Greetings fantastic elearning Heroes and Heroes in training! I need to pick your wealth of experience as related to LMS options. Right now all of the buzz with Open source is Moodle. I've never had any experience with Moodle but all the articles discuss how easy it is...am I missing something? The website is super confusing and it seems I need more developer skills than I have to understand? I am thinking that I may be overlooking something with Moodle, but at this point I have not been able to effectively launch this on my computer. I wanted to get your thoughts on which systems you have used both proprietary and open source. Which ones would you recommend? I'm researching like crazy and trying to demo as much as I can, but would like to get the perspective of users. Much appreciated for your time!!!

We've set up, configured, and customized Moodle for many government agencies unable or unwilling to pay for a commercial LMS. You'll find opinions all over the place. If you want to get valuable insights, I respectfully suggest that you tell us a bit more about your specific requirements. I would not recommend Moodle or any other LMS without knowing how, why, where, and with whom you intend to use it. Generally speaking, Moodle's strengths include its flexibility and vast global developer community. It's particularly well-suited to academic environments, especially those with dedicated IT departments who can support it. There are also some great companies dedicated to hosting, supporting, and customizing Moodle. I personally would not consider Moodle if you're a small training department solely responsible for every aspect of LMS setup, maintenance and administration. Hosted solutions like Articulate Online are probably a better starting point for that set of needs.

Dennis, thanks for the great information!!! Some of it aligns with what I have been finding. The timing of your message couldn't be better because I have a new project that needs to find an LMS. Do you know if most LMS require you to prepopulate the learner or can the learner set up their own account?

Hi, how many users should you manage? Are you speaking about thousands of users? I'm asking you because both LMS stability and LMS administration are really important point to consider. A server of your own could not serve many users, unless you are heaviliy supported by an It Dept. (als in terms of networking and balancing issues...) Are you considering a LMS installation at your site, or a hosted or cloud one? That is another important point.... A truly "free" LMS is hard to use in a professional way for large numbers of users; a Cloud or hosted installations are the best choice, in my opinion... you could start with a minimum number of users and then scale gradually... Moodle Totara, Docebo, eFront, are all great! Absorb is amazing! To be sure and avoid mistakes, start with Totara or Docebo, according to your budget...if I may suggest hope it helps

I have used Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Edvance360, and Moodle. I concur with you, the Moodle website is confusing. Even though Moodle is open source there are costs associated with it. For instance, hosting, maintenance, updates, programming modules, purchasing modules, etc. The Moodle design is very plain and did not seem user-friendly. We ended up select Edvance360, www.edvance360.com, as our LMS. It is a hosted platform and upgrades are as easy as the click of a button. Edvance360 also had all of the tools (discussion forum, tests, Wiki, chat, lessons, etc.) that we were searching for in a LMS. The customer support is awesome too.

Moodle and eFront innovative? Weeeeell...no...not really... Contrary to popular belief, there hasn't been much innovation in the LMS field for the past 10 years, unless you call integrating a "Like" button to a platform "innovation" - I certainly don't.The things is that when it comes to features most LMS's are on par with one another. The keys to selecting a LMS, is true conformance to standards and overall performance (footprint and load) - the two factors they don't tell you much about in the first place... I would argue that the interface is of secondary importance (initially), as it is something that can be easily remedied (a decent developer will be able to provide an alternative design fairly easily) and would cost much less than the pain and suffering you will inevitably experience should you select the wrong LMS for your business.Hope this helps,Alex

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

seannufer1
Community Member
11 years ago

Moodle is great. Our institution recently went through the evaluation process and looked at all of the major contenders in the market to assess the best platform which would meet our needs and expectations. We are a non-profit education system focusing mostly on graduate studies (psychology, law, nursing). We decided to migrate to Canvas by Instructure (http://instructure.com).

We just finished migrating the majority of our affiliates from eCollege to Canvas, and are now working on the conversion process to migrate one of our affiliates from moodle. Canvas seems to have all the benefits of moodle, including open APIs, while being hosted on Instructure servers. For small institutions like ours, it is cheaper to have Instructure host the LMS rather than maintain an open source platform locally.

The functionality of Canvas is fantastic as well. It is ahead of the game in terms of mobile accessibility, integration (LTI), and functionality. I'm not trying to sell the product for them, but these were just our conclusions based on our assessment of the LMS landscape. D2L is also a fantastic product that you might consider.
ChimegBaatar
Community Member
11 years ago

Hi all,

I have been working on my research for 2 years. Using Moodle and trying to control students' learning process. I have very limited materials using log data of LMS. Moodle has some problem evaluating students' learning process. I uploaded SCORM packaged lesson materials and want to get active learning result of reading lecture slides.

