Moodle 2.0 versus Blackboard 9.1 -- a Brief Comparison

[EmergingEdTech]

I guess I should provide some feedback re: some of these comments. The post tries to provide a balanced look (although personally, I prefer Moodle). It seems some readers/viewers chose to jump on certain statements re: open source, cost of ownership, etc., and interpret them outside of the larger context. I am also in favor of open source, in the right applications and situations. Watch or read for yourself and form your own opinion. Thanks!

[bohemicus]

@emergingedtech What you say about the disadvantages of OpenSource for support is about 5 years out of date. Whitehouse.gov, MTV, Sony, IBM all have websites that run on Open Source platforms. I've seen Blackboard sites go down for days with no proper support until someone from Mexico could come have a look at things. With Blackboard you're always stuck with one company for support. On the other hand, there are dozens of very capable companies that will support and/or host Moodle.

[bohemicus]

@MrBootsCat What you say about the TOC is not true. For a small to medium-size organization, Blackboard simply isn't an option. For an institution with 10,000 students or more, it may end up being about the same but the flexibility is minimal. Moodle has just as many APIs as Bb but the advantage is that if it doesn't you can look inside the code to see what else can be done.

[MrBootsCat]

Blackboard can also be free. Check out coursesites which gives instructors up to 5 free courses with up to 500Mb per course. Add the company name and com at the end, YouTube doesn't like urls

[mhilliard53]

@MrBootsCat

I've seen the free BB sites, and while an individual instructor can put up 4-5 courses, this is only an individual solution. It would be never be a solution for a school or department if you ever wanted some kind of common interface with any common IT management or institutional presentation.  FYI - Our college was evaluating upgrading to the newest BB and the new costs almost tripled!! Budget busting was the only way to describe the financial model used by BB these days.

[MrBootsCat]

Some corrections and comments.

BB Learn V9.1 was release less than 6 months ago not "late last year".

BB Learn supports open source development just as well if not better than Moodle. It has a well defined API and Database schema which makes developing building blocks a breeze. Unlike Moodle you don't HAVE to muck with the core source code to get stuff done.

Total cost of ownership isn't much different between the two.

BB isn't perfect, but neither is Moodle.

[mcgorgomagan]

@MrBootsCat Moodle is highly modular. I admin a Moodle at UNSW, and rarely have to much around with the source code; in fact, the only serious modifications I had to make were to integrate it with our custom SSO system, and to implement tinyMCE, which is no longer an issue as it's the default editor on 2.0. (Finally.)

2.0 is a pretty amazing release. I do work with our Blackboard here, too, and it... well, it sucks. Extensible, it is not. Expensive, it sure is.

[EmergingEdTech]

Yes, I avoided a big discussion of features and functions, because many of these are basically the same, and for those that aren't, which of these will matter to a given institution will vary (links are provided to learn more). A bigger difference between these apps is their vendor and delivery models and their cost. The post generated a great deal of informed discussion on those topics. Viewers might want to click over to to the post to read the varying opinions and insights in those comments.