Google Classroom vs. Moodle

- During the pandemic, the college needs a fast and easy solution to conduct Google Classroom. The integration with Google Accounts and Google Meet allows the university to run and access the Classroom on a large scale. - The teacher wants to conduct some exams in third-party software like Moodle. But we have not found any plugin for this famous open-source learning platform. The exam system in Google Classroom is so poor that it doesn't even fully screen the test when students are writing their exams.

Moodle is a Learning Management System and is best suited for just that. We didn't like the assessment piece of our full scale Learning Management System (nor did we want to purchase the entire assessment module) so we chose to use Moodle for this, and it works well. Installing this application with the intention of only using a portion of its capabilities can be successful in environments where you have technical skills and a broad understanding of integration between your systems. For institutions that lack these, you're better suited to using a full scale of an LMS with assessment inside that same application.

Incentivized

• Student-teacher communication - I love using Classroom for this because my students can always go back and check what was on Classroom by looking through the stream. This way they don't have to go dig through emails to find what they're looking for.
• Posting to multiple classes - I can post the same announcement or assignment to multiple classes at once without having to repeat the process or send separate emails.
• Streamlining grading - when students turn work in on Classroom, it all goes to one place and then when I'm grading I can open their documents directly from Classroom or my Drive folder. This way, I'm not looking through emails and Google Doc shared files for their assignment.

Incentivized

• 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

• Although usually in the discussion with other LMS apps such as Schoology and Canvas, Google Classroom doesn't possess as in-depth of a platform. There is no ability to set individual learning paths, pace student work with completion settings, or embed other apps directly into teacher-created assignments.
• The assignment creation options are limited. Teachers can only choose from creating an assignment (usually a link with directions), a material (usually a doc/slide/website, etc), a question, and a quiz.
• With gamification taking on a new lens in education, there really isn't any way to use gamification elements with Google Classroom. There isn't any way to create Individual learning paths, or use badges and micro-credentials within Classroom. Outside programs would have to be used.

Incentivized

• Rubric Management. This may have been addressed in a plugin module.
• Better tools for examining outcomes from exams and rubrics across a class, course, or organization. This may have been addressed in a plugin module.
• Improved content management within the default installation. While there are modules that support products such as Drupal, building into the default product would ease adoption.

Incentivized

Testing is particularly important in online learning, and Google Classroom falls far short of other learning management systems in this regard. Security is also a concern: while account control is reasonable for the account used with Google Classroom, the person controlling a particular account is often able to, for example, forward or download proprietary materials.

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.

This is only a product I would recommend to a humanities teacher. Math and science teachers cannot use this product the same way that I can as an English teacher. It is great for word process and for reading, but unable to handle the demands of math and science. Therefore, I would highly recommend this product to English or Social Studies teachers, but NOT math or science teachers

Incentivized

I've been able to figure out Moodle through my own experimentation and some help from the Moodle support pages. It's not always obvious where to make certain some changes and It can be a little confusing in determining which pages blocks will appear. If this is your first time using Moodle as an admin/course designer you should expect to spend a some time experimenting because knowing where to make certain changes isn't always intuitive. Additionally, plan to explore the course as a student vs. as admin because the UI is different based upon your settings

Incentivized

We have had very little trouble in accessing Google Classroom. Our issues, if any, have risen from our server and not the Google servers.

Incentivized

I have worked in Moodle for over 10 years in two different organizations, and I have never experienced an outage. We have about 600 courses in our current account and the only outage we have had is FlashChat add-in we use for live chats, within Moodle, hence the reason for the nine (9). If you all know of Moodle vendors willing to help us upgrade from 1.9, Please wend me their info.

Incentivized

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

Since this platform is provided by Google, the technical support is better than any others, and we are not required to bother about the space constraints for adding the contents. If we have a good uninterrupted internet facility we can access Google Classroom without any delay or lag. They have app support in both Android and iPhone.

I can consider Moodle as one of the pioneer in providing online learning. Before the introduction of other Learning Management Software, Moodle has been in place already in the field of education and so I believe that Moodle is definitely one of a kind software that all teachers should try and utilize in making sure that the online learning is a good experience.

Incentivized

I have used a few sites and they were adequate but my best learning experience was face to face and hands on.

Incentivized

It was relatively easy to implement due to the simplicity of the platform. Even our more technology challenged teachers found it easy to get started with Google Classroom.

Incentivized

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

Skyward and Google Classroom are completely different programs that are used for completely different things. The only comparable areas are communication with students. Skyward does so through the class rosters and message center and Google Classroom does so through the classrooms for each student and their teacher, but each is unique in their own way.

Incentivized

Moodle, being open source, is the foundation a lot of other tools like it are based on. It provides almost all of the same functionality and feature set as Google Classtoom, Canvas, etc., although those products are a bit more polished. All can do content delivery, progress tracking, attendance, reporting, etc. with ease, but Moodle also does this as a completely open source product that can be code-reviewed, audited, modified, extended, etc. at will, provided the expertise is present.

It is very easy to push out this program across our buildings. Teachers are able to use it without much trouble.

Incentivized

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

• Students are able to continue learning in a remote environment
• Parents have a single, consistent organization structure to make it easy to track assignments and progress for multiple children
• Much better solution than the quickly assembled Zoom-and-gloom of the previous spring when school abruptly went remote with no planning

Incentivized

• Moodle has allowed the business to track all training initiatives. Since, November 2014 we have loaded 54 courses, 339 users, 889 resources, issued 719 badges, and created over 100 course modules.
• Our company just got a new applicant tracking system for the recruiters to use. In order to get all of the employees up to speed we created trainings that we loaded into Moodle. The participants and participation was tracked and we were able to find correlations between users engaged in training and their activity in the new applicant tracking system. This is a significant win for the training department, our learners, our company, and especially Moodle.
• Moodle also provides great customer service for our internal employees. They now have one place to go to find all their resources, all their training, and all the help they need for any training questions. Instead of scattering information on the intranet. Training is more official when it has its own domain.

Incentivized