I’m tasked with putting together an online certification program (well, mostly the courseware will be elearning though some will be instructor-led). This will include online examinations. My company sells specialized tax software and we’ve had many folks ask us about putting together a certification program for customers/partners. Unfortunately Breeze’s reporting is terrible, and I have a lot of other issues with it from a development perspective. We put together a simple database/registration portal for elearning courseware but Moodle appears to be much more robust. I’m particularly interested in the discussion board and interactive elements of it. Wikis would be very helpful for the type of certification pathing (think ‘curriculums’) that we’d like to do. Breeze is great for webcasting/live demonstrations but not suitable for collaborative elearning IMO. Thanks again!

I think a lot depends on what your situation is. Moodle is Open Source, but I don’t necessarily believe that means it’s going to be cheaper in the long haul. I think there are more support and customization costs involved with integrating Moodle than one thinks about.

Is it more robust than Adobe Connect? I guess it depends on what you need. I look at Adobe Connect as playing in the same collaboration space as WebEx — not in the same VLE space as Moodle. Moodle and Blackboard (and Sakai) are more head-to-head in the VLE space, and there are maybe a half-dozen other projects going on (open and proprietary) that play to that space, too (like Desire 2 Learn).

If you decide that you’re ultimately going to build your own mini LMS, you might consider bootstrapping the system with Rustici Software’s SCORM engine (http://www.scorm.com) — it’s a drop-in run-time environment for SCORM 1.2/2004 and I think AICC, too. It’s certified by ADL and it’s specifically made for custom LMS projects.

So… in summary… I think Moodle rocks (I like Martin Dougiamas a lot), but it may be too metal for you (or not metal enough).