Kudos to Kathy D. Munoz, Professor, Humboldt State University and Joan Van Duzer, Instructional Technologist, Humboldt State University who published a study online on 15 February 2005. The published article is available here.

In short:

The Question ...

Can free software satisfactorily meet the needs of students, faculty, and instructional technologists for online teaching and learning?

Developer Satisfaction

• Excellent local support to customize Moodle with more desirable features
• Better results incorporating video in Moodle
• Campus support to explain features and make implementation suggestions
• Flexibility results in some confusion when Moodle features are changed with no warning
• Remarkable array of tools in Moodlesome unavailable in Blackboard
• Not all Blackboard features work like they should: quiz scoring, replicating the course without breaking internal links, etc.

Moodle Customizations

• Essay questions added to the quiz module
• Surveys added
• Gradebook improved with added features
• Date/time programming for topics and/or individual activities
• Quickmail: Allows emailing all or selected students in a course with attachments and a history
• Features added to Moodle's Lesson module
• MyFiles: Students and faculty share files with selected groups
• Return Assignment: Faculty return graded assignments to students

Student Satisfaction
Would like another (Blackboard/Moodle) course

Blackboard:

• 46.2% strongly or somewhat agree
• 30.8% neutral
• 23.1% somewhat or strongly disagree

Moodle:

• 57.2% strongly or somewhat agree
• 21.4% neutral
• 21.4% somewhat or strongly disagree

Student Satisfaction
Which do you prefer, Moodle or Blackboard?

No preference 42.9%
Moodle - 35.7%
Blackboard - 21.4%

 Hope you enjoy reading this report!