Hi Darren, from looking over Maps, it seems kind of an apples vs.
oranges comparison. It looks more like Maps is more of an eportfolio
system than a course management system. It looks to have great features
for assessing written assignments or hand graded assignments over time,
between student and teacher, but nothing like the automatically graded
quizzes, branching lessons, interactive glossaries, or collaborative
forums that Moodle has.
Maps really looks more like an online system to manage the work of
grading written assignments in a traditional (face to face) class, not
a full featured tool for running online or hybrid courses or entire
educational institutes. There seems no reason that the two should
need to compete, I would think one could run a course in Moodle and use
Maps as a portfolio system in a nice conjunction (the main issue being
that Moodle assignments wouldn't directly tie in to Maps, though
perhaps that could be managed).
With the 'send commented paper back to student' features in some folks
are adding to the assignment module, along with the MyFiles block we
are working on, one could approximate some of the features of Maps
withMoodle, I guess, however
IMO, Moodle is more of a course management system
while Maps is more of an individual management system, and they don't
really compete directly.
An open source equivalent to Maps seems to me like it would be Segue rather than Moodle.
but I was after a compassion between using MAPS and Moodle just for assessment. Where is MAPS stronger (eg pupil feedback linked to a piece of work) and where is Moodle stronger (eg peer assessment).
.