I love to listen to people who are passionate. Elizabeth Stanny is obviously one of those people. I don’t know Dr. Stanny at all. However, she has a blog post (Why SSU should continue with Moodle), that is filled with passion.
She also makes some really great points:
- Why switch from an open source learning management system to a proprietary one while switching from proprietary textbooks to open source textbooks?
- Why spend time evaluating an alternative to Moodle when 80% of the faculty are satisfied with it?
- Why redo connections (that may not be able to be redone) that work?
- What are the attributes of a “next-generation” Learning Management System?
She makes some excellent and passionate points. She has done her homework on Canvas. Part of that homework was reviewing some of Canvas’ financial reports. Part of that homework was reviewing a presentation to Investors (you know the people that give Canvas money).
A few excerpts, (please do go read her post):
- Canvas executives have no experience in the educational market, but lots of experience marketing.
- Concern about stricter privacy laws in the EU relative to the US
- For every $1 of revenue, there are 63¢ of Sales and Marketing expense
- Large losses now for future profit
- Only Canvas can host
All great points. I’ve talked about how you are either investing in yourself or investing in someone else. With Canvas, it is pretty clear that you are investing in Canvas and that bill will come due someday.
So, I did say that Dr. Stanny was passionate. She uses Moodle in conjunction with r-exams. She has obviously invested quite a bit in this workflow. So much so, that she states
If SSU continues with Moodle, I will offer free training and support to anyone that wants to learn how to use r-exams. (emphasis mine).
It is also noteworthy that Canvas is not even an option for r-exams output.
All in all, an excellent write up from a passionate fellow Moodler. Go give it a read.
