I compared the following LMS:
Blackboard
KEWL
Joomla
Moodle 1.9
Angel 7.3
Using the EduTools website, I was able to find the similarities and differences (mostly similarities) between these 5 LMS.
**BLACKBOARD 8.0
*Communication Tools: Blackboard offers both asynchronous and synchronous communication tools: discussions forums, e-mail, live chat/instant messaging, file exchange.
*Productivity Tools: students can create bookmarks, the calendar has extensive features for both students and instructors, students can view grades online, and some data is PDA compatible.
Student involvement Tools: grouping is very flexible as it allows for students to assign themselves, and each group can be somewhat autonomous by using their own whiteboards. Students can create their own personal pages for displaying or presenting their work.
*Administration Tools: One feature that I like is LDAP authentication support with Blackboard. This would come in very handy in our district, as it would eliminate the need for yet another username and password. The administration of courses and student management is very flexible.
*Course Delivery Tools: Blackboard provides for many different assessment types that include multimedia integration. Students can retake exams, instructors can review student work and give feedback, and instructors can develop personalized tests. Also, when an assignment or test is created it is automatically added to the Blackboard grade book.
*Content Development Tools: Blackboard is 508 compliant, version-tracking tools are available for developers, templates are provided, and wizards are available for step-by-step content creation.
**KEWL
*Communication Tools: KEWL seems to lack many of the features of the other LMS that I looked at. It does offer RSS feeds for e-mail communications (asynchronous), chat rooms and group discussions are offered (synchronous).
*Productivity Tools: KEWL offers a little more advanced bookmarking features over Blackboard in that students can bookmark content within a course. It has lots of the same calendar features as other
LMS. Online tutorials are available and a context-sensitive help system is integrated into KEWL.
*Student involvement Tools: Students can have a group whiteboard and their own discussion forum. Personal home pages are also available for compiling e-portfolios, and they can communicate across courses in general discussion forums or chat rooms.
*Administration Tools: LDAP authentication is available, user roles can be setup and administered, the programmer’s comments say they can connect their system to anything if requested.
*Course Delivery Tools: KEWL supports multiple assessments formats (including multimedia integration), all manner of restrictions or imposed limits on assessments. It also supports rubrics and problem-based learning features.
*Content Development Tools: KEWL is pretty weak in this area of the comparison chart. There is no mention of 508 compliance, but they try to adhere to ‘good practices’ as they have more developers than they can manage. Standard and custom templates are available and it is SCORM 1.2 compliant.
**Joomla LMS
*Communication Tools: RSS feeds, e-mail, file exchange, chat rooms – all types of asynchronous and synchronous communication is available.
*Productivity Tools: no bookmarking features were noted (strike 1), but context-sensitive help search is available, and personal home pages and individual grade books can be accesses by all. PDA compatibility is featured as well.
*Student involvement Tools: Personal homepages are featured, and there is an add-on for e-portfolios available. Students can create their own groups, and instructors can create student groups as well.
*Administration Tools: Joomla seems to have the most common characteristics of other LMS. LDAP authentication support, roles can be assigned, SIS text file compatibility is supported.
*Course Delivery Tools: No MathML support or compatibility with Joomla. The others have this, even though I don’t know what this means. Test analysis data is provided, and instructors can create custom test banks – Joomla is on par with other LMS.
*Content Development Tools: 508-compliance is a Joomla feature. Content sharing is available for sharing between instructors, and template-based course creation is available. These templates can be customized.
**Moodle 1.9
*Communication Tools: Moodle offers a lot of features that are not listed on the table. I wonder what they are?... Asynchronous tools such as e-mail, drop boxes and discussion forums are available. Chat rooms are available as a synchronous offering (these sessions can be archived for asynchronous use.)
*Productivity Tools: These are pretty much the same as Angel and Joomla, but there seems to be no support for compiling materials for cd-rom. There is context-sensitive help, though.
Student involvement Tools: Students can create online clubs, but there is no support for online portfolios (which is why we are creating our own through a website, I suppose.)
*Administration Tools: Moodle supports all the major features of other LMS.
*Course Delivery Tools: Quiz types are varied, and I can say that I actually have some personal experience in using the quiz creation tool. It was fairly complicated for me as a novice, so I stuck to true/false and multiple choice. Links to external sites can be used, and all manner of content type can be uploaded/downloaded from Moodle. Online grades are possible as well.
*Content Development Tools: Moodle is 508 compliant. Instructors can share content across courses, and templates can be used and modified. Moodle seems to have the edge on Instructional Standards Compliance.
**Angel 7.3
*Communication Tools: Angel has all the features of the other LMS as well as a ‘new high performance discussion engine.’ All standard forms of asynchronous and synchronous communication tools that the others have are here in Angel. Angel allows instructors to limit disk usage space for students.
*Productivity Tools: Bookmark sharing is present here, as well as all the search functions and calendar features. Context-sensitive help and online tutorials are available, too.
*Student involvement Tools: Online clubs and system-wide discussion rooms are available. Student home pages are available for students to showcase their online work.
*Administration Tools: Identical to the other LMS available, but regarding ‘registration integration,’ Angel falls somewhere between Joomla and Moodle with available features.
*Course Delivery Tools: Full multimedia support with audio and video, as well as other common assessment formats are available. When a student is testing in Angel, the browser is locked in this mode to keep students from opening separate browser windows to find answers. A possibly helpful gradebook setup wizard is available, too.
*Content Development Tools: Angel is 508 compliant and has most of the same features as the other LMS in this review. Template-based course creation is available, but these can be modified by the instructor to contain custom images and headers. Colors can be changed, too.
I can’t say which of these I would prefer over another, because I haven’t used them enough or at all to know anything about them. Since I have experience using Blackboard and Moodle, I would probably pick one of those two, and between them, Moodle is free, so I would probably choose it on that basis alone.
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