These two platforms serve a similar purpose, which is online learning. A comparison of Google classroom vs Moodle helps us understand the different approaches towards online learning using different platforms.
Moodle
Moodle is preferred by many teachers and professionals as it is an open-source. Moodle also has many collaborative tools such as Chat, Forum, and Discussions. The Learning Management System facilitates efficient course and user management to allow for easy integration with 3rd party applications. It is based on a modular design that allows educators to design their curriculum using plug-ins to serve various purposes.MoodleCloud comes in two packages: Moodle for Free and Moodle for School.
Moodle does everything that Google Classroom is capable of. But the vice versa is not true. Moodle is huge, vast, and offers a lot more features than Google Classroom. Simply because Google Classroom is not officially an LMS. Teachers can design the entire curriculum right from scratch as Moodle supports plenty of content authoring tools. Moodle also provides parents with access to the grades of their children.
Moodle provides multilingual support, attendance tracking, videoconferencing through BigBlueButton, plenty of gamification modules, enables gamification of tests and quizzes, etc. To make sure learners stay on track and do not drop off, viewing trends of participation, submissions, and other data is incorporated. As a result, it improves the overall e-Learning experience, vastly helping retention rates and student successes.
Tip: Make sure you use more clickable activities, gamification, audio, and video-based learning instead of going for text-based learning. Also, students love learning through games, points, badges, puzzles, crosswords, treasure hunt, and embedded videos.
Google Classroom
Google Classroom is part of the G Suite for Education. It provides a simple and straightforward interface and is accessible via Google account. It encourages collaboration between students and teachers to foster better communication. This tool is a free promotes free collaboration that allows instructors to create online classrooms, invite students, and conduct classroom discussions. For teachers and students to be able to use the platform for e-Learning, their schools must be first registered with Google Classroom. It simplifies the process of creating, distributing and grading assignments. Grading, class organization, and administration can all be managed in its interface.
When working within Google Classroom, it is important to know that you cannot design your own curriculum in the LMS but it is fairly easier to set up classes and assignments. You can even reuse tests or assignments for future classes, set access rights, export grades to Google Sheet, share study resources in the form of videos, links and images with the students. With Google Classroom, you can easily manage classwork and homework assignments into one simple thread. It has everything top-down in one fluid thread for students and teachers to be able to easily find and access.
Google Classroom is a cloud-based platform that integrates Google Apps for education and helps teachers co-ordinate day-to-day training activities.
Major Differences
Pricing– Google Classroom is a free service for teachers and students. However, they can’t sign up unless their school has registered for Google Workspace for Education. The Google Workspace for Education Fundamentals platform is free for qualifying institutions and includes many basic Google features. There are three paid plans:
1. Google Workspace for Education Standard – This plan costs $3 per student, per year and includes all of the features of the Fundamentals platform, plus a security center and other features.
2. Teaching and Learning Upgrade – This plan costs $4 per license, per month and includes all of the features of the Google Workspace for Education Standard, plus advanced Google Meet features (e.g., meetings with up to 250 participants, interactive Q&As, breakout rooms).
3. Google Workspace for Education Plus – This plan costs $50 per student, per year and includes all of the features of the other plans, plus live streams with up to 100,000 in-domain viewers.
Pricing– Moodle’s open-source platform is free to download and install. However, its cloud-based deployment, MoodleCloud, has five paid plans:
- Starter: $120 per year for 50 users and 250 MB of storage
- Mini: $210 per year for 100 users and 500 MB of storage
- Small: $380 per year for 200 users and 1 GB of storage
- Medium: $840 per year for 500 users and 2.5 GB of storage
- Large: $1,490 per year for 1,000 users and 5 GB of storage
Features- Some of Google Classroom’s key features include platform branding with school colors/logos, along with the ability to reuse tests, assignments and other content for future classes; share videos, links or images with other students; schedule postings of assignments. Moodle provides many features, such as a mobile app, content authoring tools and support for multiple languages. Some of the features include the BigBlueButton for video/web conferencing, Quizventure for gamification with quizzes and tests, another gamification module called LevelUp that includes progressive checkpoints. Google also has the ability to export grades to Google Sheets and set permissions for student access/commenting. Some new features introduced recently include the ability to send assignments to individual students, email and mobile notifications of assignments’ due dates, and the ability to customize the types of notifications received. Moodle also has Word Count for writing assignments, Chemistry Editor for chemistry assignments, Group Choice for group projects, and Checklists and Attendance tracking.
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