As a learner I am constantly making references to what I already know (old/prior knowledge) and using that to relate to and/or organise new knowledge. In some way then one can say that I embody theories such as Schema Theory, Discovery Learning, Constructivism and Connectivism. I begin with this preamble because I need to qualify the title of my post in that rather than being a ‘which is better that the other’ it is more of how I related to and organised my experiences based on prior knowledge.
I concentrated on Moodle first. I touched on Vista but did not fully emerse myself in the Sandbox until I felt I was somewhat proficient in Moodle. And what a surprise it was!!! It was far more user friendly and did not necessarily require as much technical expertise (e.g. html code) as Moodle. My appreciation for Vista however was that much greater having experienced Moodle first, in which I fought my way through mastery while engaging in quite a bit of research. Components I had to research in Moodle I found so easily in Vista (perhaps that is one reason why WebCT Vista is not free or perhaps prior knowledge made me more aware of what to look for?). If you have the money to spend on WebCT Vista then it is more than worth it, particularly at the level of administrators and course designers. It really takes a load off module leaders in uploading and managing content.
Moodle is great to work with once you get the gist of it and it has the benefits of being free and open source but I could not help but thinking, while working with Vista, ‘Ahhhh. This is way easier’. The templates are sequential, easy to access with a very friendly user face. For example, even just how one assigns what kind of discussion: threaded, blog or journal; course management tools such as deciding what tools to use in the course, ease of changing the appearance of the course, use of colours and course creation tools e.g. assigning goals and uploading content. These affordances go a far way in creating an aesthetically pleasing, professional and user friendly site quite.
What also was very apparent is the manifestation of meaningful learning. The Moodle experience was meaningful as I used a real course and had the desire to create a full LMS. From my Moodle experience I was also able to have a more meaningful experience with WebCT Vista. All in the all the experiences were a full manifestation of Ausubel’s meaningful learning theory in experiencing and participating in authentic and relevant learning structures and activities.
I thoroughly enjoyed the experience of Moodle having left the experience with new skills, particularly html coding, which I did not utilise as much in my WebCT Vista experience.