On Evaluating Learning
Management Systems
Submitted for Partial Credit ED 693
Jodi Doster
4/6/2012
To determine what technology tools work in a classroom either virtual or face-to-face the
teacher must explore and try different software or learning management systems (LMS). I
am teaching a high school chemistry course and others with a blended classroom approach. I
use Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment (Moodle) as my LMS. To
determine if this LMS is suitable to the needs of my classroom teaching and student learning
I will compare two other LMS to Moodle. Research suggests that integration of face-to-face
and online learning or blended classroom can enhance student achievement and optimize
student contact time. Twenty-four teachers at 16 colleges and organizations examined
research on design, deliverance, student interaction and satisfaction, and training strategies
(Tufts, 2008). The National Research Council (2000) suggests four elements necessary for
designing a learning environment: learning environments be student centered, knowledge
centered, assessment centered, and community centered. Each of these elements needs to be
considered when choosing and designing any learning environment. LMS when designed
and implemented properly can increase positive results in these elements of the learning
environment (Tufts, 2008). The use of a LMS along with face-to-face meetings provides an
opportunity for student-centered learning by providing time for a student to connect prior
knowledge with new information and construct new learning. The LMS provides an area for
students to find resources from class lectures, notes, and examples for knowledge centered
learning. Using the LMS allows students to upload assignments and then be given prompt
feedback to increase learning and achievement on assessment. LMS is also community
centered providing an area for discussion forums and collaboration with other students,
colleagues, instructor, and even parents who can be invited as a guest. There are other
considerations when choosing a LMS that can include price, source code (open source or
software), host installation (stand alone vs. vendor), use i.e. education or business, standard
compliant, content creation capabilities, platform, and integration.
The learning module I am creating is part of a blended class. I meet with my students five
days a week for 50 minutes. This is when we conduct labs and direct instruction is
provided. For the online portion of my class I use Moodle as my LMS. Moodle is the
LMS my school chose for teachers. After researching why Moodle was chosen I found
information from Koneka (Charlebois, 2012). . Koneka is an experienced software
development company that was first asked to research LMS for Edilex Learning Center
where they developed their expertise. In response to the request from CLIENT for
information on web-based learning management systems to upgrade their LMS for staff
development Koneka researched Moodle as a possible solution. According to Koneka
Moodle met all the requirements for a web-based learning management system. Some of
these requirements included features, such as, a system that recognizes different types of
users, ability to view all course offering, ability for easy registration, administrator rights,
and easily navigated by instructor and student. Other considerations included security,
notifications, and reports. Charlesbois (2012) concluded that Moodle was well
maintained and used by many colleges and universities. Moodle provides easy
navigation, course creation, and enrollment for students, which makes it a desirable
learning management system. I have been using Moodle for approximately three years
and agree with their assessment. Moodle provides well-established roles for users (Table
1). Moodle allows me to organize my class materials and resources.
Table 1. There are several roles that Moodle recognizes and allows for different accesses (from
Koneka, 2012).
Roles
Administrators
Management
Instructors
Staff
Accesses
Unlimited. Administrators are in charge of configuring the
system, appearance, security permissions, roles, available reports
and so forth.
Management has access to all courses and approve the enrolment
of the staff. They can consult reports to view attendance
statistics and supervise staff s development.
Same as “Teachers” in default Moodle system. Instructors can
create courses and define the content as publicly published to
staff members such as the overview and requirements. They are
also in charge of managing the learning material, the evaluations,
confirm the “attendance” flag and moderate the forum when
available.
Staff can view the available courses, enroll, post questions,
download certificate and consult the learning material of all the
courses they attended.
