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First study

21 January, 2016 - 14:46

As in (Wharekura-tini, et al., 2004) Moodle has limitations, notably it lacks SCORM support, and its roles and permissions system is limited. However, these limitations can be fixed, and are part of the project roadmap in Moodle site.

Table 10.7 reveals that ATutor, while strong in features and usability, has serious architectural limitations, and although some features in ATutor warrant further investigation, it may be that candidates will opt for Moodle.

Table 10.7 Comparison based on focusing on the technical aspects of the VLE systems

Product Category

A Tutor

ILIAS

Moodle

Architecture

Weak

Complex

Good

Implementation

Weak

Complex

Good

Interoperability

Bad

Good

Average

Cost of ownership

Medium

High

Low

Strength of the community

Low

Medium

High

Licensing

GPL

GPL

GPL

Internationalization

Weak

Average

Good

Accessibility

Excellent

Bad

Average

Document transformation

No

Average

No

 

ILIAS, while promising, has a complex architecture with tight coupling that is hard to work with and debug. The code is new, and lacks maturity. The developer community of ILIAS is small outside the core team. Nevertheless, some features in ILIAS deserve to be reviewed before opting for Moodle.

Moodle has a good architecture, implementation, inter-operability, and internationalization, and also has the strength of the community. It is free and its accessibility is average. On the other hand, it has limitations, as mentioned above.