Moodle

Moodle is an open source learning management system so it's free in every sense of the word to download, install, configure and customization in any way you want which is terrific, of course. Though you are probably going to require specialized help to configure it optimally with any sort of large student body but it's relatively easy to find expert database developer help locally or as a freelancer online to get this done. This all depends on your technical savvy. There are many roles and permissions possible in Moodle including students, teachers, managers and parents so you can ensure everyone receives the correct level of communication and respects the appropriate boundaries. The user interface is relatively simple to use and easy to get building out your site once you're installed. The content management functionality is easy to use as well so organizing your curriculum and breaking down accordingly is an efficient process. And you can update content and courses at any time as well, of course which is good. There are lots of great plugins you can install into your Moodle account to extend ways it can used. You can add a quizzes module for example and have this accessible in your account moving forward. This extensibility is a significant aspect of Moodle because the Open Source combination of platform and plugins together is a powerful offer in terms of overall value. I like a lot of minor features they have added to their latest version 3.0. Such as the drag and drop technology and new question types. The ability for students to use drag and drop is awesome and perhaps the simplest way to increase adoption and engagement rates of this platform. I also like how you can see who's logged in, workshop participants and filter your data in useful ways to help you see trends or patterns which can help you one way or the other. Another minor but very helpful feature is the version updates for your content. As a teacher now you can show when a document was changed or updated, in other words please re-read it there is new information to consider, though you will not have to mention it out loud as much anyways. The filtering by course and groups is helpful to in order to obtain particular enrollment statistics. The content editing has been much improved so you can take care of most of it on a single page now instead of flipping between so many.

Be aware that though this is a free software there are significant costs associated with it's installation, development and ongoing maintenance. Especially if you have a lot of students in your database it's probably best to work with a specialized expert, but also a specialized third party tool for database management which can makes this aspect of Moodle much more efficient and cost effective.

Moodle seems greatly focused on creating the best end user experience including students, teachers, management and parents. These latest feature updates are a great move in the right direction in terms of creating the most streamlined, easy experience for everyone involved. There is always room to grow but you can never complain about the price that gets you going with nothing out of pocket. I feel this LMS is sufficiently easy to use for all parties and appreciate how much you can extend it using the plugins. And the community is great it's very active and committed to great LMS software. I will be recommending to my teacher friend that Moodle is a very good option to consider as they are currently without a learning management system at their school and are currently in the market.