Reflections on the Moodle Moot

The Moodle Moot is over, at least for me it is. There's still a couple of sessions going on but I'm shot from talking LMS all day long. For some reason, a vision of a wet moodle keeps popping into my mind ... please stop that.

Just a few thoughts in closing:
1) The best part for me today was to be with a whole bunch of anti-Blackboard people. There was only one person (that I saw) who was trying to say that Blackboard is not evil. The vast majority of the attendees were either former Blackboard users, or current BlackCT users who are planning to switch away from Darth Vader. (flickr photo courtesy of emerald isle druid)

2) The user/developer community of Moodle is growing and passionate. Those seem to be two key components of a successful FOSS project.

3) California is becoming increasingly Moodlefied. The California schools are all over the map as far as LMS implementation is concerned, but if they ever have one system that is clearly dominant, it will likely be Moodle based on the momentum I'm sensing. Maybe they should send a contingent to the D2L User Conference this summer to see how the other half lives.

4) More and more large installations of Moodle are being used around the world. It will be interesting to see how the scaleability holds up. Moodle aficionados say it is no problem, but of course they wouldn't say otherwise. I'll wait to see the data.

5) This Moodle Moot (can't say that without laughing, at least on the inside) has drawn a very diverse group from different types of institutions, different roles in those institutions, and with different motivations for coming to the Moot.

6) IMO, Desire2Learn Version 8 has more functionality, more features, and just more things to recommend it when compared to Moodle. However, Moodle would currently be my second choice for an LMS although I would like to get a better look at the newest version of Angel before deciding that (opinion) for sure. If I was going to recommend an open source LMS for someone, I would definitely choose Moodle over Sakai ... and it's not even very close.

Technorati Tags: ,

Comments

Anonymous said…
Hi Barry, good to see you at the Moot:p, sorry you missed the later afternoon sessions.

There are some tutorials on the new format and other tools we built for Intel's Moodle rollout here, if you are interested.

Best
Michael Penney
February 20, 2007 2:40 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ed2Go is NOT Higher Education

Image
For several years now I have railed against the use of ed2go courses when they are affiliated with a college or university. During my time on the Minnesota Online Council I was especially adamant against the listing of the ed2go courses at the MnOnline website as though they were endorsed courses from a member institution. There is no way that I think the brand should be diluted by including courses like this in our offerings. Why not? Glad you asked. NOTE: most of this post was written after I discovered that my own school had recently signed on with ed2go. This saddens me to no end since I spent the past five y ears railing against the use of ed2go in Minnesota Online and our colleges. Our VP in that division assures me that they will do what they can to not harm our reputation for quality online offerings - and I believe that, I'm just not sure how much of that we can actually control. I waited a couple of weeks before posting this to see whether my opinion would be changed by
Read more

Another Switch from Blackboard to Desire2Learn

Image
As many of you know, I am always interested in the comings and goings of the LMS wars. Who's leaving Blackboard and what are they going to? I rarely have to ask the opposite question - who's migrating to Blackboard from a non-Blackboard platform - because it almost NEVER happens. The latest one to catch my eye was the University of Surrey in the UK. Here's their press release about choosing D2L . Nowhere in the release do they mention what platform they've been on - but it doesn't take much effort to find this on their current website: So, yes, this is another school switching from Blackbeard to Desire2Learn. I find portions of their press release to be revealing about their previous experience with BlackCT Vista. "A new hi-tech system is being introduced at the University of Surrey to enable students to learn on computers and mobile devices via a more personalised platform ." "The new Virtual Learning Environment (VLE), replacing and vastly improving
Read more

Distance Education and Reauthorization

Image
The Committee on Education and Labor in the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "College Opportunity and Affordability Act" (H.R. 4137 ) on November 15, 2007. This means we are nearing the end of the long road leading to reauthorizing the Higher Education Act (HEA). The House committee bill now joins the bill passed by the U.S. Senate (S.1642) in July 2007. House link: H.R. 4137 , go to part H, section 496-A Senate link: S. 1642 , go to part G, section 491 (formerly 496) At some point the language differences between the House and Senate will need to be hammered out. However, with regard to accreditation concerns for distance education, the House committee bill is identical to the Senate bill. The current language would allow college and university accrediting agencies to address the quality of a school’s distance education offerings without the need to create separate standards, procedures or policies related to distance education (for a while this looked to be the dire
Read more