______________________________________________________________________________________
I can created and collect assignments easily. It is easy for me to enroll my students and
provides a place for students to easily access materials and grades. Moodle allows my
students access to class materials at any time. It is very useful for students who are
traveling for sports or who may be missing school for other reasons. Moodle also allows
me to collect assignments and notes if the assignment is late. Using Moodle allows me to
create an interactive blended classroom. Moodle is open source and affordable. Since
Moodle is open source there are no license restrictions that prohibit customization that
occurs with vendor lock-ins (Bremer 2005). Winter (2006) reported that Moodle is user
friendly, engaging, and can be customized to meet your needs. As a choice for LMS for
our school Moodle was in my consideration a good choice. There is some weakness
reported for Moodle that included lacking features such as a drop-box and whiteboard
capabilities (Winter 2006). Weakness that I find in using Moodle is of course time and
training. I have also found the quizzing module difficult to work with, but again I think
this may just be a training issue. With any technology especially something that is new to
the user there is a learning curve and time and training are essential for the successful
use.
I found that there are many more LMS then I realized while looking for others to
compare with Moodle. One other that I am most familiar with is Blackboard. I have used
Blackboard as an adjunct professor and I am taking another class Teaching Academic
Courses Online setting up a biology II class in a Blackboard shell with Dr. Natalia Zinger
and Dr. Victor Zinger. For this reason I chose Blackboard as another LMS to research.
Blackboard was developed in 1997 and merged with Courseinfo in 1998. Courseinfo a
part of Cornell University was developing course management software. Eventually the
name Courseinfo was dropped and in 2004 Blackboard went public. In 2006 Blackboard
was awarded a patent covering Internet-based educational support systems (Winter
2006). Many schools and universities use blackboard internationally. The byline of
Blackboard found in its brochure is learn, connect, and share. Some of the features of
Blackboard include an online journal, video streaming and whiteboard functions. Many
of the features of Blackboard are otherwise very similar to Moodle. Some of the features
of Blackboard include the ability to move files from one course to another easily. In
Blackboard it is also easy to hide or show items by clicking a link. Another important
feature of Blackboard that is not as easy in Moodle is the ability to import quizzes
developed by publishers or personal resources. Another advantage of Blackboard over
Moodle is the link between publishers and Blackboard that allows for the easy import of
textbook resources. Grading calculations and weighing of grades are done in Blackboards
gradebook but not in Moodle (Bremer 2005). The strengths of Blackboard are it has all
the features of Moodle and other features Moodle does not have. The weaknesses are the
cost and the fact that you cannot customize Blackboard in the way you can Moodle. Both
LMS have issues with problem resolution for Blackboard a problem needs to be logged
then a problem ticket is generated and assigned to a technician, which can take a lot of
time. If a problem arises with Moodle you have to be prepared to troubleshoot or find a
solution on a Moodle forum. That could be a problem if you don’t have a good technical
skills or a certified tech person (Bremer 2005).
Next, I will review and compare ANGEL to the other LMS. I choose ANGEL because
our school district mascot is the Bristol Bay Angel so this one just called to me for
review. ANGEL is an online LMS that was recently bought by Blackboard. It was
designed to be flexible and to give students an opportunity to work in class and out like
the many other LMS. The features of ANGEL are designed to meet the needs of
elementary and secondary schools and include collaboration, grade book, IM,
assignments, parent communication and professional development.

ANGEL LMS – a set of enterprise learning management tools that enable efficient and effective
development, delivery and management of courses, course content and learning outcomes.
Engaging communication and collaboration capabilities augment instruction to deliver leading
edge teaching and learning. (From http://www.angellearning.com/media/about_us/profile.html)
According to Wikipedia ANGEL LMS was developed by researchers at Indiana
University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). CyberLearning Labs, Inc. released
ANGEL in 2000. ANGEL LMS was designed for use by K-12 schools that wanted to
offer online courses or have blended or hybrid classes. Corporation to implement online
training could also use it. Another feature ANGEL offers is the ePortfolio. Students use
this feature to create electronic portfolios of digital work.

