Need help with LMS decision....is Moodle that great?

I have worked with MOODLE for the last 4 years and I love it - however we had it hosted by an external company (onclick) so any upgrades etc they where there to advise.

From a course creater/reporting point of view it is lovely, it really does not take long to learn and I have had good feedback from those who use it.  In fact 81% of our organisation accessed this in the last year, considering we are a government ran organisation I feel quite proud of that.

Take Care

Clare

I have worked extensivly with Moodle, Docebo, Ed, SumTotal, Saba, built my own "poor mans" LMS, and modified or worked with about 7 or 8 other unmentionables.

In every case below, I've customized the LMS's at the code level and can say the following:

Free systems:

Moodle: Great software architecture, very scalable, supports many languages, can be modified at the code level bloated as heck, terrible work-flows (although you can create your own work flows) for users and worse for admins.

Docebo: Clean and simple software architecure, great user workflows - that you can customize totally, very easy to customize (via code, or just admin configuration) and you can edit in all 32 languages, create custom client portals with their own work flows, courses, catalogues, etc..., not recommended to 100+ simultanious accesses.

Paid:

Ed: Amazing LMS, do anything with anything, supports any SCORM, and AICC, incredible dashboard, supports Certifications, skills, competencies, production planning, feature rich like no other, very like and intuitive work flows, extremely expensive (like 150,000+ to get started with your own server, or about 10.00 / month per active user for hosted) - This system was originally designed for aerospace manufacturing.

SumTotal, far too expensive, user work flows are terrible (example: My Completed Courses is a collapsed (hidden) areas below My courses (rather than a tab t the left where all other user page navigation is), Admin functions are divided into 4 round buttons accross the header, after you select one, you get to guess which of the 5 menus below you need to use to do a task, and the pain goes on...

Saba, got 150,000.00 so they can send their expert to answer your questions, then give you the product to install, next, you still have to pay them per user when you exceed teh number that the original cost covered, btw - you are not allowed to customize it at code level - oops, been there - done it, not goin' thar agin'

My own LMS: Absolute failure compaired to all of the above (although I ran simulators off it which no one is yet doing today), also not available anymore

I hope this information can be of help.

Best Regards,

Dennis Hall

If you're looking for free LMS solution you can also try Sakai http://www.sakaiproject.org/ — it's more user-friendly than Moodle.

As for paid LMS, I prefer Docebo. I agree with Dennis, it's good solution for up to 100 trainees

if you want to store your courses somewhere, you can use Articulate Online or iSpring Online.

Dennis, Andreas, thanks for the useful suggestions!

I have one question regarding Docebo : What problems did you experience when hosting a large number of users? Are you reffering to old installation or the current Docebo solution?

Thanks a lot!

Hi Stefano:

To clarify my statement, that is 100+ simultanious users. I use 4.0.4.

Actually, there is no issue with Docebo itself for more than 100 users...

You will need a very robust PHP server to serve 100+ users simply because Docebo is not a distributed or enterprise solution such as Saba, Moodle, Sumtotal,and others can be configured.

In short the single servers workload cannot be shared amongst many servers (with the exception of templates) in docebo, therefore all users must enter and communicate with one server. An example, would be the 100 users finalizing their course at the same time sending at least 64000 X 100 bytes of information for the server to process at once. In most PHP servers, something's gonna give

Saba, as my monster example; can be configured to have multiple portals (LMS), multiple content servers (LCMS), and uses a connector to offload the project processes and source files to developers to send, retrieve, and version RLOs on the content servers. Saba can also be purchased with Saba Publisher Pro (known in the real world as Lectora) so it accomodates the whole ADDIE life-cycle over many servers and developers workstations connected from around the world.

Moodle can connect servers to share content, catalogues, etc. in its enterprise configuration.

Server power make all the difference in each case above.

Best Regards,

Dennis Hall

Hi Sarah,

as a good alternative to open source free lms solution you've been shared, I can recommend a paid but not less effective JoomlaLMS (www.joomlalms.com). I've been using it for a while and find it really easy and intuitive. As for your needs, it enables courses selling oline.

Hope it would be helpful.

Hi all

I'm working with MOODLE and i have some experiences with Claroline, Docebo, dokeos, ATutor, eFront and ...

I know if anybody want start a learning management system as Commercial Use MOODLE is the best choose.

Other Open source LMS have problem with High user!

It's very important your LMS have acceptable responsive for all user.

Does anyone know what platform is used here? for the eLearning heroes portal!?!?!?

I love it...

ASP.Net as you can see on the URL

amazing thread..

btw, been working in moodle for almost 4 years and counting and have this hobby that everytime moodle upgrade, i want to upgrade too, but it's not advisable for me, users get confused everytime i upgrade and ended with tons of calls... Maybe info below would help too

Moodle currently Status:

 **1,250 number of users

 **moodle 2.4 version

 **150 # of teachers enrolled. the rest is students

 **1 to 10 rate: 8 is my rating for moodle 2.4 (interface not lookin good but plugins are awesome)

** 136 classrooms

**creating quiz in moodle is not really bad and it will display the results u needed. 

Problem encounter and solutions

** database overload - solution upgrade max_limit in php.ini

** limit the report logs - set it for one or three months logs only (encounter hundred thousands logs within six months and it is dramatically slow).

**avoid enabling blocks when its not really needed