Moodle Software

Moodle's complexity may be confusing for users, but in the end it allows good and successful teaching over distance.

Pros

Moodle allows courses to be taught online with students distributed over distance. Many parts of it's interface, particularly overviews of grades and status of various students, is helpful.

Cons

Moodle and it's user interface is quite complex, undoubtedly in attempt to add flexibility for different types of courses. In my experience teaching with it, though, many users, especially older, non-computer savvy students, have difficulty navigating to find the various parts required of them in the coursework.

- Efficient management of various courses
- Creating learning modules, quizzes, courseware
- Customizing on top to add more functionality to features

Pros

- Alot to do, right from managing courses to creating quizzes and what not. Everything can be done on Moodle
- Easily customizable

Cons

- A bit old school
- More options with design could help
- The user role management should be more elaborate

Pros

Free (except to host it-see below in cons)
Lots of free articles and you tube videos to help you with it.

If you are task oriented, you can set up an entire course with this program including videos, pictures, web pages, test, SCORM packages, whatever you want. I even have courses within courses.

You can train others to use it as well. Administration is pretty good so you can have others create courses or content, but not have the ability to screw things up.

Cons

Clunky and scroll of death are common descriptors of the program.

It is free and there are updates coming out all the time, but you better have a good IT department that is willing to host the site, manage the server, etc. My webpage guy at my fire department set this up for me for free. Then I got a bill from someone that he had to hire to set it up because it was over his head. I don't dare ask him to upgrade it because I will probably get another bill. But I can still use it, just some of the newer features don't work. As soon as I can, I will try to get my City's IT department to host it for me on a newer server.

There are quite a few Moodle partners who will host it for you, but they are extremely expensive.

I tried to host it myself with a free web hosting service and it worked for a day or two until I got notice that I had violated the user agreement. I don't know how, maybe I used up too much space. Don't know.

Least time of development, small Developer Team, no expertise in HTML/ CSS/ XML, etx required. nevertheless, having them can help you dive deeper into the devlopment schemes and have real fun. Very fast time to GO-LIVE, ROI for development is faster reached, fantastique and responsive.

Pros

Covers most of what es expected on an eLearning platform. provides all functions, mainly adapted by other vendors and marketed very expensive, although Moodle is Open Source. I would rather invest in professional developers and use Moodle as base platform and customize to suite demands

Cons

The Integration with Oracle is supposed to be slow. I haven't tested that yet, so not sure. Mainly, Moodle users are large, for Colleges and Universities, and Oracle is supposed to handle large user environments better and faster responsivenes, so i expect that the Moodle Development Community does something to make the use of Oracle as Backend better

Pros

I like the structure of the website. You can find everything under the designed tab. Also, I like the search engine for courses, students, or specific professors. Overall, it's an easy website to manage as administrator!

Cons

One of the thing I do not like about Moodle is the way you upload assignments. Some students have faced difficulty uploading assignments or papers.

I received immense educational learning experiences through this software.

Pros

Moodle is very straight forward to use. Moodle provides customization and is extremely friendly for users and administrators. I have used Moodle as a user and as an administrator, therefore, I can attest to this fact. I have been using Moodle for five years now and think it to be superior than other software out there.

Cons

Sometimes Moodle can have a slight lag when loading videos that are loaded onto a home page for courses.

The greatest benefits are being able to manage and deliver content with the click of a button.

Pros

I most like Moodles organization and intuitive features. It's easy to organize and deliver content to students. Once you have a little bit of experience, there's not much in the classroom that you can't do with moodle in some way shape or form. The Organization,Grading, feedback, compatability, and assessment features make moodle a must for anyone moving into a digitized learning space or 1 to 1 environment.

Cons

While moodle is not perfect and can be a bit difficult to figure out in some regards, its the most cost effective platform I've seen for a digital learning space.

Pros

Moodle is low cost and very user friendly. I would say if you are comfortable using most social media platforms, you should adapt to Moodle with ease. Moodle also has a host of plugins which can be added to enhance the overall efficiency of the software. Shout out to: all the mass features. Overall, Moodle gives you bank for your buck. Larger LMS options are too expensive for smaller schools to afford. Moodle is helping to close the gap between cost and functionality.

Cons

Learning the ins and outs of the software can be a bit painstaking. Randomly, things may go wrong, and it takes a bit of time to dig through the online forums to resolve the issue. I guess this is kind of a pro and a con at the same time as the user community is really supportive. Also, the beta versions of some of the plugins can be a hit or miss with them working perfectly for some users but spotty for others.

Offline teaching and learning

Pros

free (open source), flexible Course Management System, great community support, robust and easy to use

Cons

Not in my language, yet, so many users of the application would strongly resend it.
Also a down-side, you have to learn how to use each (of many) tool most appropriately to get the best results

Nothing. I was way to difficult to work with. Unless you have a company that sets it up for you, expect to struggle.

