Was asked by email what I thought of Moodle, this is my very very quick answer from a ‘kinda’ user perspective, am I off the mark?
Pros:
-Open source thus hacks & hackable / add ons / community / good vibes etc.
-Good standards stuff (like RSS for example)
-Incorporates email!
-Very ‘comfortable’ graphically… also very simple operation
Cons:
-Made around the traditional ‘LMS’ model and strongly in that vein
-Am not sure if it has as powerful content management tools established vendors do (and naturally doesn’t meet their huge lists of features… most of which are pointless / never work or are so badly designed that they are useless (ahem)
-Interface can get a bit too cutesy
Having said that I’d lean heavily towards Moodle over WebCT or BB if only because I could employ, for half the amount I’d pay in vendors fees, a good sized team to make it do whatever I want for my organisation… and once I was there I could halve that team and keep on going at great guns (bear in mind I’m talking about a 30k student organisation here).
Not sure either if Moodle is any good as a CMS, but will check with our tech expert at Mancomm.ca. Moodle is based on a constructivist pedagogical model, and we have had professional nurses use it as they co-developed their own knowledge base at the beginning of a course on a new nursing methodology – worked well. One more thing, Moodle has a built-in wiki, which we found easier to use than TikiWiki.
Not that hard to be easier to use than Tiki I’m finding! Thanks for the extra notes.
I’ve heard all the stuff about it being based on a constructivist model but am not all that convinced really, maybe it’s just my social-constructivist leanings though…
I’m a big user of moodle with my classes, but I am under utilizing it for two reasons. one, I’m still doing graduate school while working full time. two, There are so many features, I only feel comfortable trying out one or two at a time. So it will take me a long time to try everything I see a use for.
Another pro for your list is a robust user community and rapid development. when 1.5 is released (any day now) it will be much easier to customize the look and feel of your site. As of now, all moodles look the same – just different colors.