The Learning Management System (LMS) Review Steering Group overseeing the Review process will make its decision late this month on a final recommendation as to which LMS – Blackboard or Moodle – the University should adopt. To inform the decision, during the second semester we have conducted a live trial of Moodle.
You are invited to see the results of that trial and the process that has been followed. These are also opportunities to make any final comments on the process, and these will be provided to the Steering Group to place alongside the other information and evidence collected during the review.
Demonstration courses – three from the Moodle trial, and three existing Blackboard courses to compare – are available for you to explore. Go to http://www.uctl.canterbury.ac.nz/lms-review-demo-courses to access these courses and find forums in which to make comments.
There are three session times for the presentation. This will provide an overview of the review process, and a presentation of some of the features of both Moodle and Blackboard using the above courses.
* Monday 20 12-1pm College of Ed (location to be confirmed)
* Tuesday 21 12-1pm UCTL Law Rm 427
* Wednesday 22 1-2pm UCTL Law Rm 427
Is support a consideration? Moodle is open source so you can’t take it back to the people who sold it to you.
But you can take it back to the Moodle community for development. (I don’t know the merits myself but I’ve certainly seen arguments that support from open source communities can be higher than from vendors.) There are also two Moodle support services in New Zealand — see http://moodle.com/support/
Judging by the spiel they give it looks like they provide development rather than support services which is quite different.
From one of the early meetings I went to on this I recall a fairly good understanding of the potential support issues involved, by UCTL and by other staff. It may well be that the full cost is no less going Open Source than with Blackboard when staff costs are accounted for but this was factored into the project brief from memory.
Dave C.
Dave is correct. The cost of support has been fully factored in compared to Blackboard (and Interact). Moodle has a very large user base which helps.