Johnson - LMS Comparison

Comparison : Blackboard and Joomla

I chose to compare Blackboard and Joomla. I am obviously familiar with using Blackboard in college courses. I have never used Joomla before, but I have heard of it being used at schools within my district. I’ll begin by describing what I learned about Joomla.

Joomla

Communication
Joomla accomodates synchronous as well as asynchronous communication. Live audio and video streaming is supported on a multichannel interface. Live conferencing includes interactive whiteboard use, and SWF files can be played on the whiteboard. Instant messaging is allowed via email notification. Joomla provides progress monitoring features at the front and back end, including homework tracking, grade reports, interactive quizzes, exchange of files between users along with corrected/ uncorrected file status. Joomla supports groupware tools such as discussion boards, announcements, and live chat.

Interface
Joomla has a flexible, intuitive interface at the front and back ends. Instructors can customize features. Learners can easily navigate courses. There are a variety of instructor monitoring tools available within this LMS. The interface is customized according to user roles: administrator, teacher, assistant, or learner. Navigation is different for each. At the front end, the interface may be customized in response to the desired learning path and progress of the user. This seems especially useful for high school students.

Capabilities
Joomla includes tools for authoring content. Instructors can create interactive quizzes, surveys, and multimedia content pages. Joomla allows for multiple instructors per course, and gives users the ability to Import existing course material. The course subscription feature manages access to paid courses.

Likes and dislikes
Joomla has been described as easy to use for learners, and certainly seem intuitive. From an administrative standpoint, one great benefit of Joomla is its Blackboard course-converter capabilities, which would certainly make it a more attractive option for current Blackboard users. Joomla’s e-commerce is also very attractive, as this is hard to find, except in very expensive LMS. The relatively low cost of Joomla makes it a great option for many institutions, especially for K-12 schools.

Blackboard
In addition to supporting various means of synchronous and asynchronous communication, Blackboard seems to offer the best multimodal communication capabilities, incorporating instant messaging by voice, email or text. This is a great advantage of this LMS: its capacity to incorporate mobile web technologies, which are fast becoming ubiquitous tools among student populations.

Blackboard’s notification platform has a built-in translation feature, which allows instructors to overcome common language barriers to communication. This seems especially useful in a K-12 setting. Many of my English-speaking students have parents that do not speak English. Aside from inconvenient, obvious problems can arise when the student is responsible for communicating a teacher’s message to parents.

Interface
Content can be easily adapted according to instructor’s needs, and can also adapt to the learner’s needs. The toolbar makes navigation intuitive, streamlining the use of an intricate array of features. Blackboard supports content authoring, and many instructor-friendly customization options.

The interface can be tailored for K-12, Higher Ed and Career Colleges. I read an interesting article about the benefits of using blackboard in a blended model of professional development. The product website also suggested ways that Blackboard could be used as a tool for membership organizations, which could facilitation continuing education and certification programs, and for corporate and government training and education program.

Likes and dislikes
Blackboard is certainly powerful. It has the advantage of being familiar to many users, because of its prevalence in so many of today’s colleges and universities. One dark side to its shining image seems to be the company’s habit of buying and killing potential competitors, especially those that seem to present the most powerful capabilities.

I think its fair to say that, for the time being, Blackboard is the better choice for major universities. For secondary schools, however, Joomla seems to provide more than enough features at a much lower cost.