This is my second week using Blackboard as an online instructor. I have for many years been on the student side of Blackboard. I have recently been introduced to Moodle. It is a free, open source, Course Management System. Honestly, I didn’t even know there were other CMS options out there for free. This also means that individual persons who teach can use Moodle for their classroom without a whole school or school system buying into a single Course Management System. This would allow for some flexibility. I also have no idea what Universities and Colleges pay for the service. This would be something good to investigate.
These are some of the claims of why Moodle is better:
- it is easier to navigate (Blackboard has confusing tabs and windows)
- RSS feeds to different modules
- avatars
- automatic email function of chat, IM, and forums
- when adding a quiz date, it is automatically added to the calendar, upcoming events, and recent activity
- back-ups can be made and saved as a zip file and uploaded to a new course instead of going through an intermediary of Bb support staff
These are some reasons against Moodle:
- the wiki has limited function
- there are navigation issues with the forums
- the design layout may appeared disorganized to some users
Here are some sources if you are looking to compare Blackboard and Moodle:
University of Victoria offers many tools at the bottom of their website including a helpful comparison chart, PowerPoint, and pdf detailing differences between the two CMS.
University of Louisiana lists 5 differences between Moodle and Bb
