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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Ellucian Colleague

    Score7 out of 10
    N/AEllucian offers Colleague educational ERP, including a student information system supporting higher education institutions with student admissions and registration, academics, curriculum management, and other aspects of student management.N/A

    Moodle

    Score8.6 out of 10
    N/AMoodle is an open source learning management system with hundreds of millions of users around the globe and translated into over 100 languages, used by organizations to support their education and training needs.N/A
    Pricing
    Ellucian ColleagueMoodle
    Editions & Modules
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Ellucian ColleagueMoodle
    Free Trial
    NoYes
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoYes
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeOptional
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Ellucian ColleagueMoodle
    Considered Both Products
    Ellucian
    No answer on this topic
    Moodle
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    100%
    Would buy again
    6 Answers
    90%
    Would buy again
    18 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    6 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    17 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    6 Answers
    90%
    Happy with the feature set
    18 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    5 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    10 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    5 Answers
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    17 Answers
    Features
    Ellucian ColleagueMoodle
    Student and Faculty Administration
    Comparison of Student and Faculty Administration features of Ellucian Colleague and Moodle
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    7.8
    4 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Moodle
    -
    Ratings
    Integrations with 3rd-Party Education Technology7.74 Ratings00 Ratings
    Online Registration Management7.33 Ratings00 Ratings
    District Communications, such as messaging and alerting7.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Roster Management8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Platform Customization8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher Self-Service8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Student Data Security8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Community Support7.73 Ratings00 Ratings
    Class Scheduling8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    State and National-level Reporting8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Compliance Support8.04 Ratings00 Ratings
    Teacher and Parent Mobile Application8.03 Ratings00 Ratings
    Learning Management
    Comparison of Learning Management features of Ellucian Colleague and Moodle
    Feature
    Ellucian Colleague
    -
    Ratings
    Moodle
    8.0
    29 Ratings
    0% below category average
    Course authoring00 Ratings8.725 Ratings
    Course catalog or library00 Ratings8.026 Ratings
    Player/Portal00 Ratings8.326 Ratings
    Learning content00 Ratings7.724 Ratings
    Mobile friendly00 Ratings5.726 Ratings
    Progress tracking & certifications00 Ratings8.527 Ratings
    Assignments00 Ratings8.729 Ratings
    Compliance management00 Ratings9.022 Ratings
    Learning administration00 Ratings8.627 Ratings
    Learning reporting & analytics00 Ratings9.024 Ratings
    Social learning00 Ratings7.426 Ratings
    Gamification00 Ratings6.03 Ratings
    Single Sign On (SSO) Enabled Learning00 Ratings8.52 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Ellucian ColleagueMoodle
    Small Businesses
    No answers on this topic
    Google Classroom
    Score8 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    Schoology Learning
    Score8 out of 10
    Enterprises
    Schoolmint Hero
    Score9.7 out of 10
    D2L Brightspace
    Score7.8 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Ellucian ColleagueMoodle
    Likelihood to Recommend
    7.2
    (13 ratings)
    8.0
    (65 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (22 ratings)
    Usability
    7.3
    (2 ratings)
    8.0
    (8 ratings)
    Availability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (4 ratings)
    Performance
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    7.4
    (15 ratings)
    Online Training
    -
    (0 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.8
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (3 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Ellucian ColleagueMoodle
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Ellucian
    Ellucian Colleague is wonderful at streamlining processes and unifying data related to students, finance, human resources, and financial aid. It continues to support and manage administrative needs, enhance student experiences, and improve operational efficiency across the University. Ellucian Colleague is less suited for quick data retrieval and comprehensive financial reporting. These functions could use some improvement to optimize the user experience.
    Read full review
    Moodle
    Moodle is great for any environment where a class or other learning activity needs to be completed in an asynchronous manner. It can be used to post information, create interactive threads for discussion, issue quiz and exam work with grading, track and grade progress, and keep track of attendance. It is an overall wonderful solution for managing asynchronous learning.
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    Pros
    Ellucian
    • Colleague Student allows us to integrate services across the university for students with staff in various departments able to see the information about a student that they need to serve the student well.
