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[august]

Any thoughts on this? 

I am going to teach an online class where I want to post the readings, put up extensive primary sources, etc.

I can use Blackboard or Moodle.

From your own experiences, do you have a preference?

[der_gadfly]

probably equal BUT it is HOW you organize the course: by week, by learning unit, or in categorical format. (the last means that all documents are in one section, all discussions are in one section, and all audio/video are in another. Exams are all lumped into a section.... etc.

[johnr]

Does your university support both platforms equally? 

[mended_drum]

Given the relative prices to the institution, I would say, "yes."

[voxprincipalis]

Is Moodle superior to Blackboard? Yes, in the way that being shot by a firing squad is preferable to being boiled in oil.

VP

[august]

Is Moodle superior to Blackboard? Yes, in the way that being shot by a firing squad is preferable to being boiled in oil.

VP

Hmm... I've never thought about this before, but I guess I would prefer to die by firing squad than by scorching oil.   

My university has Blackboard.  Moodle is free. 

[mj_romo]

I have used both and prefer Moodle for organizational reasons.  I have had students tell me that they like Moodle better because of the style it has (not really sure what they meant).

[johnr]

Is Moodle superior to Blackboard? Yes, in the way that being shot by a firing squad is preferable to being boiled in oil.

VP

Hmm... I've never thought about this before, but I guess I would prefer to die by firing squad than by scorching oil.   

My university has Blackboard.  Moodle is free. 

So, the point I was trying to make in my previous post was that if your university supports Blackboard, and has tech people that can help you with Blackboard, and if all the students are used to Blackboard because that's what all of the other instructors use, then perhaps Blackboard is the way to go?

[llanfair]

My uni is currently contracted to have WebCT till next June - here's where I comment that WebCT is as useless as the proverbial mammaries on a male bovine - but is "test-driving" Moodle.  I'm curious about it, but haven't yet had time to try it.

[melba_frilkins]

For the short term, it's a toss-up. That is, either platform will serve your purposes well enough. Neither is perfect, but both are good. But you do need to find out if both are equally supported by your campus (such as populating in student accounts, help desk support for faculty & students, etc.).

Now, if you are planning to continue using an online platform into future semesters/years, you really need to try to find out which platform will still be available to you a few semesters or years into the future. That way you can avoid having to transition from one to the other. (Though, there are always transitions to newer versions. And there's no promise that either platform will continue to be available to you.)

But personally, I would avoid Blackboard like a plague. They are an irresponsible company and have caused our campus much grief. (We had been happily using WebCT, which was bought out by BB. BB then turned around and destroyed WebCT through neglect--failure to update and support the product. It was a disaster and we ended up going to ANGEL. Well, guess who just bought out ANGEL now?! So, we'll probably end up going to Moodle. Since it's open-source software, no one can buy it out and take it over). Blackboard seems to be trying to gain a monopoly on course management software. That's never a good thing in an area where consumer choice is the only thing that drives quality control.

[mayjohn]

http://www.humboldt.edu/~jdv1/moodle/all.htm
http://mfeldstein.com/blackboard-vs-moodle-north-carolina-community-colleges-assessment/
http://www.dontwasteyourtime.co.uk/blackboard/blackboard-vs-moodle-a-comparison/

Besides and except the above,  the word I hear on the street is that Moodle is more intuitive. It probably is slightly better designed but I would not go as far as stating that it is a factor or two better than Blackboard. So the differences are negligible and subjective from a technology perspective (cost not taken under consideration).

While not a Blackboard fan, I have to admit my suspicion that because Moodle is open source, for some people these days has the same effect as good as: "green energy". So I don't know if the "more intuitive" characterization is a non-quantitative way of expressing this feel-good, we-don't-feed-commercial-interests, aspect of Moodle.

Now, I am forced to use Blackboard as my institution refuses to transition or even offer Moodle as an alternative. But I can live with either platform and not really bothered by this constraint.

[csgirl]

We have WebCT, and I am just appalled at how bad it is. I spent 10 years developing software in industry before going to academia, so I have some perspective on how web-based apps should behave, and WebCT is not even close. It is slow as molasses, has a poor and annoying user interface that slows me down during even the most basic tasks, and it turns up its toes and dies all the time. Is this really the state of the art in course management systems? I haven't seen Moodle, so I don't know if it is any better. I am about ready to bag it and find a web host someplace and set up my own site.

[hoodah_thunkett]

Is this really the state of the art in course management systems? I haven't seen Moodle, so I don't know if it is any better. I am about ready to bag it and find a web host someplace and set up my own site.

I should probably open a new thread with this question, but I'll start here. I'm an instructional designer with a background in software interaction design, and my husband is a Web developer who runs in open source circles and worked on the Moodle project in the early days. Since we also hate Blackboard and haven't found anything better than Moodle, we've toyed with the idea of creating a home-grown (open source) course management system. My question to the community is:

What would a good course management system look like?

[melba_frilkins]

What would a good course management system look like?

What a huge question!

Just about any of the main players are actually pretty good, if they work properly. For example, WebCT (now Blackboard-something or another) would be great, except it's buggy as heck and is not well supported; for each thing that a WebCT/BB update fixes, two other items end up broken. We left WebCT/BB recently for ANGEL. Currently ANGEL is quite good, but having been bought out by Blackboard, we're expecting it to crumble from lack of support.

From my point of view, the platforms have hit a point where no one is really superior in terms of tools and organization. When one gets a new tool, the others follow. Organization of the platform is subjective--you'll never please everyone, so any reasonable organization works.

What I think people are going to be looking for is STABILITY: a platform that works perfectly with all current browsers and will easily accommodate the never-ending updates to those browsers; it will work equally well from mac & pc; it will need minimal plug-ins; it will have lots of room for enhancements/updates without having to go to a totally new version; it will not be released until it is well tested and very stable. Should be able to integrate easily with campus enrollment systems (like Banner, Datatel).
 
Personally, I like a system with lots of flexibility and options (but with easy defaults for the new user) and ANGEL seems to have this. I really like ANGEL's learning object repository and the way it's pretty quick and easy to throw in links from one part of the class to another. I wish it were quicker to do routine things (like to change a certain setting for each discussion, I have to change them manually, instead of all at once). Oh, and it'd be cool if it had a built in tool so I could make little audio/screen shots videos (like Jing).

[neutralname]

I heard that Blackboard has some great features, but they are extras, and that my school won't pay for them.  So we have the basic version, which feels like software from 1993.