Carleton has selected Moodle as the replacement to the WebCT Learning Management System (LMS), after a trial and survey of students and instructors.
Moodle is expected to be available in full production for the spring/summer 2012 term, while all courses will be using the system by the fall, according to a statement on the university’s website.
Moodle’s benefits include “ease of use, integration with university systems, such as student email, and mobile compatibility (for fall 2012),” according to the statement.
“It was important that the system we selected be reliable, easy to use and meet our security standards,” Denis Levesque, assistant director of operations and infrastructure at Computing and Communication Services, said via email.
Sixty-five per cent of students and 87 per cent of instructors surveyed said Moodle was either better or slightly better than WebCT. Other replacement candidates, Desire2Learn and Blackboard, didn’t fare as well.
Students and instructors surveyed said they liked Moodle’s simplicity, user interface and email notification system. Others said its chat applications, discussion features, and email system were “difficult to navigate.”
“Choosing an open source product provides us with the flexibility to adapt the product to the needs of the university,” Levesque said.
