In order for Benoit to decide whether to go with Moodle or Blackboard Learn, I cannot limit myself to coming up with only one question Benoit would need to consider. As I see it, there are a number of questions he has to determine answers to. These include:
If he was to choose Moodle, how comfortable does he feel about his own learning skills to learn a new system? Is it important to him to use a system that others in his department generally use? Is it important to him to be using something that does have institutional support, even if that support is not highly effective? Porto (2015) and Coates, James & Baldwin (2005) indicate that one of the features of LMS is a move toward more standardization in teaching and a system that allows for more flexibility in design on the instructor’s part may play a role in a decision between them, so how important is a sense of autonomy to him. The case study indicates that Moodle might offer the opportunity of more autonomy as the flip side of it also having less IT support; however autonomy might also relate to flexibility in the design of the course, and which system might offer that.
Related to these questions are considerations about the types of learning activities that Benoit wants to use in his teaching; which system would better support these types of learning activities? What kinds of interactions does we want between himself and his students, between the students themselves, and between the students and the course content?
An additional consideration is whether or not he thinks it will make a difference to the students who potentially access his courses. Does this even matter to him? Are they predominantly students in the English department who might prefer a platform they are also using in other courses? The answers to these questions might have an impact in terms of thinking about “ease of use” from the SECTIONS model.
Given my limited experience of knowledge in designing completely on-line learning course, and complete lack of experience with even using Moodle (along with no information in the case study about the types of learning activities, types of assessments etc, that Benoit would develop for the course) I am ill-equipped to even estimate how much development time Benoit might need to develop an on-line version of his course.
As I was writing my response to this case study I came to realize that what I was identifying as factors that Benoit would need to consider were actually some of the things that were probably things that were important more to me than they might be to others with different (but as important to them) priorities. Some of the questions that I came up with for Benoit did not have “yes” or “no” answers; they were an attempt to identify to what degree something was important and see how one thing relates to another. It reminds me of Bates’ (2014) assertion that trying to make decisions about educational technology, even when using a model such as SECTIONS is not something that could be coded and automated.
Bates, T. (2014). Teaching in digital age http://opentextbc.ca/teachinginadigitalage/ (Chapter 8 on SECTIONS framework)
Coates, H., James, R., & Baldwin, G. (2005). A critical examination of the effects of Learning Management Systems on university teaching and learning. Tertiary Education and Management, 11,(1), 19-36. http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11233-004-3567-9
Porto, S. (2015). The uncertain future of Learning Management Systems. The Evolllution: Illuminating the Lifelong Learning Movement. Retrieved from http://www.evolllution.com/opinions/uncertain-future-learning-management-systems/