    • Colleague Student makes it easy to see our students current academic record as well as transfer courses (and information) and their past records here at the university. Our old system required a lot of homegrown connection points to be able to see all of this information. It was neither quick nor easy.
    • Colleague Student makes the registration process for our students much easier. Our old system was clunky and would often prevent students from registering for a class but not provide information for them about why. Colleague Student makes it easy for students to see if they are missing a pre-requisite, have a hold, etc., so they can know how to get their registration back on track.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Moodle
    • Moodle's grade book works well. Assignments are integrated so the grades are recorded automatically.
    • Moodle is customizable by administrators, so our version only gives us the options we need. NO Clutter.
    • The discussion board offers several options for instructors that help with grading. I use "sum of points", but there are other options as well.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Ellucian
    • Develop API's that are vendor agnostic rather than selecting specific vendors (Clearinghouse, ImageNow).
    • Colleague tends to be to reactionary to the changing needs in higher education rather than developing the future.
    • Hound clients to pay extra for consulting (consultants are usually bad), rather than helping institutions to use the product. Seems to be the first thing help line personnel jump to rather than working with clients to figure out creative solutions.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Moodle
    • The interface is not very intuitive. You must know what you are looking for in order to navigate effectively.
    • Although installation of Moodle is easy, it is a little more difficult to configure it with your other Learning tools. As an example, LDAP synchronization is a little difficult.
    • The interface is a little dated, even though new releases keep coming out (which is great!) none of them really add value to the appearance of the platform.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Moodle
    We use it because it is what have committed to back in 2011. Perhaps Moodle will evolve and advance in a positive way that will alleviate most of our user-based gripes? Perhaps it will not appear to be as cost effective given the need for a certain level of engineering and support staff to maintain it at a future level of sustainability? It's hard to say. As an enterprise scale critical application, we like it, but don't love it. Our instructors don't particularly like it at all.
    Read full review
    Usability
    Ellucian
    For decades, Ellucian Colleague has served the University as our primary student record-retention CRM. Its functionality has weathered many recent trends in CRM development and continues to produce the needed results for our constituency and the size of our university. We look forward to continuing to utilize Ellucian Colleague in the future.
    Incentivized
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    Moodle
    Moodle can be used on a tablet, on a mobile phone, and on a PC. It is easy to navigate for learners and figure out for administrators. The learners can easily complete tasks and the administrators can easily track completion. The last thing about Moodle that one may not realize is that it somewhat resembles Facebook in its layout. This means that users are already familiar with the interface and therefore they are more comfortable using it.
    Incentivized
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    Reliability and Availability
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Moodle
    Yes, Moodle is always available. We are self-hosted and Moodle is always up and available. The only time that it is not available is when we are upgrading it each semester. It is then down for just a few planned hours. That is in-between semesters and we let the faculty and students know. We do it on a Friday evening and it is back up within a few hours.
    Incentivized
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    Performance
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Moodle
    Moodle is an excellent LMS in relationship to any other one that I have seen or used. The pages load quickly and the reports complete in a reasonable time frame. Moodle has taken on Respondus, StudyMate, BigBlueButton, Turning Tech, Turnitin2, Certificates, Attendance, Tegrity, Questionnaire, Virtual Programming Lab, and Badges. All of these programs work right in with Moodle and do not cause any issues. Instructors may also use Camtasia and Snagit software as well as using webcams, downloading videos from the Internet, adding into books, or any of the many other areas within Moodle. Our instructors use the grade books without many problems and really don't ask questions much anymore. We upgrade Moodle every semester and are currently on 2.9+. Our instructors have basically learned to use most of the resources and activities.
    Incentivized
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    Support Rating
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Moodle
    Moodle is open source, and must be evaluated in that context, but one also has to provide a fair comparison to competing products with commercial backing. Support varies depending on the component of Moodle. Bug reports in Moodle Core that affect security or stability are dealt with promptly. Functionality requests or features not working smoothly may or may not be addressed, depending on whether the functionality desired matches the "vision" of Moodle HQ. The user community provides excellent support for initial installation and configuration, but more complex questions may go unanswered, unless they are noticed by someone who happens to know the answer. The support forum feature at the Moodle site (the same feature used within Moodle itself) does not provide granular subscription to topic discussions, apparently by design, and Moodle HQ seems resistant to changing this feature.
