Moodle vs Canvas

Turns out, the platform doesn't matter much.

The pandemic forced schools into distance learning.

Some schools, the ones who could afford it, went online. That meant more people adopting Moodle and similar tech. Suddenly, learning management systems weren’t just for early adopters anymore.

A couple of weeks ago, my supervisor wanted to talk about our learning management system.

I work as a Moodle Technical Support officer at a university. My supervisor is the Moodle Administrator. So, obviously, we use Moodle.

During our meeting, he mentioned that someone suggested we look at Canvas instead.

I’ve been using Moodle since my first university. Back then, the computer science department was experimenting with it. We were guinea pigs, basically. Moodle was still kind of an infant.

It worked fine. Everything was straightforward. No major problems.

That university still runs on Moodle today. All the colleges use it now, even those in the satellite campuses.

But at my current job, things might go differently.

We recently switched hosting providers. The old one wanted more money to handle our server demands. The university didn’t want to pay it. Fair enough.

While we were looking for a new host, someone brought up Canvas.

I’m guessing it came up because Canvas has been growing. It’s actually overtaken Moodle’s market share in the US. Canvas started in 2008 with a tech startup called Instructure. By 2011, it officially launched as an LMS and disrupted the whole market.

My only experience with Canvas is as a student at another university.

I’ve never seen the backend. Never dealt with the administrator side of things.

From a student’s perspective? It’s not that different from Moodle. Things are where you’d expect them to be. As long as your university sets it up properly, everything’s easy to find.

I haven’t had any issues with it.

My supervisor knows I use Canvas at my other school. He asked me about it.

We came to the same conclusion he’d already reached before the meeting: It doesn’t really matter which LMS you use.

What matters is the content and how you deliver it.

If your courses are good and your instructors know what they’re doing, the platform doesn’t make or break anything. Whether it’s Moodle or Canvas or something else entirely.

The system is just a container.

What you put inside it is what counts.