I hope to meet someone who have enough experience working with log data.

I have no information about Blackboard's log data. Does the BB can control students learning process?

Cheers,

Chimeg
Frank-Natt
Community Member
11 years ago

el rooc said:

easiest way to try Moodle - go to http://bitnami.org/stack/moodle - download installer - runs as a virtual machine on laptop/PC

also look at eFront (much less cluttered, and free)

The statement about eFront is partially accurate, not totally! I tried eFront. It is free until you need support. If you want the functionality of a true LMS, you're definitely paying.
SeanPower1
Community Member
11 years ago

Hello Sarah,

I am keen to see if you are still considering options for a LMS vendor and to introduce Firmwater LMS to see if we are a match for your needs.

Let me know if you are still on the hunt, more than happy to host a demonstration and provide information if so.

Regards,

Sean Power

+1 416-815 1496 x 125

spower@firmwater.com
JeffNye
Community Member
11 years ago

Everything depends on your needs and experience.

I have worked as a Moodle admin, web developer, and elearning developer in addition to teaching and supporting technology in schools. I can tell you that Moodle is in some ways an ugly beast, but it also has some in depth functionality that makes it good for course developers. It does lack a robust ecosystem of good plug ins and themes to choose from, as well, so you can spend lots of time and or money trying to make it do the extra stuff you may need (using a shopping cart or PayPal, for example because the Moodle PayPal implementation is bare bones).

Moodle is free, and it's been around along time. But consider your needs well, and all the other LMS options. WordPress is the free, easy to use CMS out there today, and LearnDash is the plugin that turns Wordpress into an LMS. This is huge, because you get a free, user-friendly CMS with a vast selection of themes and plugins to use along side what seems to be a thoughtfully created LMS add on in LearnDash. Truthfully I haven't used Learndash but have been following it for a while before it was officially released over a year ago, and I have been very happy to be developing with WordPress for some years after doing a bit with Joomla. I would consider the suggested JoomlaLMS suggestion in this thread as well, hopefully compare that to the LearnDash one I've described if Moodle seems like overkill or too cumbersome.

Good Luck!
krishnakumarP-N
Community Member
11 years ago

Hi,

l want to make an e-learning system .. I would like to start with Moodle. from last one month I am working on open source LMS softwares and I found Moodle is the best.. but I have some doubts .. I am planning to make a system like video tutorial (digital contents) portal.. how can I upload video to Moodle and I want to add a video player in Moodle itself. .... Now I am blank.. I don't know how to start it... expecting help from experts... just guide me how to do this... and give me some stuff for reference also...

I saw absorb and I really liked it... awesome work they have done... I also want to make one system like that...

please help...

thanks...
MarlinLinger
Community Member
11 years ago
There are apparently some very knowledgable people here. Would someone know if there is an easy way to implement a Mastery Learning system in Moodle or another inexpensive LMS? Blackboard's Angel software has one, and I'm wondering if there is one on a less expensive solution.
AlinaToderas598
Community Member
11 years ago
I think you can find a way better solution than Moodle with less hassle, how about EDU 2.0? It's more modern, not that expensive and very easy to use it.
LoyicsBlue
Community Member
10 years ago
Hi everyone, this thread is really interesting but I need to ask you something. I'm looking for a LMS which could support 150k+ users and I'm only interested in analytics ( I'm working for a driving school editor and we only need to follow all students to see their evolutions ). Could you give me a tip ?
AtulShetty
Community Member
10 years ago
I know this post is now pretty old and moodle has just released their latest version (2.9), but i think ill answer anyway :) Moodle is like Jazz ! you may not like it at first but once you get used to it you start appreciating it. Just like Jazz the customization options are limitless especially if you try to integrate Moodle with another platform, for example integrating Moodle with WordPress can be an interesting proposition. However, Moodle is not for every one - I would say it is more popular in the educational sector rather than the corporate world. I have implemented/ used moodle for staff education at my workplace for 6 years and it worked pretty well but it required certain amount of web development to make it work exactly like we wanted it to. So if you can afford a commercial LMS go for it, unless you are happy to customize etc. or live with the vanilla version.

It will be interesting to see what Articulate changes in Articulate online, considering Adobe Prime was recently launched. One of the the missing pieces in Articulate online system is the flexibility to accept SCORM packages developed in a non articulate authoring tool, i am sure this minor change will make several people happy, oh and yes social learning, mobile learning, event driven learning would be good to have too :D