Pros

It was free. That's it. I really cannot think of anything else to say. I was super excited to get the opportunity to use it but it was cumbersome.

Cons

There was this hype about Moodle being free... all the support you need in on the internet. Yes it is free and there is a reason for that. When looking for support, there is a lot out there as long as it is common things, any time you get to the nitty gritty of something you are on your own. Then free? It was not really free. Setup costs, support costs, etc..etc...If you go it alone be prepared to spend hours and days trying to understand the beast. The user interface looked old fashioned. Everything about the look and feel was ugly.

Pros

I like that it is very easy to use, and you can see and download all the learning materials, see the participants, have a discussion or message people individually. It is a big upgrade from the other platform I was using some years ago.

Pros

Moodle makes it easy for me to distribute handouts and reading materials, and take up student work all in one place. It saves time by allowing me to load materials my students need in a daily basis. It helps students keep track of their assignments and all handouts. If a student misplaces a handout or reading materials, all they have to do is go to my Moodle site and download the documents again.
I also love how all documents students submit through Moodle have a time stamp. This helps me hold kids accountable to deadlines and keeps a record that is useful for sharing with parents during conferences.
The other feature I really like is being able to load as many documents as I want on my site and then using the hide feature to keep students from being able to see the documents until they are needed.

Cons

I haven't yet mastered how to use Moodle to give my students tests. I have tried to figure it out on my own without training, but I have not had a lot of success.

Pros

Open source. Regularly updated and improved. We could integrate it with our academic management system.

Cons

Standard interface design is not the "best", although it can be customized. I find it a little bit confusing for teachers to manage their course page, but once you get used to it, the job is done.

Pros

Used it with my university. Very easy to share courses and find what you're looking for. Easy to get your grades in one place.

Cons

A bit old-fashioned. Would be nice to be more mobile-friendly. Add some features around collaboration between students, etc.

We get a functional LMS at a minimal cost. It integrates easily with Student Information Systems and allows us to produce high-quality courses at a very minimal cost.

Pros

1. It's open source software.
2. There is a large community of users who add to functionality via plugins and add-ons.
3. It's extremely flexible as well as affordable.

Cons

The basic skins are very plain-jane.
It doesn't pop like some paid LMS options, without some extra involvement in skinning. Sometimes bugs take a little while to be worked out.

Pros

This software was in use at my school when I started working here, but it was easy to pick up and essentially master in a short period of time.

Cons

There are occasional recurring issues (i.e. overridden grades sometimes fail to show up in the grade book) that are annoying in their frequency. Also, we've been unable to get the grade book to automatically award zeroes for unsubmitted assignments.

One of them most well known Learning Platforms / course management system (CMS)

Running for years, it do what you need, but the look and feel is not the best.

Pros

Useful and easy to use. Everybody on the online courses have used it or at least have heard about it.

Cons

Old style looking and standard.

I used this application in my college for sharing submitting all my assignments and college study materials from lecturers and friends. This is the best platform for collaborative sharing of study materials.

Pros

This is the best platform for collaborative sharing of study materials. Many features that can be manipulated for custom usage.

Cons

Lots of features that require UI changes for quick learning. Learning the platform itself is bit slow.

Advice to Others

UI for using the application should be researched.

I've been running my classrooms with Moodle for 4 years now. It really is an amazing resource in terns of the organization and ease with which you can easily facilitate and organize an online/hybrid class setting. Most of Moodle's features are quite intuitive, especially the online drop-boxes and organizing units and class materials. Simple drag and drop tools also allow you to work seamlessly with multiple windows open in order to edit the layout of your page or to add files.

The one weakness of moodle is in the area of online assessment and feedback. It's simple enough once you get the hang of things, but it is not easy to explain or teach others to do, even with the help annotations. It's compatible enough with some programs to import an assessment onto it, but all of the tweaking and modifying you have to do is a pain. Once you get everything created correctly and edited, it's not so bad. However, it takes time and experience, with frustration along the way.

Overall, I've used Moodle and other programs as a teacher and student, and Moodle is a small fraction of the price for comparable learning experience. It's been the best program/system I've found in terms of bang for your buck, especially if you're not planning on hosting the data/server.

Pros

Ease of Use and Organization--Drag and drop features and page editing options

Cons

Assessment and feedback

As an online instructor, it took me just a few minutes to learn how to use this powerful LMS tool to update and revise an online summer intensive course that another professor had created. As an open-source product, there are tons of free "how-to" videos and documentation available to help guide any instructional designer.

Pros

Easy to use cloud-based platform with all of the tools needed to design and manage online courses. All of my students found it easy to use. It enhanced their online learning experience and saved me hours of time by having all of the course content built into a single LMS platform.

Advice to Others

Check out their DEMO sites today and you will see for yourself why this is a better alternative to other LMS platforms!