Comparison Of Moodle, Litmos, And Blackboard: A Detailed Analysis Of Learning Management System Platforms Essay.

Within this section you will need to address the minimum requirements below:
1. What is the business case for the report ie. what was the requirement?
2. Provide an overview on what the report is about?
3. Why are you writing the report?
4. Provide an overview on the organisational information ie. business structure and relevant information (If you are not in an organisation then explain what type of organisation ie. industry/size that your research would be applicable for).

5. Introduce the three LMS’s that you will be reviewing. Provide an overview on each.

Course Authoring Tools

The purpose of this paper is to present the detailed comparison between three learning management system softwares to establish a proper distinguishing characteristic between the three of them. The three learning management system platforms to be discussed in this regard is the Moodle platform, Litmos platform and the Blackboard learning platform. A learning management system is first and foremost a software application that is utilized in the educational system to document, administrate, track, report and deliver the training programs as well as the educational courses of the students, These software applications are utilized by various educational institutes that require handling a huge number of students and deal with their assignments all at once. This concept has emerged from the entire prospect of e-learning. The learning management system has given birth to various different software applications serving for the same purpose. Therefore, it is necessary that a proper distinguishing factor be established between at least three of them to make sure that any particular person can chose between the software applications as per their requirements and discretion. It can also be justified as a purpose for this report that is to make a learning platform fully for the benefit of the students so that the online or regular courses they attend to do not fall under any kind of disruption as per the software applications hold. A Learning Management System usually holds the management of instructional content and the registration of the students online, starting from their online registration to the administration of their coursework; everything is handled with the help of an LMS system. Thus, the all purpose software in the educational institutions must be analysed well to understand their functioning better. 

The objective of this paper is to present a wholesome idea about the Learning Management Systems or the LMS and particularly differentiating between three of them, namely Moodle, Litmos and Blackboard learning software to make clear distinctions between the three of them so that in accordance to that a proper idea can be obtained about each of them. The strengths and the weaknesses of these learning platforms will thus be ideally analysed with the help of the distinguishing factors which would be done in the following way. The course authoring tools for all the three learning management systems would be described in details as per the requirements that each of these LMSs provide the educational institutions. The course authoring tools would clearly define what these software applications offer the students as well as the educational institutes and these would help in determining the functioning of the learning management systems. These would then follow with a Teaching and Learning tool provided by all the tree of them that would help in determining the tools for administering education by all three of them. The ways, by which the LMSs manage tracking, instructing, assessing student coursework would be clearly identified with this. Furthermore, the report would cover the assessment details as offered by the three learning management systems as a whole. The assessment features, administrating features and the cost of ownership would also be compared according to the three learning management systems to make out the clear distinguish between the three of them. 

Teaching and Learning Tools

Moodle: Moodle is identified as a free Learning Management System which offers educator with creating their own learning websites for extending the learning with the help of dynamic courses. The Course authoring tools that are enabled by the Moodle software enables an educator to create their own content for the course and then make the system learn the course as per their own language and even set up the entire system with multiple languages for the help of other users and organizations. It helps in creation of bulk courses and also holds a backup for them easily. Furthermore, Moodle helps in the detailed reporting and log keeping for the activities of the students and generating their reports based on these activities. In addition, Moodle helps an educator to make peer as well as self-assessment with creating workshops and surveys online. Grading and marking rubrics made for the examination purposes are also supported in Moodle by easy handling processes. All the course features and the activity logs included in the features of Moodle are also available in easily downloadable documents.

Litmos: Litmos advertises itself as more than just a course authoring tool. Litmos not just helps in creating course authoring platforms for the student as a helping hand to the educators but also these coursework that the educators create are available as rich media courses. This LMS platform helps the educators to create online courses, assessment, examination platforms and marking rubrics for the student including the rich media like videos, text, images, audio and animations as well. This makes Litmos a much more advantageous LMS platform as it is seemingly much more interactive compared to many other LMS platforms which does not support rich media format to be included as a course authoring tool.

