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Teams Vs Moodle Vs Google Classroom?
I work at a school and Ms Teams for Education is definitely a viable option for providing blended learning. I would like to hear more from tertiary institutions. Do you think that Ms Teams is a viable replacement for Moodle? What would you consider as pro's and con's? I know of an institution that would like to start a new private university and they were considering their options for an LMS. So far they are favoring Moodle due to its maturity, rich features and customizability.
While we are on the topic, how would Teams compare with Google Classroom, especially after the new features that are being rolled out? Has anybody moved from Google Classroom to Teams for Education? I don't seem to find a creditable comparison anywhere - especially not a recent one.
- I am interested in this comparison as well. I have used Google Classroom in a secondary classroom last year and it is amazing.
I am still waiting to try the (1) rubric grading feature and (2) forms to assignment feature to be available.
I especially don't like that there are no toggles just to "Ask a Question" it is a very important step in formative assessment. :( I'm hoping the forms to assignment will make this happen.
I have used Moodle since ~2007 and Teams since 2020.
At our institution I was and am the Moodle superuser, besides being a teacher.
During the Corona pandemic I was sort of my own Teams administrator, superuser and teacher.
I definately know which of Teams and Moodle I prefer - and that's Teams.
Unfortunately I'm obliged to still use Moodle, because collegues have decided so. For pedagogical reasons, but I'm sure it's for their own reasons. They don't want to learn new ways to work.
I experienced that I became a better version of myself as a teacher with Teams than I could and can be with Moodle.
What also is a fact is that collegues that don't know anything about Teams and in reality only a little about Moodle have had their say.
Moodle is from the "zeroes" and updates only coming at a slow pace, while Teams have evolved rapidly during the pandemic - and since. It's alive!
Personally I find Moodle painful to use. Clunky, slow, awful. For example, go to a course and add 5 hyperlinks to useful websites and then add the same 5 links on another course. Do the same in Teams and find its much faster (copy - paste).
My limited use of Google Classroom before settling on Teams put me off by the conversion of everything to Google Docs/Slides/etc while keeping the original MS versions to add confusion as to which version to use. Then downloading back to Microsoft formats for desktop use or sharing with team members and sometimes inconsistencies occured. Teams for me has seamless integration with Office so I can edit in browser or in the desktop apps. I don't even have to re-upload the documents from the desktop app - it saves back to the cloud automatically.
I'm also not a fan of G-Classroom's stream view, but granted on whole Classroom is easier and more simplistic.
I'd argue Teams may have slightly less intuitive interface, but its not as bad as Moodle. Also I believe Teams has slightly more functionality than Classroom (though hard for me to substantiate as its based on limited Classroom experience) leading to a more complex interface. Essentially Teams has 3 menus: 1) a side menu to select from: Teams, Chat, Assignments, Files. 2) Extending the side menu from before, to choose the Team/Channel you want. 3) The top menu, that is unique to the channel you're in and always includes conversation, files and a OneNote (actually a tab in the team document). I like how assignments work in Teams too. I used to feel the 'conversations' tabs on every channel got annoying and hindered access to the 'files' tab (which should be first) but now I use the conversation so much I think its useful to realise that Teams is not meant to be used like Moodle or Classroom.
Moodle does have better logs to view user use of the system though. Teams icons when you setup a class are limited and should allow for custom logos as other setups do.
I have taught using Edmodo, Google Classroom and MS Teams. My district is a Microsoft District and the direct integration of office and teams really makes MS Teams the hands down goto. One I sorted out how to do everything, and there were training videos for the features I needed, it became really easy to use.
Unfortunately the latest upgrade, the grades tab, has supplanted the most flexible and efficient grading tool I have used to date (that being the view grades link on the assignments tab).
My bottom line is that if you are a Microsoft district, MS Teams can't be beat. If you are a Google district, MS Teams is not strong enough to draw users over to the MS environment and there is no integration.
Edmodo is just not in play once you add district tools and delivery platforms.
- NileshKhaitan
Microsoft
Hi Marius! Great news -- now you don't have to choose between Moodle and Teams. We have recently released the integration of Moodle in Microsoft Teams! More details here: https://aka.ms/TeamsMoodle Very good question... for the teacher. I've used for many years Moodle that have a lot of useful tools and resource for all you need in the classroom and even Google Classroom, last year.
Moodle has many capabilities to search/modify/grouping the students... transfer the class to the end of the year, reuse all the materials ...
The most important tool and section is about QUIZ, with a lot of different kind of question (cloze, association, drop the answer, ...) and a very useful tools to control and verify the results of the class, and even the comparison with other group/class . Teams and GC with his Forms are, at the moment, quite poor in comparison.
I'm using Teams (only 2 month!) and I found many differences and ...limitation.
The CHAT in Team sometime is a big problem, because the students abuse of it, talking and chatting each other, exploring all the emoji and meme...
The focus on Microsoft Office365 and his different tools is important, but when you can't find the way to share/add a file from your Onedrive is frustrating :-( A teacher who need to show the same file to differents classes (modified day by day....) loose a lot of time.
