Moodle VS Blackboard.
I am aware the Moodle is "Free" but what are the expenses in the long run?
Interested minds are asking,.....
Also, I like to say that it is totally free because I added Moodle to an existing home server and it was, in fact, free but it is just that, a home server. It has no on-line access. What might be the expense to link my server to the outside world?
No need to go into too much depth here, just some figures please...
It's a bit like "how much is a hair cut"? It could be free, you could do it yourself, however.....
Cutting hair, not unlike trimming a large shrub, one can always say "Thats OK it will grow back" Which is where I am starting with this question. Others claim that Blackboard is better. I guess that is like my paying the most expensive hair stylist one can and claiming my crew cut is better.
Still, I would like to know what average costs people pay for a working edition of Moodle.
WIth differing levels of education in computers, PHP, linux etc, there must be ranges. This is what sparks my curiosity.
Steve - I pay about $12US a month for hosting with Bluehost. https://www.bluehost.com/
Start with your own box and things are different again. Joe may get a server up and running in 3 hours. Fred may take 20.
You say:
Others claim that Blackboard is better.It is 'better' if you get to chose the criteria. On what basis are 'others' saying this?
Develop a spreadsheet. These are a few of the aspects to include.
Just ignore Marcus, he's having you on. He's just not valuing his time with a $$
value.my 2c
-Derek
It's almost impossible to give an 'average' cost for a working edition of Moodle without knowing what sort of scale you are thinking of
My Moodle sites run from:
localhost - sits on my laptop/desktop, installed and managed personally, cost £0
home webserver (web accessible) - installed and managed personally, cost £0 - unless you count my broadband, but I would have that anyway
shared hosting - hosted, but Moodle managed by me, has previously been used to support a primary school moodle instance, cost £7pm
small external site for a university - partner hosted, cost unsure but in the low 000's
main university moodle site - internally hosted, moodle managed by me, server managed by IT staff: server capacity and staffing already exists - but by the time the various staff also do other tasks and work with other systems if you took one full time annual salary you'd probably be in the ball park of the specific cost (but this wouldn't cover a bigger institution like OU, so you still have scale to think about there)
In terms of personal education and experience - I started running a localhost and school website (probably about 10-12 years ago) with no experience and knowledge at all. Moodle has been my personal/professional development vehicle for learning about linux server management and web development. That's fine for running a small personal site, and may even be OK (given time commitment) for running a small school site, but running a university site requires more expertise in the server management, security, backups etc. BUT in terms of comparative costs between Moodle and AN.Other system, bear in mind that those same costs would apply (along with Tim's comments around content creation) to any self-hosted system.
Thanks Richard!
It's probably also worth mentioning that when we outsource LMS management, whether proprietary or free and open source, we get into the world of call centres and unqualified support staff responding to issues and queries, and the email/phone rage that this can provoke for your organisation's teaching staff and admins... I'm sure we've all heard stories ;)
Probably less likely if the LMS provider knows that we can switch if we're dissatisfied with their service though.
Although it is not possible to give a single reasonable answer to the question it is a good topic to discuss to get an idea of the range of costs. So as an individual teacher I used to pay the equivalent of $US70 per year for a hosting account on which I ran Moodle. That discounts the cost of my expertise of course.
At the University where I work we have two Moodle experts and it probably occupies the equivalent of one persons job. We are paid annoyingly close to the national average . I have investigated all manner of outsourcing options and in my view you would not save any money but lose flexibility. For example most hosting offers are understandably cautious about allowing the use of 3rd party plugins and it in that area that things get interesting.
I was looking for actual explanations of expense. The who and when and how theory is interesting but "just the facts please" is preferred.
For example, the university where I use a Moodle on line explains it as:
---------------
It's a virtual server on campus and the storage is on a SAN,
so the costs are small margins on top of the costs of running/maintaining
those. The server is a standard CentOS 5 image that IT uses for other
purposes and is only slightly modified to run Moodle. It's backed up
automatically to an image so it can be restored quickly if there's a disaster.
The storage area network is likewise used for other purposes and we have
yet to break 500GB total on that.
The only real cost is my time which I volunteer since I want to
use Moodle.
--------------
For other without the experience or time to be so dedicated, there will be expenses. These I would like to know and I believe that others would too especially for those that do not have as robust of an IT department at hand. Maybe a description such as the one I offer may be good enough to help a situation where the IT is not convinced that it is worth their while for their system.
So the question seems to have moved from 'No need to go into too much depth here, just some figures please...' to asking for some facts about moodle setups.
My question would still be the same - what kind of scale do you want to know about?
