What a major disappointment! My district wanted to get Blackboard for next year, but decided against it due to the high cost. I do not know if this information is correct, but someone said that it would be around $20,000. Now that I have played around with Blackboard, I would love to be able to use it on a regular basis. It does seem to be very user-friendly, and there are so many tools available.
The best thing about Moodle is the cost! I think that it is interesting to see the statistical information for Moodle; it shows that there is a strong community of "Moodlers". As an alternative to Blackboard, it is a great solution for school districts on a limited budget. In my opinion, Moodle is not quite as easy to figure out as Blackboard, but there are several resources and tools available to help a new user.
It is becoming more evident to me that we need to use something, whether it is Blackboard, Moodle, or some other platform, for online course management. I realize that it is a huge change for many teachers to convert to hybrid classes, but it is a change that needs to happen. I think that it would be beneficial to many students if districts began to teach with this format.
So we recently purchased our own test scanner and I have been developing training for faculty and it export the grades to a course management system. Blackboard is one, Moodle is not unfortunately. Considering we have classes over 200, having to enter that many grades is very cumbersome, so if you can get the computer to do the work for you, that is a real plus.
ReplyDeleteBB is a lot of money and the $20k is prob. the lowest of their offer. The thing I don't like about BB is that they keep wanting to add on things and each add on cost $$. I hope your district finds something! There are others, Moodle is just one of the many open source and free option.
ReplyDeleteWOW, $20,000 at the low end. That's crazy, but I would hope the support would be there and great.
ReplyDeleteYikes! 20k is outrageous considering how much (or little) support they give. I know my friend taught at State Fair and their BB tech support was the guy at the college that worked in the IT department. You'd think for that cost they'd at least give the users some manuals or something.
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