A colleague at another university, which is contemplating a move to one of these four learning management systems, wanted to know the preferences from among this list of systems:

• Blackboard learn+ (http://www.blackboard.com/)
• Brightspace by D2L (http://www.d2l.com/)
• CANVAS (https://www.canvaslms.com/)
• Moodle (https://moodle.org/)

Here is my reply:

BYU was a huge Blackboard user for several years, before deciding to develop their own LMS

BYU was a huge Blackboard user for several years, before deciding to develop their own LMS (BYU Learning Suite). The decision to build one’s own system was not one that I supported, but given Blackboard’s exorbitant cost, I totally understood the motivation.

That said, in the lab I directed before retirement we implemented Moodle on a couple of projects. We have also worked with Canvas and even received an award a couple of years ago from Instructure for our implementation of LTI (Learning Tools Interoperability) with Ayamel.

Canvas and Moodle each have advantages. There is a large community of Moodle users, but we found certain functionality lacking. The fact that it is free is also a bit misleading, given that a particular shop is on its own for the system’s implementation. Yes, there is a community of users “out there” to help, but the system still requires an in-house support capability when technical issues arise.

You have probably done your searching, but I just came across this piece that compares Blackboard, Canvas, and Moodle. Blackboard comes in third place, and Canvas edges out Moodle, but only very slightly.

To me the key factors lie with a concept a colleague and I wrote about here and labeled “tool and content malleability.” A key aspect of this is LTI a capability that both Canvas and Moodle have to some degree, Thus it all comes down to the level of technical support you can expect at your institution.