If you are looking for a comparison with what you have put there, give us an indication of the size of institution (or of the anticipated users for your moodle) and people with a similar use case to your own will be able to respond appropriately. There doesn't seem to be a lot of point me detailing my moodle localhost, or the shared hosting/VPS a Primary school may get away with, or Tim coming on the discussion with a breakdown of what supports the OU Moodle sites. Maybe my university could be a useful comparison, or if you are only using your moodle with a small group of teachers and students (as seems likely if its on a system used for other purposes and you don't break 500Gb storage for all those uses), then the usage equivalent may be closer to that of a high school, or single university department.
So suggest what the usage is likely to be and people with similar experiences may be able to give some useful feedback, otherwise the responses are likely to be as useful as the 'ooh about this long' answer to the string question
So the question seems to have moved from 'No need to go into too much depth here, just some figures please...' to asking for some facts about moodle setups.
Nope, the question remains although some perversion of the original intent has been observed...
No interest in discussion of what to do, estimates of how much it will cost or all that theoretical,... well, stuff. Maybe this thread should have been titled "What are you paying to run your Moodle right now?" It might even be worth starting a new thread to catch more eyes.
My point is to know about setups already running, expense to run, numbers of students / instructors served etc. Maybe the results can be gathered into a simple chart so comparisons can be made. In other words: Show a list of pastries first, let us taste them, then we can talk about the ingredients later.
For the university here, aside from a 0.01% additional load on the existing IT system, there is no expense. Obviously if one doesn't have trained/ambitious volunteers with access to an IT department then there will be expenses.
Inquiring minds want to know.
No wonder there is 'perversion of the original intent'..
'what are the expenses'
'just some figures'
'what average costs people pay'
'actual explanations of expense' (yet your actual example doesn't mention any costs)
'there will be expenses. These I would like to know'
'No interest in discussion of what to do, estimates of how much it will cost or all that theoretical,... well, stuff'
Inquiring minds want to know many things, but unless the question matches what they want to know the answers are likely to be like looking for 'Jones' in a Welsh phone book - cover everything possible, but not exactly useful to what you really want to know.
There have been several answers given, giving you a range of costs that you appeared to initially ask for, so if you are now suggesting a simple chart - how about creating that chart and people will fill it in for you and you'll get the answers you really really want.
Richard
OK, I'll start
I probably have the cheapest option; I use a virtual private server (VPS = The Cloud ...woooh!) and manage it myself (root access ). So I pay around $5 per month for a small but very fast system*. I don't think I'm the typical Moodle user though.
* 512MB Memory, 1 Core Processor, 20GB SSD Disk, 1TB Transfer
Actually, you can have your very own Moodle for up to 50 users, 200MB file storage, and a BigBlueButton (video conferencing) account for up to 6 concurrent users for free here: https://moodle.com/cloud/free/
What costs do you want to include?
Most of the cost is the time teachers spend creating their courses in the system, and the time other people spend helping with that, and ensuring that the right students can access the right courses.
Compared to that, the costs of servers, hosting, and even the software if you are careless enough to choose commercial software, is relatively small. So, the bulk of the support costs are independent of the solution chosen.
What costs do you want to include?
It doesn't matter. The question is: What is it costing right now?
I only want to know what people are already doing. I am not designing a set up. Therefore, asking what I want to include is moot.
Do you have a Moodle running? Post the facts. Post something like this:
I have a set up that costs $1/month/student based on 50 students. That price drops as I add more students. I do my own maintenance.
My computer was effectively free because I assembled it from scrap that I already had.
It costs $80/month for on-line access but we already have it for other uses and that is not included either because the access is scarcely used for Moodle.
So the only cost I have is for public access to my cloud-based system costs only $50/month,
That is it. $50/month! Everything else is/was free. No more design unless I change things and this will net only minor increases in the monthly cost.
If your system costs for maintenance or design, how much did it cost?
If you are paying a fee for per student access, how much?
If you had to add internet service, price it in but you should adjust the price if you are using that service for other reasons also.
Needed to purchase a computer? Add the cost.
In short: What expenses are you already accruing to keep your Moodle running.
Many people have systems, already in place and varying costs.
Let's find out what the spectrum is and not what it can be.
I presently have four systems in my chart from here and another discussion group.
'I presently have four systems in my chart'
So show us the chart - give us some headings to fill in, as that example is a completely different set of information from the one you posted earlier and now, indeed, seems to be back to costs which were not in your previous example of what you wanted to know.
I am intrigued to see this information across a range of institutions as well, but it would be easier to get some good comparative data if it was done more systematically, with specific headings/questions to answer Steve - especially if you already have a chart to fill in!