Blackboard: Blackboard is a Learning Management System available online, which first and foremost is not free. It is a paid LMS platform that helps in the immediate out of the box experience for the educators used primarily for the educational institutions but in some cases it has also been found that the LMS platform is being used in different other purposes of a business. The course authoring tools that Blackboard offers the educators are found to be much more interactive and offer features that are not found in other LMS platforms in comparison. The course authoring tools that the Blackboard platform offers the student consists of even creating a student portal that would help a student keep track of their assignments, marks obtained in examinations and upload their coursework through the platform. In addition to that, Blackboard offers offline functioning which a feature for a course authoring tool is not found in many LMS platforms in comparison. 

Assessment Features

It is recommended as per the findings that as per the course authoring tools are concerned, it would be better if a user or an educational institute opted for the utilization of the Blackboard Platform in comparison to the other. It can be said so because comparing the course authoring tools for all the three platforms creates a clear picture that Blackboard fares better advantages than both Moodle and Litmos. Moodle falls short in having an interactive format though it offers helpful features available to every educator at free of cost. The Litmos platform on the other hand creates a rich media formatted content for the course authoring activities but falls short in offering offline functions or having a platform or portal created for the advantages of the student. Blackboard fares well in comparison to both these platforms by being interactive as well as providing a student portal, however, it is not available for free. Nevertheless, as a quality LMS platform, it is recommended that features be included in the other platforms as well, and it can be a paid feature to maintain a level of security. 

Moodle: There are many tools available in Moodle that would help the educators in making teaching and learning easier for the educators as well as the students. It offers various tools like Lesson, which helps an educator create learning units that are pre-programmed and has the ability to bring up a new piece of information for a student with the delivery of each correct answer. In this way the learning and teaching process can be somewhat interactive. In addition to that, Moodle provides various tools for listing the students, preparing grade books, selecting groups, messaging the students, forming a questionnaire, creating pop quizzes and even prepare a feedback form to survey on the students.

Litmos: Litmos on the other hand, presents learning and teaching tools that are informal in nature. Litmos prefers that the students be aware of their surroundings with the help of these informal learning tools that helps them to create a wider multitude in learning and not just go through the assigned coursework. As per the makers of Litmos platform, it is fearsome for few students to always follow the classroom coursework and thus, this platform is preferred better where it helps to remove the mental blocks of the students as well as the teachers. The curriculum of the Litmos platform enables that the student learn their coursework as well as take instances form the other platforms like Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn and other educational and business blogs to acquire informal learning.

Cost of Ownership

Blackboard: Blackboard does not have the old methodology followed for their teaching and learning tools that enables a teacher to teach and a student to learn. Instead it creates a platform where teaching and learning is rather collaborative with the utilization of collaborative discussions. Thus, the Blackboard platform has a discussion forum for the teaching and learning module where a button is available called the “Create Forum” button, where a student can also present their insights during a teaching session when they find adding up some important points they know of themselves. The students are available to be marked or graded on account of the value they add to the teaching process and it also enables the educator to change their own published posts with the help of the insights they receive from the students during the collaborative learning process.  

Thus, it can be recommended form the above findings that amongst the three Learning Management System platforms, for the teaching and learning processes as well, Blackboard platform can be chosen to be the most useful platforms. This is because it does not restrict teaching and learning process to be solely restricted to a one-way non-interactive process where a teacher teaches and a student listens. As per the methodology used by blackboard, it can be said that learning is a two-way interactive procedure that only becomes successful when the student of the receiving end also has some insights to deliver. Based on the added value to the course, the educators are also enabled to add these values by the students to their published course work. 

Moodle: This is a feature in Moodle platform by the way which an educator co-assists a student assignment. It allows different marking schemes that should be created for the group of students. The platform then enables the educators to filter these assignments by merging the similar merging schemes and items together. In addition to this, based on the similar marking schemes, the Noodle platform enables the educators to distribute the marks to the other students. Finally, a final marking scheme is then generated that guarantees the educators on how the assessments of a student should be graded according to the expertise revealed about the student.

Litmos: All the exams and quizzes for each student remain bundled within the module enabled in the platform known as the “Assessments” module. This module enables the educators in determining the information retained by each student in the course work. The assessment can be created by opening the Assessments module and following the easy User Interface in creating a coursework as per the educator’s choice.

