Journal Article #4 - Course Management Systems

I chose to explore the different course management systems available to teachers. A course management system (CMS) is a collection of software tools providing an online environment for course interactions. The traditional course management systems, Blackboard, Moodle or WebCT help teachers disseminate information to students by posting course content, assignments and grades in a central location that students can access over the internet. Additionally, CMS’s contain an integrated email tool that allows participants to send announcement email messages to the entire class or to a subset of the class, chat tools for students to interact with one another online and threaded discussion boards enabling communication among class participants.

By looking at several threads posted under course management systems I found a study done by Humboldt University that compared Moodle, a “Open Source” free, learning management system software to Blackboard, a learning management software partially owned by Microsoft which charges approximately $8,600 per year in licensing fees. This report is a great way for teachers to assess the functionality and efficiency of both course management systems. The noted advantages of using Moodle are that it is easier to provide individual feedback on all assignments as well as it is easier to track each student’s activity in class by being able to view when and how often parts of class are accessed and where students access the course. The noted advantages of Blackboard are that it has a more polished appearance, better grade book, the threaded discussions easily differentiation between read and unread posts and announcements are more prominently displayed upon entering the course.