[Using Sakai] LMS evaluations & comparisions?

[Robin K. Hill]

Gregory Guthrie poses a difficulty question -- Frequently-Wondered, if 
not Frequently-Answered -- and I'd like to take it on, having been in an 
LMS-selection phase that has played out over, well, several years now. 
I (and others) have spent a lot of time looking for written advice along 
the lines you mention.  With these results:

There is no authoritative, objective, and comprehensive comparison of 
LMS choices.  The levels of detail that need to be probed, in order to 
form a complete opinion, are virtually bottomless.  The range of 
products is in flux.  As you suspect, selection seems often to be based 
on anecdote, sales calls, or comfort.

Institutions that have arrived at a decision through one of these paths 
may be loath to reveal so.  Or they may demur out of respect for unknown 
factors, at other places, that did not figure in their own criteria. 
Once a choice has been made, stakeholders at the institution need to 
come together to learn and manage the product, and only the most 
confident committees stand to gain from exposing their deliberations to 
second-guessing.

It's a messy business.  I doubt if you'll uncover a Moodle-to-Sakai 
silver bullet, a document that "proves" one choice better than another. 
In fact, I'm afraid broadcasting such records would tend to discourage 
deep investigation.

We ourselves are developing an RFP, for public bids, which I think will 
be a great help.  The main selection work can focus on developing 
meaningful requirements.  Which is hard enough!


On 10/14/12 11:04 PM, Gregory Guthrie wrote:
> Sorry if this is an FAQ - but we are going through an evaluation of
> LMS choices, and while I am advocating Sakai for various reasons, we
> have a local home-grown contingent of Moodle users, who naturally
> have a familiarity bias even though they have never tried any other
> LMS system.
>
> There are lots of various comparisons of LMS's around, most that I
> found were fairly old and in this always updating area not so
> relevant I think.
>
> Are there any current important points of comparison between Sakai &
> Moodle, or is it just a Mac/Windows familiarity issue.  ;-) Any
> advice on how to help oversee an informed choice, or if it really
> makes much difference? I have a preference for Sakai for multiple
> reasons, some subjective (familiarity, good UI), and others technical
> (Java based), but don't have any real experience with Moodle, and
> thus any strong basis for recommending that Moodle users switch (we
> want one LMS system as standard).
>
> Seeing that Blackboard hired Charles Severance as part of their
> Education Open Source Services is interesting, in his book he seems
> to downplay any competition between Sakai & Moodle, and talk about
> integration of both to standards. I do see that BBoard open source
> support really currently means (their) MoodleRooms, and don't see any
> SakaiRooms there, although it hints that with Severance it is
> considering that direction. :-) [his role ... "to guide the company's
> efforts to support clients using Sakai."]  Someone else here recently
> also asked about migration issues for going from Moodle to Sakai; the
> only things I found online about that were limited and from 2009, is
> there some other place to look for better and more recent information
> and references? -------------------------------------------
>
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-- 
    Robin K. Hill, Ph.D.
    Coordinator of Instructional Computing
    Ellbogen Center for Teaching and Learning
    University of Wyoming
    http://www.uwyo.edu/ctl/ics/
    307-766-5499