Moodle 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
Google Classroom
Moodle
Editions & Modules
Education Fundamentals
$0
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Standard
$3
per student/per year
Teaching and Learning Upgrade
$4
per license/per month
Google Workspace for Education Plus
$5
per student/per year
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Classroom
Moodle
Free Trial
Yes
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
Optional
Additional Details
Education Fundamentals Version - 30-day free trial for qualifying institutions.
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More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Classroom
Moodle
TrustRadius Insights
Google Classroom
Moodle
Highlights
Research Team Insight
Published
Google Classroom and Moodle are online class assignment and learning management tools primarily used in academic environments, in k-12 primarily, but also higher education. They facilitate assessments, content management, and online discussions. Google Classroom is available for users of Google Workspace for Education, or it can be used for free with a Google account for some use cases. It is commonly deployed across institutions of all sizes where Google’s office apps are also used. Moodle is open source and free under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and like Google Classroom is widely adopted by institutions of all sizes.
Features
Google Classroom and Moodle offer very similar capabilities, but are chosen for different reasons.
Google Classroom is natively integrated in Google Workspace, and so it works seamlessly with apps like Gmail and Google Meet. It also includes chat features in Classroom itself, facilitating communication between students and teachers when video is not needed. It’s integration with Google Drive makes document management, including assignment creation and management, an easy and familiar task, given the ubiquity of Google app adoption for personal use. Google Classroom may seem a no brainer for easy adoption for schools that have already onboarded Google Workspace for Education in some capacity, and if an institution is already using Google then there exists little reason to avoid Google Classroom.
Moodle’s advantages flow from its open-source design, community, and the expanse of plugins and extenders available for it, at no cost. Since Moodle is open-source and freely downloadable, LMS costs are primarily around IT implementation and management (you may need a resident Moodle development expert), rather than an annual subscription for software updates. Moodle boasts excellent content creation and course administration features, chat, and integration with neighboring systems (e.g. student management systems).
Limitations
There are also some limitations to Google Classroom and Moodle in terms of capabilities and packaging worth considering.
Google Classroom is not known to fit business use cases as Moodle might. While Classroom integrates with a range of applications for in-classroom use, it is more limited in the administrative integrations it offers, such as with student information systems. Users report minor quibbles around its usability.
On the other hand, Moodle’s open source structure leaves it to academic institutions to provide their own in-house implementation, support, and security. This limits self-service customization that teachers can do without requiring developer assistance or approval from IT to enable this or that third-party plugin. Moodle’s mobile capabilities are also more limited and less user-friendly than market standards.
Pricing
While Google Classroom is free to use alone, and Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals is available to qualifying institutions and some homeschoolers, many users will need the Google Workspace for Education Plus plan (formerly G Suite Enterprise for Education).
Moodle is open-source and free to download. The cost of implementation and long-term maintenance or support will vary by each academic institution or business, as it may require in-house support to build and govern the right implementation.
Features
Google Classroom
Moodle
Learning Management
Comparison of Learning Management features of Product A and Product B
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
