Online Course Management Systems (CMS) are at war. In order to win, savvy administrators are looking at new technological options to overcome the belt-tightening restrictions imposed by the state and federal governments. What was once a free-for-all spending spree has become a battle for the best online course management system for the least amount of money. This article explains how you can easily compare and contrast the systems and how you can set-up the best and lowest cost system for your school or district.

As an education consultant for many years, I have always developed online course materials with the user in mind. My experience as an online college educator (over 10 years of course development and delivery) has allowed me to talk with a wide variety of educators and administrators, and I have now come to some surprising conclusions about the course management systems out there and how the wars are being fought between them.

One of the largest and most expensive course management systems is Blackboard. Blackboard, to bloat even further into the "dark side" of profit-taking, recently acquired its primary rival, the Canadian WebCT group. The result? The price just got higher for schools who wish to adopt their online course management system, and the levels of bureaucracy also increased. The result? Before Blackboard gobbled up WebCT, a major American university stated:

However, from a consulting perspective, I know Blackboard is not created with the best interests of the faculty who use it in mind. Instead, Blackboard works closely with big publishers (it’s partially owned by Microsoft) and other vendors to sell additional "courses," which are certainly not quality educational courseware, and the schools end up paying even more to the profit-takers. For example, the Moodle Forum recently did a comparison and contrast of the use and opinion of Blackboard and Moodle.  Also, San Francisco State University replaced Blackboard with Moodle.

Why was Moodle a better deal? Well, it’s an open-source platform, for one thing. That means that it’s free to users for educational institutions. With only some IT expertise, I was able to download and install the complete infrastructure in less than five minutes! Try doing that alone with the Blackboard system and you’ll need a psychiatrist afterward.

Moodle was also created with a sound, online pedagogy in mind. In effect, it is a system for the "noodle" and not for the profit. Online teachers developed Moodle and it shows. The interface is easily navigated by students, and the online "elements" are easily plugged in and used.

In my e-book, How to Create a Superb Course Management System on a Shoestring Budget (ISBN 0-9776503-4-0), I explain the details of this system and offer consulting demonstrations to show faculty and staff how to use it and how it’s better than Blackboard or any of the other commercial systems out there. My main argument rests on three factors:

1. Cost (Blackboard charges $55,000 a year, Moodle costs $0).
2. Pedagogy (Blackboard pushes glitzy and expensive seminars like the one in my home town of San Diego. Moodle states their underlying pedagogy online, and the proof is "in the pudding": a social constructionist pedagogy that means that students learn by cooperating and doing educational tasks together.)
3. Support (Blackboard sets up many layers of bureaucracy that get in the way of simple, student-teacher communications. Moodle sets up communications between online teachers and technical people who use the software and are not "corporate clones" paid to sell you more "stuff.")

School administrators should carefully consider the advantages of switching to Moodle to see the cost of bureaucracy go down and your student and faculty productivity go up. Most certainly, if you have not yet decided on a CMS, you should definitely look into the Moodle "Noodle" option for your institution.