CMS Technology Wcet Edutools CMS

CMS Technology

WCET EduTools CMS comparisons: Appropriate Content Management Software (CMS) for a community college

Blackboard Learning Systems CE was one of the first forms of online Content Management Software (CMS) that was used to supplement 'real world' classroom learning. Blackboard has now become ubiquitous in distance learning classes. However, when contemplating what type of CMS software is most useful for a community college focusing on distance or off-site learning, the question arises if the new alternative CMS programs that have emerged in the marketplace would be more or equally effective. Two of these new offerings include Angel Learning and the open-source software Moodle. Both of these forms of CMS offer opportunities for instructors and students to create homepages, discussion forums, chat rooms, and online examinations.

All three technologies offer a wide variety of useful discussion and interactive forum features, including allowing forums to be threaded and for posts to take the form of individual or group blogs. The fact that Blackboard posts can contain URLs, file attachments and HTML as well as depict mathematic equations makes Blackboard particularly useful for all disciplines including mathematics, natural sciences and economics classes as well as social science and humanities courses. Angel Learning and Moodle advertise that students can categorize posts as problems or scientific explanations as well as general comments, evaluations, or summaries.

All applications allow instructors to generate statistical summaries of discussions for help in grading. Internal emailing between students is allowed between all formats, as well as internal emailing between students and instructors. When using the chat room function, instructors can moderate content, suspend students, and archive logs of chat sessions. The only difference between the three technologies in terms of the chat function is that Blackboard supports an unlimited number of simultaneous rooms, while Angel and Moodle limit the number of simultaneous rooms. Blackboard and Angel only allow students to search discussion threads: Moodle allows students to search chat features as well.

Blackboard clearly has superior whiteboard technology: The Blackboard whiteboard supports image and PowerPoint uploading and mathematical symbols. Users can record whiteboard sessions for future viewing. This makes Blackboard more useful for courses that make extensive use of PowerPoint, including business classes where students may be asked to construct PowerPoints for presentations.

Instructors and students can post events in the online course calendar of all three applications. Instructors can post announcements and students have a personal homepage with personal records of their grades, email, and system-wide events using all three systems. Only Angel allows access to these systems through RSS feeds. Angel and Blackboard allow students to create private as well as public content and to create a home page for each course. In terms of creating assessments, all applications allow for a wide variety of testing formats, from fill-in-the-blanks and multiple choice to essay questions. Only Blackboard and Moodle allows for calculated answers. Also, Moodle supports a MathML editor for the inclusion of mathematical formulas in both questions and answers in instructor-created examinations.

All systems allow for certain applications to make it easier for instructors to create course content, such as automatically adding assignments to the grading book when they are posted and allowing the instructors to create personalized content for certain students based on group membership. This might include giving additional extra credit or remedial assignments to certain students. There are also default course 'looks.' Angel and Moodle offer the capability to share content with other instructors and students through a central learning objects repository.