CMS Product Familiarity

The survey listed the names of 48 different course management system products (not including our own systems, CAPA, LectureOnline, and LON-CAPA), and asked the respondents to rank these:

0. Unknown
1. Recognize name
2. Somewhat familiar
3. Very familiar

Results

• Out of the 48 systems listed, 19 systems were unknown to all respondents, including systems listed at major review sites such as edutools.info.
• Out of the remaining 29 systems known to respondents, the average familiarity rating is 0.3.
• Blackboard is the most familiar system with a rating of 1.8, closely followed by WebCT with a rating of 1.6. All other systems have a familiarity rating lower than 0.4.
• One of the most successful open-source course management systems, Moodle, achieves a familiarity rating of 0.2.
• Other results of interest are the commercial Angel system, 0.3, and the open-source CHEF system, 0.1.

Results for Decision Makers

When limiting the analysis to respondents who indicated that they can make CMS purchase decisions on an institutional level, the results change as follows:

• The average familiarity rating for the 29 "known" systems increases slightly to 0.4.
• BlackBoard has a familiarity index of 2.2, followed by WebCT with 1.8. All other systems have a familiarity rating lower than 1.
• Moodle was unknown to responding decision makers, while Angel and CHEF achieve the same ratings.