Dear Principal of CLC,
As you know I have been slated with the task of determining a LMS system for our school as part of our e-learning initiative to support students. As our centre deals with at-risk youth who go to school 4 days a week, for 3 hours per day, we need an LMS system that allows students and teachers easy access to their courses whether at home or school. In addition as most of our staff and students have never used an LMS it is important that it is both easy to learn and to navigate. I have determined that the best LMS to fulfill our needs is Moodle. The reason that I have chosen Moodle stems from my research into different LMS systems and my evaluation of Moodle using the SECTIONS framework as set out by Bates and Poole (Bates & Poole, 2003).
The first category of the SECTIONS framework deals with the appropriateness of the LMS for our students. Our students generally lack motivation and as a result they struggle with working independently. As we still require the students to come into class and interact with the teacher Moodle is just providing them with extra learning opportunities and tools.
For Ease of Use I first looked at a survey conducted by Machado & Tao on students using the Blackboard system in a University setting. “71% felt that the Moodle learning management system was easier to use than the Blackboard learning management system. 75% of the respondents would prefer to use the Moodle learning management system in future courses as a replacement for Blackboard.” (Machado & Tao, 2007, pp. S4J-11) Their study further concludes that Moodle is the more effective management system. Although Blackboard has changed since the time of this study Moodle’s navigation has not and it is therefore still easy to navigate. I can attest to Moodle’s ease of use as I have been able to see first-hand on my Moodle site how quickly students navigate the different tools and learn the various features.
In regards to reliability some concerns are raised that Moodle is open source and as a result not as reliable in updates or testing. Moodle just released their 2.5 version where they received code from 112 developers which is the most ever for a single release. This version also was the most tested release in the history of Moodle. (Dougiamas, 2013) I think this speaks to the fact that though Moodle is open source they do have a great deal of support from the community that rivals other proprietary LMS. The new release added new features to Moodle like badges, bootstrap (allows for greater control over design), and usability improvements. (Dougiamas, 2013) This shows that they are continually looking at adding new innovative tools and improving their design.
Another study by fadhil Muhsen et al (2012) that compared different LMS systems recommended Moodle as their top choice. “Moodle has a good architecture, implementation, inter-operability, and internationalization, and also has the strength of the community, It is free and its accessibility is average. “ (fadhil Muhsen, et al., 2012)
Cost structure is an important factor for us as we have a limited budget being a small school of only 160 students. Moodle is open source software which means that we can freely download and install the program. We could install the program for free on our local Windows server using Xampp and as a result we wouldn’t be reliant on the internet. However, one of the requirements was that students have the ability to work on their courses at home, so for this reason we will have to look at external hosting.
Moodle needs LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) in order to operate which can be easily found from most hosting providers. As we have to deal with the regulations of FOIPPA we would need to find a provider who uses servers that are only located in Canada. The estimated cost would be $150/year for the hosting and $20/year for our domain name. As I am technically able to install and maintain Moodle there would be no additional cost for setup.
Moodle provides many different tools that promote learning and a comparison of LMS features by Kumar, Gankotiya and Dutta focused their attention on learner tools that promoted communication, productivity and student involvement. The results were that Moodle ranked in the top with several other LMS systems only missing an orientation tool. (Kumar, Gankotiya, & Dutta, 2011) All of these tools mean that many different types of learning and teaching styles can be accommodated. The same can be said for interactivity as these tools allow for student involvement from creating groups, to real time chat, discussion forums and more. These tools are included with the basic Moodle installation but more are available with 3rd party plug-ins.
There are not many organizational issues except for a general resistance from the staff to use an LMS instead of their paper courses. Additional training and support from the school will help with this issue.
There is no novelty from Moodle as this system has been around for quite a while. I am encouraged to see the new tools that they are introducing which means they are trying to add novel features to Moodle.
Once staff learns how to work with the various in tools in Moodle it will not take long to prepare a simple course. Care must be taken to not make Moodle just a document repository but instead to fully use all of the interactive tools that it offers. On average a complicated course can take several weeks to create or about 30 hours and easier sites can be done in less time.
A careful analysis of different LMS systems has revealed that for our needs the best and most economical option would be Moodle. Implementation will be easy and a basic site can be setup and operational within a few days. If you have any further questions feel free to ask.
Colin Grzeskowiak
Works Cited
Bates, A., & Poole, G. (2003). Chapter 4: a Framework for Selecting and Using Technology. Effective Teaching with Technology in Higher Education: foundations for Success, 77-105.
Bremer, D., & Bryant, R. (2008). A Comparison of two learning management Systems: Moodle vs Blackboard., 21, p. Proceedings of the 19th Annual conference of the national Advisory committee on computing Qualifications. NACCQ.
Chung, C., Pasquini, L., & Koh, C. (2013). Web-based Learning Management System Considerations for Higher Education. Learning and Performance Quaterly, 1(4), 24-37.
fadhil Muhsen, Z., Maaita, A., Odeh, A., Eljinini, M., Nsour, A., Azzam, M., & Ahed, M. (2012). Moodle Caroline and Blackboard Systems. European, Mediterranean & Middle Eastern conference on Information Systems. Munich, Germany.
Kumar, S., Gankotiya, A., & Dutta, K. (2011). A comparative study of Moodle with other e-learning Systems. Electronics Computer Technology (ICECT) , 5, 414-418.
Machado, M., & Tao, E. (2007). Blackboard vs. Moodle: Comparing user experience of learning management systems. Frontiers in Education conference- Global Engineering: Knowledge without Borders, Opportunities without Passports, (pp. S4J-7).
Panettieri, J. (2009). Addition by subtraction. University Business, 58-62. Retrieved March 2009