    Incentivized
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    Online Training
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Moodle
    I have used a few sites and they were adequate but my best learning experience was face to face and hands on.
    Incentivized
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    Implementation Rating
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Moodle
    Find a partner who will work with you during the implementation process. Be sure to provide ample training for veteran users on the changes and for newbies on the overall product.
    Incentivized
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    Alternatives Considered
    Ellucian
    I did not use Jenzabar as extensively as Colleague, but they perform similar functions for student information tracking. I think Colleague is more appropriate for use across campus, as its student billing and scheduling options exceed Jenzabar. Jenzabar, however, offers better tools for use exclusively in student affairs. If an organization wants to track all student data, they should consider Colleague.
    Incentivized
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    Moodle
    Blackboard has clear advantages in rubric management, and offers a content management system of its own. The largest barrier is cost for smaller or financially-disadvantaged organizations. However, as in any IT project, adequate resources must be made for even "free" software.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Scalability
    Ellucian
    No answers on this topic
    Moodle
    Well, I administer Moodle for a dozen of our divisions and there is a wide range of flexibility between offerings. I have course instructors who use every module i their course, chock full of videos, pictures, links to web tools for synchronous sessions within the asynchronous course. I also have others who are content with a syllabus, a few pdfs, links to podcast lectures and a few simple assignments. No matter if your organization is big or small, or if your requirements are strict for credentialing or non-existent (for internal know-how), Moodle can accommodate you.
    Incentivized
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    Return on Investment
    Ellucian
    • By keeping student's academic work, financial aid, and accounts receivable information in one location we are able to report without the need for data aggregation.
    • Colleague's web applications allow the students themselves to perform tasks such as enrollment without assistance from staff members.
    • Using customized rules that we can set up in Colleague we can trigger events to happen as data is entered. This eliminates the need not only for someone to remember to perform an additional task, but it also saves the time of performing the actual task.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Moodle
    • While it certainly takes more time to develop an online training vs a face-to-face we can offer the same content over and over again and meet a larger audience. There's no way we could have offered these trainings face-to-face to the same size audience. Economically it's just not feasible. Moodle allows us to share multiple trainings on a variety of topics over extended periods of time in a cost effective way.
    • The impact on early interventionists is still being evaluated, but we do know that early interventionist now have more ways to access professional development than in the past. The ability to customize the registration page has allowed us to track which agencies in Virginia are having their staff participate and we can see which topics are favored above others.
    • Other LMS's were far too costly. Aside from the monthly hosting fees (less than $200 a year), and the time it took to do the initial install and setup, Moodle is free. Once it's setup the only elearning costs are related to the development and creation of each training and then the setup of training on Moodle. This allows us to devote more time and money to the development and creation of more courses vs. the management of the system.
    • Minimal tech support for the users is required and most requests are limited to lost/userid passwords. The course designer is able to manage tech support needs for the users because so few requests are received.
    Incentivized
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    ScreenShots

    Moodle Screenshots

    Screenshot of Moodle offers activities and resources to create courses.Screenshot of The course dashboard shows the courses which an student is enrolled in.Screenshot of Inside a course view shows the course complete index of activities and resources.
The course view can be customised to be cleaner allowing the student to focus on learning.Screenshot of Moodle Workplace includes all features in Moodle LMS and other exclusive features like multi-tenancy, dynamic rules, and report builder.Screenshot of Programs help users stay up-to-date with compliance, and help with designing learning paths for a teams so that they can develop the right competencies. Certificates can also be issued to validate learning and compliance.Screenshot of Dynamic Rules help to avoid the tedious tasks and create and manage automated rules for several groups of users. Learning experiences based on location, department, position, roles and other criteria are available.