LMS comparison

LMS Comparison

Joomla
Communication
Joomla offers both synchronous and asynchronous communication. Some of the live conferencing tools include multichannel audio and video streaming, chat, student web camera view, and a shared whiteboard that can play .swf files. Instructors can set up their own conference template and they can record meetings. Joomla also has a lot of asynchronous communication tools. Students can submit assignments using drop boxes and share the contents of their personal folders with other students. Forums seem to be pretty straightforward in Joomla. Students can subscribe to forum posts using RSS or they can enable posts to be sent directly to their email.

Content Organization
Documents and Learning Paths follow a hierarchical document structure. Joomla also allows users to read and edit documents within a web browser, attach video, audio, or images with questions attached. An interesting feature is the learning path building. Instructors can set up a learning path with prerequisites for each step, completion messages, and they can insert links, documents, quizzes, or other content into the learning path. The learning path also records progress so a student can resume a path when convenient. Learning paths are also SCORM compliant.

Design Interface
Joomla offers a simple interface as well as online video tutorials, an FAQ page, and a searchable online forum.

Platform Capabilities
Joomla allows detailed tracking of students, a grade book, and a file drop box. There are also ecommerce features such as a ‘pay-pal’ button. It supports free and paid courses, as well as detailed permissions for each type of user.

Likes/Dislikes
From an instructor’s point of view, I think this LMS looks very useful and user-friendly. I like the grade book, quiz, drop box, and learning path features. Those, in combination with the detailed tracking Joomla provides would be very helpful to an instructor, provided that the tracking tools are easy and quick to use.

From a student’s point of view, Joomla seems straightforward and easy to use. I like that it offers students a wide variety of ways to communicate with each other. The forums, live chat, and the whiteboard feature all seem like they would go a long way towards reducing the transactional distance for the student.

Platform Use
As an educator, I think this LMS platform would be ideal for K12 because it allows for self-paced learning, it is easy to use, and the grade book and tracking features would make it easy to follow student progress through a course. I also think the ecommerce features and the live conferencing features, such as the chat and whiteboard, would lend themselves well to a higher education or corporate learning environment where learners would be taking the course online.

Sakai 2.6
Communication
Sakai offers instructors three different types of forums to use, a discussion forum, a private messaging forum, and a message center forum. Students can subscribe to email digests of forum posts and there is a spell checker. There are also wiki and blog tools. Sakai does offer live chat, but only in a limited number of simultaneous rooms. However, there is no whiteboard function and there is no mention on the Sakai website about the ability to use audio and video.

Content Organization
Instructors can post, store, and organize course materials using Sakai as well as creating and storing online learning sequences.

Design Interface
Sakai seems to be much simpler than Joomla. There are fewer synchronous and asynchronous tools and the reporting features seem to be less detailed. Sakai uses a modular architecture, so instructors can pick and choose the features and tools that are right for the course they are teaching.

Platform Capabilities
Offers portfolio tools to help participants document and reflect on their learning. Participants can get summative feedback on their portfolio submissions, and the instructor can get reports on portfolio-related site activity. It also offers different templates to personalize each portfolio.

Likes/Dislikes
From an instructor’s point of view, I think Sakai leaves a lot to be desired. It offers many fewer features than Joomla for live conferencing and reporting. However, I really like the portfolio tools for students to document and reflect on their learning.

Platform Use
Sakai is open source software created for higher education and K12. It does not include any ecommerce features, so it seems to function better as a course management tool, and not as much of an institution wide learning management system.