When I first approached this assignment, I went to EduTools and chose five LMS and clicked compare. I found all the information overwhelming, so after seeing that some other students had created their own template I decided to do that also using the project questions. I looked at three different LMS by themselves first (Scholar360, WebStudy, and Sakai) so I could get a grasp on what the information was. Once I was able to match their descriptions with the questions, I started to notice many similarities between them. There seems to be some basic features these all have:
ability to set up groups, posts can be peer reviewed, students can submit assignments using a drop box, forum has spell check, most have internal mail, you can search within the site, you can assign roles, etc., etc.
So I tried to focus on the things that were different or features that I liked. I mostly cut & pasted from EduTools to create the chart, and then I highlighted the features that were different or that I liked. Then I made further comments in the Admin/Student - Likes/Dislikes sections.
I will comment here on what I feel is a BIG difference between some of these systems. WebStudy and Scholar360 both have the ability to personalize assess to course content or material based on things like student performance or content completion. A third system (Sakai) will offer this feature in its next version also. This feature is a step toward being able to use a LMS to differentiate the content, which I think will be a strength of LMS to come. Neither Moodle and Blackboard, both of which are widely used, currently have this feature.
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