The life and times of MET student

West Vancouver Board of Education

1075 – 21st Street

West Vancouver, BC

V7V 4A9

Dear Board Members,

As a teacher in the district, I am writing to gain your support in setting up a Moodle server at my school as a pilot project.  Currently, there is no official Learning Management System (LMS) supported by the district. I, along with several other colleagues at my school, believe that this needs to change so we can more effectively manage our classroom environments, enhance our teaching, and improve students’ learning using current technology.

When selecting an LMS, there are many options to choose from, and I believe that Moodle is the best choice for our school and district.  I came to this conclusion based on a comparison of several LMSs, focusing on specific qualities that I believe are essential for an LMS to have for it to be effective in our context.  Firstly, I compared the overall cost to set-up and maintain the LMS system.  For commercial systems like Blackboard, the cost can range from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars, depending on the number of users.  Whereas, to set up open-source software, like Moodle, it is free.  The only potential costs with Moodle are if you choose to use a hosting service, which ranges from $60/month to $175/month, and technical support, which ranges from $1500/year to $5000/year (from Moodle partner, Lambda Solutions).

Another criterion that I looked in my evaluation of different LMS sites was ease of use for both teachers and students.  As described by Perkins and Pfaffman, “because what the teacher sees is so similar to what students see, managing a course in Moodle is quite intuitive” (2006, p. 35).   Furthermore, Moodle allows for teachers to easily create uniform, organized pages without having to think about how to formant their content and set up navigation. Moodle is much easier to use and much preferred by students as well.  In a survey done by Bremer and Bryant, 45% of students found general navigation around the site easier with Moodle than Blackboard, and 80% preferred Moodle as an overall tool for learning.  Similar results can be found in a separate study conducted by Machado and Tao, where 71% of students found that Moodle was easier to use than Blackboard.

Finally, in my comparison of different LMS sites, I looked at the level technical support offered by each site.  With commercial sites like Blackboard, technical support for a wide variety of problems is included.  Moodle, being an open-source software site, unfortunately offers no technical support aside from user manuals and forums.  It is possible, however to purchase technical support from the same partner sites that offer hosting services.

Based on significantly lower cost, and ease of use for students and teachers, I have concluded that Moodle is the best LMS for this pilot project.  Little resources would be needed to set up the server, aside from a moderate budget of $60/month for hosting services, and $1500/year for technical and help desk support from Lambda Solutions.  I hope that you can see the many educational benefits that an LMS in our school would provide, and take this proposal into serious consideration.

Sincerely,

Katie Greene

References:

Bremer D., Bryant, B.  (2005).  A comparison of two learning management systems: moodle vs. blackboard.  Retrieved February 3, 2010: http://naccq.ac.nz/conference05/proceedings_05/concise/bremer_moodle.pdf

Machado M., Tao, E.  (2007). Blackboard vs. moodle: comparing user experience of learning management systems.  Milwaukee: Frontiers in Education Conference.

Perkins, M., Pfaffman, J.  (2006)  Using a course management system to improve classroom communication. Science Teacher, 73(7), 33-37.

www.lambdasolutions.net