Differences of E-Learning Systems With the Focus on Moodle and Blackboard Systems

Introduction

New technology and new concepts of learning are transforming the existing learning system into the new virtual system that functions in a virtual learning environment. The integration of education and technology is present and almost every educational institution has adopted the e-learning concept into its educational services (Al-Fraihat, Joy, & Sinclair, 2019). New generations of students grow up with new technology, also referred to as digital natives (Suša, 2014), especially the Internet and social media, and digitization and virtualization of learning are not foreign to those new generations. Lecturers must adapt to new concepts and consider all the benefits that new ways of learning have to offer (Rodrigues et al, 2019). Using the Internet, mobile phones and other gadgets and devices for learning is the future and the Internet is a tool that can be used to replace traditional learning (Aloia & Vaporciyan, 2019). e-learning is a very popular subject among different scholars and there are many case studies made in this field. However, with many scientific papers already written, it is important to clarify the basic components of an e-learning system to differentiate parts of the virtual learning environment. Since the field of e-learning is relatively new and new concepts are emerging every day, some specific problems, that are primarily related to not understanding the systems used for e-learning, are also emerging.

To understand the influence of e-learning, it is necessary to understand fully all the components of e-learning systems, especially learning management systems that are key to today’s education. This paper presents an overview of the e-learning system components but focuses on one – Learning Management Systems. The biggest advantage of using Learning Management Systems in education is to develop autonomy, which can improve critical thinking among the students and improve the quality of the educational process. To consider all the advantages, educational institutions and their members must face one of the largest challenges of e-learning, which is learning management systems (Judge and Murray, 2017) or facing the transition from formal learning to new platforms. Learning Management Systems became a tool for managing educational material and there are many types such as Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, and others (Elfeky 2019). Moodle and Blackboard are mostly used LMS’s in practice and are also used as a focus of many types of research (Soykan and Şimşek, 2017). Although the comparison of Moodle and Blackboard systems are made in numerous scientific papers, it is important to highlight different perspectives that are made through those researches. Most of the papers regarding this subject offer a technological view on Learning Management Systems or present results of surveys based on LMS user’s satisfaction. This paper offers a different view on Moodle and Blackboard systems that is based on quality.

With the comparison of the two most used Learning Management Systems, which is based on the conducted research, this paper offers a holistic view on the topic of Learning Management Systems in the context of e-learning. To carry out any further research into the topic of e-learning, it is important to distinguish all terms related to this concept. Through this paper, a foundation for understanding the virtual learning environment and its components as well as the comparison between Moodle and Blackboard is given. The focus of this research is the difference in the quality of Moodle and Blackboard systems, as the two most used systems. Through secondary research, it is necessary to gather all the information available on both systems, as well as all the information needed to conduct a comparison based on ISO 25010 model. ISO 25010 is based on ISO 9126 model that focuses on the quality of software and it gives a good overview of the overall quality of a system. The main question of this research is the level of quality of both systems and the correlation between the quality level of a system and the user’s preference. Strugar, Pejic-Bach, Zoroja and Jaković (2019) conducted an online survey with the goal of investigating the relationship between the future intention of using LMS’s and student satisfaction. What it proved to be relevant for satisfaction, as well as for future use is the quality of a system. Precisely that quality can be measured with this method.