Blackboard: Blackboard enables a huge amount of different features on which a student can be assessed and these entire not necessarily happens to be based on just educational and academic prowess. The different kinds of coursework divisions that the students are assessed upon are assignments, quizzes, test, discussion boards, wikis, journals as well as blogs. 

The use of Blackboard LMS platform is recommended for this feature as well since the assessment feature not just makes account of the academic skills of a student but also the other varied talents of a student. The varied resources that the platform uses to assess the works of a student are mostly recommended for all learning management systems. 

Moodle: Moodle uses different plug-in features to administer the coursework of the students and works as a helping hand for the educators. These are mostly plagiarism checkers used to help checking plagiarism in the assignments of the students. Furthermore, it helps in holding up webinars and enables distance education and eCommerce plug-in.

Litmos: The Litmos Administration Features are more or less the same as the Moodle platform provide, only difference being it enables the administrators to create new dashboards as per requirements and enables quick actions for the students when required.

Blackboard: The Administrator Console is a feature area where ANGEL and Blackboard Learn share a common terminology, though the purpose and features behind the tools differ between the two products. In ANGEL, the Admin Console is a broad term to describe the menu where all Admin level tasks are maintained. In Learn, that menu is referred to as the System Admin Tab and one of the features available to users on that System Admin Tab is the Admin Console. Admin Console refers to a set of diagnostic and troubleshooting tools available through the user interface to begin to work through performance monitoring and issues. 

For the administration features as well, it is recommended that Blackboard Platform is used, as the admin console offers much better features as compared to the other LMS platforms. 

Moodle: Moodle creates a free and simple platform offering Course Management System, Learning Management System as well as Virtual and Distance Learning Environment. Moodle comes from a background of Social Constructionist pedagogy, but it can still be used to support any style of teaching and learning.

Litmos: The technical aspects that Litmos features to the users can be listed as follows. It supports bulk import to update the users, helps in updating modules, create custom reports, duplicate documents, and link the modules with coursework for the students.

Blackboard: Blackboard offers state of the art technology to the educators as well as the students. It enables both the parties to write on the interactive walls, offers a much intelligent whiteboard for both the educators and the students, and creates a futuristic lookout to the education system altogether. 

As per the technical aspects, Blackboard is much ahead of the comparers as well as it is much ahead of time. Using Blackboard will not only be better than the others but would also enable to shape up the world of education. 

Moodle: As per the findings, the total cost of ownership is not as much as compared to the others. Since, it is a free platform, it can be easily handles with a simple set of server and staffs and for attaining further commercial support, it will require more money.

Litmos: As compared to the other two LMS Platforms, the total cost of ownership of Litmos is free for the 50-150 active users. For 151-500 users it cost nearly 4 USD and for 501-100 active users it would cost 4 to 5 USD. If more than 1001 active users want to join, it would require more money naturally.

Blackboard: The total cost of ownership is much higher compared to the other LMS platforms. It has been reported that in 2012, a survey revealed that Blackboard’s total cost of ownership had cost almost 1200 USD per student for an institution making almost 36,000 USD investments for a class of 30 students.

As per total cost of ownership, it is recommended that Litmos be used. The varied features of Blackboard makes it useful but a much more costly implementation which would be value for money but too much expensive for a little amount of people. 

Conclusion

Thus it can be concluded from the above report that the learning management tools that are available over the online services in different educational institutes has been making the handling of the assessment of different features much easier than the traditional features of teaching. The course authoring tools for all the three learning management systems are described in details as per the requirements that each of these LMSs provide the educational institutions. The course authoring tools would clearly define what these software applications offer the students as well as the educational institutes and these would help in determining the functioning of the learning management systems. These follows further with a Teaching and Learning tool provided by all the tree of them that would help in determining the tools for administering education by all three of them. The ways, by which the LMSs manage tracking, instructing, assessing student coursework would be clearly identified with this. Furthermore, the report covers the assessment details as offered by the three learning management systems as a whole. The assessments features, administrating features and the cost of ownership are hence compared according to the three learning management systems to make out the clear distinguish between the three of them. Comparing all the features of the three different LMS platforms, it can however be said that, as a Learning Management platform, it is better that the educational institutes stick to using Blackboard. It is not free, however, it provides the most unique and easy features in shaping up the student coursework and assessing them on test, quizzes and assignments. 

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