First, I have no experience using blackboard. That makes it a disadvantage in itself for a web technologies practitioner like me who is always keen to experiment education technology solutions for learning. Affordance is an issue in that respect.

If I am to compare between webct and moodle, I would go for moodle. I personally find it more open, user-friendly, and flexible in many aspects. I had the opportunity to experiment webct as a designer in my previous course, but the customization or ‘wizard’ selection looked a limit in that aspect. After several trials, I was not happy with the results of my work. As a user, webct is an effective tool for ‘discussion forums’, but again I don’t find it attractive in exploring the other resources.

On the other hand, I find moodle simple and open in choosing the layout, i.e. designing topic or theme-based courses. The rated/ graded ‘discussions’ is an advantage. Being an open source makes it a potential global software with lots of additions or added ‘plug-ins’ by other users, developers or educators. As a free tool, the affordance is not an issue. It could also be installed in an internal network or server with no internet access.

This year, I had some promising experiments running my moodle courses as part of a blended course. I hope to be able to effectively use it with more dynamic and professional tasks in the near future.

Tags: e-learning, environments, learning, virtual, vle