I spent about 2 minutes playing with Moodle today, in response to a question from Gord about how to add resources to a course. He started adding a resource yesterday, but wasn’t sure how to finish the process (it was a website link, and he wasn’t sure which fields were mandatory and which were optional). So I log in with the temporarily-shared administrative account, navigate to the course, and open the “add resource” panel.
And it has remembered what Gord was starting yesterday.
So, we just finish entering the resource (just gave it a Title, and set some parameters – open in a new window, etc…). Click Save, and it’s live.
Blackboard would have been a little more cumbersome, and wouldn’t have remembered the half-filled form. It’s the little things…
Overall, Moodle seems much more streamlined and intuitive to use than Blackboard or WebCT, from an administrator’s, instructor’s and student’s perspectives. It seems to do pretty much all that the Big LMSs do, with a much lower cost, and a better experience for all involved.
Or, maybe I’m just a sucker for open source software projects with hotties modeling T-shirts (Moodle, Drupal)…