Moodle vs a built-in LMS: which is right for your school?

Moodle is a free, open-source learning platform used by universities, colleges and schools all over the world. It is enormously flexible: thousands of plugins, many activity types, detailed gradebooks and support for e-learning standards such as SCORM. That flexibility comes with complexity. Someone has to host it, update it, create accounts, enrol learners in courses and keep it all in step with the school’s records.

A built-in LMS is part of the school management system the school already uses. It knows the classes, subjects, teachers and learners, so there are no accounts to create and no enrolments to manage. It usually has fewer activity types than Moodle, but what it has is simpler to use, and marks flow directly into report cards.

• Moodle: needs a server, regular updates, backups and someone who understands its administration screens. Accounts and enrolments must be created and kept up to date each term, by hand or through an integration.
• Built-in LMS: nothing to install. Teachers and learners already have accounts; courses can be created for every class and subject from the teaching timetable in one step.

Most primary and secondary school teachers need to do a few things well: share notes and videos, set assignments, run quizzes and record marks. A built-in LMS tends to make these few things very quick. Moodle can do all of them and much more, but teachers usually need training to find their way, and learners need another username and password.

For learners using cheap phones on limited data, simplicity matters. Pages should be light, work should save itself, and a learner should be able to pick up exactly where they left off.

This is where the difference is largest. In a built-in LMS, a quiz or exam mark can be sent to the gradebook in one click, where it counts towards the term result and appears on the report card. With Moodle, marks have to be exported and imported, or carried across by an integration, and someone has to check that grade items match the school’s assessments.

• Universities and colleges with many courses, programmes and short courses.
• Institutions that need specific Moodle plugins, SCORM packages or complex activity types.
• Schools that already have years of courses built in Moodle and teachers trained to use it.
• Programmes that share courses with other institutions running Moodle.

• Nursery, primary and secondary schools whose main need is notes, assignments, quizzes and exams.
• Schools without an ICT team to run and update a server.
• Schools that want online marks to count on the report card without extra work.
• Schools where parents should be able to follow their child’s progress.

Some schools want both: the simplicity of a built-in LMS for daily teaching, and Moodle for particular courses or for a college section. The best set-up is one where the two are connected, so accounts, courses and enrolments are created automatically from the school’s records and content is copied across.

In IWAT School Solutions the learning management system is built in, and Moodle is available in one click on our shared server, kept in step automatically, or connected to a Moodle you already run.

Moodle itself is free to download, but running it is not. A school needs a server with enough memory for exam days, an ICT person to apply updates and fix problems, backups, and time every term to create accounts and enrol learners. Plugins are often free, but some important ones are paid, and every plugin adds work when Moodle is upgraded.

A built-in LMS is usually priced per term with the school system, with hosting, backups and updates included. The hidden cost to watch for is different: make sure the built-in LMS has the activity types your teachers need, so that you are not forced to buy a second platform later.

Picture a day and boarding secondary school with 900 learners and 45 teachers. Teachers want to share notes and past papers, set holiday work, give weekly quizzes and run end-of-term exams for S1 and S2 online. The school has one ICT teacher, who also teaches computer studies.

For this school a built-in LMS is the better fit. Courses for every class and subject can be created from the timetable in one step, quizzes and exams mark themselves, and the marks count on the report card without the director of studies copying anything. The ICT teacher’s time goes into training teachers, not maintaining a server.

Now picture a college of health sciences with 1,500 students on diploma and certificate courses, short courses for working nurses, and SCORM modules from a partner. Here Moodle earns its complexity, ideally hosted for the college and connected to its student records so that accounts and enrolments are never typed twice.

1. 1Who will run and update the platform, and how many hours a month can they give it?
2. 2Which activities do teachers really use today, and which would they use tomorrow?
3. 3How will marks get from online work to the report card?
4. 4How will learners sign in, and how many passwords will they need?
5. 5What will it cost per term, including hosting, support and training?