Comparisons and advocacy

This discussion reminds me of "life before the LMS." Before I encountered Blackboard, around 2002, I was using my school's webserver to post course resources. Yep, the good old webserver. No LMS, no WordPress, no Moodle, etc. Recall the World Wide Web, "www," became usable only around 1993. I recall teaching around 1995, and asking my school's IT department, "When will I be able to get my own web page?" I quickly realized that creating web pages from scratch was inefficient, but there was a product from Microsoft called "Frontpage" that made web page creation much easier, so I began using it. Incidentally, a competing product called Dreamweaver was also available (circa 1997), but Frontpage came to me free; it seemed to do the job, so I used it. I created weekly web pages with course content, such as my PowerPoints, that my students were able to download. Wow, I didn't have to print and carry my notes into classes! Incidentally, Microsoft ended Frontpage around 2008, so I switched to ... Dreamweaver. Today, I still use Dreamweaver to create course content, contained on my VPS, and then link to it within Moodle. I believe this is combining the best of both worlds.

My university purchased Blackboard around 2002. Initially, I didn't see it do much more for me than what I was doing with Frontpage. But then I had an idea to deliver some of my lectures, in fact, the entire weekly meeting, electronically. We now refer to this as "hybrid" instruction. But to do this, I needed a way for students to "discuss" the topics. That's when I began using Blackboard... for discussions. It was the Spring of 2002. To quickly end my thoughts, Blackboard's discussion tool had problems, and I switched to Moodle in 2008 having taught over 50 courses with Blackboard.

So my story captures our current discussion (agreeing with James) that if you don't see a need for discussions, you probably don't need to use an LMS. Delivery of course content (e.g., notes, PowerPoints, videos, readings, etc.) can be done using other methods.

> But why would a learner want to pay for such a course?

Because they just want the lessons. Sites like Udemy and SkillShare are filled with such courses. Their entire business models are platforms for other to sell such courses.

Moodle has a lot of strong features as a platform for online courses. Lots of different question types. Also, the layout is made for courses. Moodle has great documentation and forums, and just about everything in Moodle is free (I think there are a few paid plugins). Moodle also allows for all kinds of content: SCORM, H5P, Adobe Captivate, and just about anything else.

I have tried some WordPress and Drupal LMS plugins. Drupal was just too awful to describe. Although, to be fair, it's been a long time since I tried it.

With WordPress LMS plugins, you don't get far before you have to start paying. And often, the people who sell the plugins are not very honest about the real price. They always advertise as everything as free, but they mean "free to download" or "free to try" or "free if you buy something else" or "free for the crippled starter version."

In my limited experience: the free versions of WordPress LMSes have little to no documentation, and you can forget about any kind of support. The free versions only exist to upsell. Even the paid versions are not nearly as well supported as Moodle.

You can use WordPress as an LMS without an LMS plugin. But it's not that easy if you don't really know WordPress.

Moodle's built in features, seem to be richer, and better, than the online platforms that I have mentioned, or other CMSes with LMS plugins.

I have not done a recent or exhaustive study of any of this. Some of this stuff I have not tried for years. Sorry if I'm wrong about any of this.

I woud like to thank, and everybody else who replied for their insights.