Moodle e Totara Learn

The covid-19 emergency has utterly disrupted the education system: with this sudden shift away from the classroom in many parts of the globe, many companies and schools are wondering which platform can deliver the best online learning experience.
There are hundreds of LMS solutions providers out there and it’s a tough task to choose the best one for each particular case.
But fear you not!
We researched the best open source solutions to help you with this choice: today we will analyze Moodle and Totara Learn, two of the most used open source E-learning platforms in the world.

Moodle

Moodle was born in the early 2000s thanks to Martin Dougiamas.
He was a distance learner himself: as a child he used to live more than 100 kilometers from the nearest school. And so, his family registers him into the School of the Air - learning delivered by radio wave. Fast-forward to 1999, and Martin begins to create Moodle as part of his PhD research project. 
Today Moodle is used all over the world, reaching 90 million users worldwide and translated into 120 different languages.
Martin Dougiamas has created Moodle, strongly influenced by the theory of Constructivism in which he has always believed.
Constructivism is a theory of how learning occurs that considers knowledge to be constructed by the learner through prior experience.
Individuals are thought to construct mental models to facilitate an understanding of the world around them. This theory also draws on the idea that people are social by nature and places particular importance on the social aspect of learning. Constructivism asserts that new knowledge cannot be forced onto passive learners but must be internalized through active processes as seen in Piaget’s theory of assimilation and accommodation.
Moodle reflects this current of thought.
By nature of being open source, Moodle has the flexibility to be customized and improved by the user.
Constructivism, especially the arm of social constructivism, understands the importance of social interactions, collaboration and connections in the learning process. Moodle has built a worldwide community of people who share, develop, and feel invested in the product that is Moodle. A privately developed LMS is not able to harness the power of these associations and is often viewed as being developed in isolation from the community.
Moodle has as its main target school institutions (universities, primary and secondary schools), but it is also used by several health/military organizations, freelancers and government departments.

Features

• Interactivity
  Why is Moodle so popular in the world of e-learning platforms?
  Moodle is a very interactive platform and this contributes to its success.
  Thanks to multimedia integration it is possible to easily search for and insert video and audio files and organize quizzes to assess the students progresses.
• Simplicity of use
  A simple interface, drag-and-drop features, and well-documented resources along with ongoing usability improvements make Moodle easy to learn and use.
• Technical aspects
  Moodle is written in PHP and Javascript. Its modular set up and interoperable design allows developers to create plugins and integrate external applications to achieve specific functionalities. Extend what Moodle does by using freely available plugins and add-ons  the possibilities are endless!

Totara Learn

Totara Learn was born in the second half of the 2000s, built as a spinoff of Moodle with the goal to take learning and performance management to the next level for companies, associations, non-profits, government agencies, and healthcare organizations.
Used worldwide by more than 16 million users, Totara Learn is uniquely suited for corporate eLearning initiatives including employee onboarding, continuous learning, performance appraisals, certifications and competency tracking.
Totara is created with workplace learning in mind, enabling curriculum planning, assigning learning to specific group, offering personalized learning pathways, compliance, certification, and much more to help organizations better educate, train, and manage employees.
Totara’s fully responsive design can be rebranded and personalized to suit the specific needs of multiple target audiences. The learners can access the full power of Totara learn on all devices giving them a modern learning experience.

Features

• Interactivity
  Totara Learn is an interactive platform. The simplicity of its interface makes it possible for users to navigate the platform without any particular complications.
  Totara Learn makes possible to assign digital badges in order to motivate learners and give them a portable record of their achievements, introducing an element of gamification to the online courses.
• Monitoring
  Totara Learn allows you to monitor the progress of each user (including certifications). Streamline reporting and meet compliance obligations with personalized dashboards, custom and graphical reporting, and completion tracking. It is possible to assign and share tailored reports to team or divisional managers. Easily export data for extended analysis.
• Customization
  Totara Learn as Moodle, it’ s open source and can be entirely customized. That includes the layout, look and feel, and functionalities.
  It is important to mention that this platform can also be integrated with HRIS, CRM or any other system. For example the HR department can sync their existing user base from the HRIS system into their new Totara platform, this helps the employees to immediately start their training programs once they are on board.
• Flexibility and adaptability
  Sometimes working remotely can make communication between colleagues difficult, but thanks to Totara the employees can quickly and easily access the corp mal learning using chat, wikis and forums.orate content, such as: videos, SCORM or AICC elearning packages, webcasts, PDFs, question banks.
  They can also be engaged in infor.

Conclusion

While all training makes for better organizational outcomes, those who are using eLearning for a specific business goal should consider Totara Learn LMS whereas Moodle originally developed with higher education environments in mind, has quickly expanded to encompass the entire range of educational institutions.

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