On August 19, 2009 the North Carolina Community College System, fourth largest in the US, published the results of a two year study comparing Moodle to Blackboard at a select number of the 58 campuses throughout the state. The results (Executive Summary) should be of interest to all schools considering a learning management system.  Remote-Learner was selected to provide services during the period, which saw several of the campuses go on to adopt Moodle even before the Pilot study was completed.

Rationale for Report

At the meeting in May, 2008, the North Carolina State Board of Community Colleges’ Finance and Capital Needs Committee requested a Moodle Assessment Report to determine the status of "Moodle as a viable open-source alternative to the proprietary Blackboard online course management system (CMS).” M.O.O.D.L.E., or Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, is an open source online course management system. The North Carolina Community College System Office currently funds the license fees for the proprietary Blackboard Enterprise CMS.

Moodle Assessment Approach

The study targeted academic concerns such as course navigation, ease of use, communication and collaboration tools, course content, assessment, and upload capabilities. To this end, a triangulated study was created to fully investigate Moodle as an effective learning/teaching platform through

• student and instructor surveys
• functionality comparisons between Moodle and Blackboard
• case studies from institutions which have fully switched to Moodle as their CMS

In each case, academic considerations were the top priorities, however, as the study evolved, the team discovered a need for more technical and total cost of ownership information. Thus the scope of the study expanded to accommodate these areas. One hundred thirty-seven online Instructors from 28 of the 58 community colleges participated in the CMS Instructor Functionality Comparison. Thirty-six DL administrators from 27 of the 58 colleges participated in the CMS Administrator Functionality Comparison.