GC have a more easier approch, showing the topic and the materials and the activity for the students; Teams is less clear (confusing?) even if OneNote is a very good tools to organize the texts, the intervention and the notes.
Give me a final note (without any critical intent, just to help): the interface of Team, does not seem mature enough; for over a year the Italian version has duplicated and confused menu names, the tablet version his different from the PC/Web (teachers and students are confused for this), the Win10 App of Team doesnt' permit to duplicate a window (just to permit more flexybilities viewing the resources...)
But hope MS will improve this tool :-)
and... sorry for my bad english ... Giorgio
Thank you, Giorgio Banaudi, that is exactly the kind of feedback that I was looking for. You will notice that Microsoft Teams is a young product and is improving all the time.
You mention that you have used Moodle for many years and that it has many more features. While I don't dispute the fact, don't you think that for new educators it can be quite overwhelming because it has so many features? I wonder whether the simpler approach of Ms Teams for Education makes it easier for new teachers to adopt? Universities usually have dedicated staff that can support implementing the LMS (such as Moodle) but at schools that is not always the case. For me it seems that Microsoft Teams is more agile, easier to implement, easier to maintain and easier to change. I am aware of all the powerful quizzes you can set with various Moodle plugins. Did you try out the latest update where a Microsoft Forms quiz can be set as an assignment?
You mention that the Chat aspect of Microsoft Teams is a problem due to it being abused by the learners. That was one of the first requests of teachers - how to disable it. It is possible to switch off global chatting - which prevents one on one chatting by students, plus you can mute the students in a particular team. So, you can control that aspect. One can then use the Conversation area in a Team to make announcements to the class or open up a discussion period where you control it. If it is used in that way it becomes quite useful.
There are different ways in which you can show the same information to different classes, either by using the files section in Microsoft Teams, or by inserting the information into the associated OneNote section. OneNote works together with the Class Notebook which allows you to distribute information in various ways to different groups. I suggest you explore that approach.
I agree that it is very limiting that you can open Microsoft Teams in only one window. As you say, hopefully Microsoft will still improve a tool that is already very useful.
Do you know which language is the language most spoken in the world? Poor English ;-) No problem :-)
Microsoft adds more functions to Teams day by day. I think that MS TEAMS could replace Moodle, especially in small schools where you cannot have a team of people dedicated to support an LMS.
In Moodle I can program the resources or activities to be available only on certain dates. That is not yet possible in Teams, but is possible set assignments, grades, rubric, sharing materials, set power BI for users or resources analyze.
Yes Marius, I think the learning needs in the organizations have been simplified, so Teams may be enough. I have been Moodle user for 10 years and Teams user by 2 weeks.
I know that Teams is new in Microsoft 365. I haven't had a chance to use it with my students yet as they have recently got their own email and passwords but I can definitely say that Microsoft classroom is better than Google. In terms of video and voice recording, being able to draw in their notebooks, its is amazing the things you can do with your students. Please give feedback.
I've used all 3 and at a very basic level, they pretty much all do the same thing, albeit in different ways.
Teams VS Google Classroom
With reference to distributing resources, setting assignments and managing groups, I feel that there is very little between them. I don't really like the chat feature in Teams and I did prefer the ease of organising resources and learning materials in GC initially. Where Teams wins is the integration of the Class OneNote.
Both VS Moodle
Moodle is a very different beast to both GC and Teams. You can use it at a basic level and have a lot of functionality that its similar to GC and Teams or you can delve deeply into Moodle and have a full-blown VLE/Content management system. The sheer number of plugins for Moodle is astounding. I loved being able to craft entire lessons that were standalone "experiences" for students rather than using Teams or GC to create resources that can be used to deliver content; Moodle let me plan and deliver the resources as a lesson, if I wanted it to. It all depends on what you want to do with Moodle.
As I said at the start, at a basic level, they can all create groups, apply resources to groups and set assignments. If that's what you want to start with, then any will do the job.
- I am interested in this comparison as well. I have used Google Classroom in a secondary classroom last year and it is amazing.
I am still waiting to try the (1) rubric grading feature and (2) forms to assignment feature to be available.
I especially don't like that there are no toggles just to "Ask a Question" it is a very important step in formative assessment. :( I'm hoping the forms to assignment will make this happen.- Justin Chando
Hi Adrianne, we released quizzing in Microsoft Teams with Microsoft Forms last week! https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/Education-Blog/Assessments-just-got-faster-introducing-quizzes-in-Microsoft/ba-p/274158
We also already released Rubric Grading a couple months ago. Would love to learn what you think now with these two important pieces now available in Teams :)
Is there any plan to be able to use Turnitin or plagiarism checking in Assignments?
Adrianne Penullar, maybe you will then best be able to compare, since you have used Google Classroom. Which features do you find the most useful in Google Classroom?
Since there is a conversation space in Ms Teams for Education, for every channel, can you not use that for formative assessment? You can ask a question and learners can respond to that thread.