ANGEL ePortfolio – extends the traditional portfolio concept by balancing a strong learnercentered focus with highly flexible tools to power institutional assessment and reporting (From
http://www.angellearning.com/media/about_us/profile.html)
When considering ANGEL LMS or ePortfolio it strengths lie in the fact that it is
developed for the use in K-12 schools. K-12 teachers can monitor students participation
to ensure they are staying on task with the whodunit feature. Teachers can easily create
reports even on student activity who did what when and how. School students can easily
view assignments and upcoming tasks. Another great feature for K-12 is that ANGEL
triggers actions like you have not completed assignment see me after class. ANGEL will
also align course materials to state standards for K-12. The other two LMS though can be
used and are used in some K-12 schools are missing the features that has for contacting
parents and tracking K-12 school student achievement. For the same reason when
considering this LMS its weakness would be for the use in college or university courses
since professors would not need a feature for contacting parents and would prefer the
grade book in the Blackboard LMS. Professors are not overly concerned with students
staying on task as college is more self-motivated they do not need the Whodunit feature
that K-12 would. Strength that meets the needs for both K-12 and higher education is the
innovative communication and collaboration tools that allow podcasting, wiki and blog
interactions. As with Blackboard ANGEL can interface with publisher’s resources also.
A major weakness for both K-12 and higher education is the cost ANGEL like
Blackboard is expensive.
Lastly, I found another free open source LMS that was created in New Zealand by
Christchurch College of Education, from the LearnLoop software called Interact (Winter
2006). Interact was developed for community building and online interaction in elearning. Like Moodle it was modeled using the constructivist educational theory. The
object was to allow for content to become interactive so that students could construct
learning instead of just be presented with content alone. Interact provides tools likes
discussion forums, weblogs, chats, drop boxes, notebooks and the ability to create
quizzes. Interact has many weakness it because it does not offer good course management.
The strength of Interact is as a collaboration software with its many tools for
communication (Winter 2006).
There are many choices for LMS. Considerations need to be taken into account when
choosing the correct LMS. Price of course would be one of the first considerations. Many
public K-12 schools cannot afford to pay for a LMS like Blackboard. Though Blackboard
has many features that would be great for public schools it may be better suited for higher
education. If your school can afford It the best choice might be ANGEL. ANGEL has
some of the same strengths as Blackboard especially the interface with publisher software
and resources. Moodle is an excellent choice of open source software that is affordable
and user friendly. Both Moodle and Interact were designed based on constructivist
educational philosophy. When LMS are being designed or considered for adoption four
perspectives should be viewed are they student centered, knowledge centered, assessment
centered, and community centered. More importantly what we need to do is make sure
that whatever LMS is available that it be used properly integrating the best practices for
online and blended learning for greater student achievement.
Literature Cited
Bremer, D., & Bryant, R. (2005). A Comparison of two learning management Systems:
Moodle vs. Blackboard. (S. Mann & C. Tony, Eds.)Proceedings of the 18th Annual
Conference of the National Advisory Committee on Computing Qualifications, 135–140.
NACCQ in cooperation with ACM SIGCSE. Retrieved from
http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&btnG=Search&q=intitle:A+Comparison+of+tw
o+learning+management+Systems:+Moodle+vs+Blackboard#0
Charlbois, P. (October 19, 2012). Using Moodle as your Learning Management System
(LMS). » Web Development by Koneka. Retrieved from http://www.koneka.com/moodleleaning-management-system/
National Research Council. "7 Effective Teaching: Examples in History, Mathematics,
and Science." How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded
Edition. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, 2000. 1. Print.
Research on the Effectiveness of Learning Management Systems (LMS) Use in Higher
Education. (2008). Learning Management System Tufts University. Retrieved April 2,
2012, from
https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/TuftsLMS/Research+on+the+Effectiveness
+of+Learning+Management+Systems+%28LMS%29+Use+in+Higher+Education
Winter, M. (2006, August). Learning Management Systems for the Workplace: A
Research Report. Retrieved April 2, 2012, from www.tanz.ac.nz/pdf/LMS_Final.pdf