Teams Vs Moodle Vs Google Classroom?

[Marius Pretorius]

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.

[#2 · Accepted solution]

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.

[#3]

@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.

[#4]

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.  

[#5]

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. 

[#6]

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-quizze...

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 :) 

[#7]

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

[#8]

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 :)

[#9]

Is there any plan to be able to use Turnitin or plagiarism checking in Assignments?

[#10]

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

[#11]

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@Irene Bailey wrote:

Is there any plan to be able to use Turnitin or plagiarism checking in Assignments?

---

According to this blog post of 22 Jan 2019 with regards to Bett, it is coming. I quote:

"Turnitin integration.  Turnitin allows teachers to check student submissions for multiple forms of plagiarism and helps teach the value of academic integrity, proper attribution, and authentic writing. With our new integration, coming soon, Turnitin subscribers will have access directly within Teams Assignments!"

This is huge!

[#12]

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.

[#13]

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.  

[#14]

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.

@Marius Pretorius 

[#15]

Hello, @Javie1975, thank you for contributing to the conversation.

I've been using Teams for Education since it was released. I have never used Google Classroom. Years back I dabbled with Moodle. Our school in rural South Africa teaches in a face-to-face situation, so there was never a compelling reason to implement Teams fully in the school. As you know, change is difficult and people prefer to use their trusted old methods.

Fast forward to COVID-19 lockdown. All of a sudden the school needed a remote learning platform. Since all the learners and teachers in the school were already registered with Microsoft Office 365 licenses the logical move was to get everyone onto Teams. What followed was a very rapid onboarding training process. By and large it was a success with a couple of speedbumps. I don't know whether such a rapid onboarding process would have been possible with Moodle. I cannot speak for G-Classroom, but since we already use Microsoft Office 365, that wasn't even an option. 

[#16]

Hello @Marius Pretorius 

I used both Google Classroom and MS Class Notebook last year with students. They liked GC better. Class Notebook kept glitching up. Students had constantly reload their pages, etc. Now fast forward to MS Teams. I find the same problems with Teams. Additionally, one big problem I have with Teams is that it is very time consuming to do anything in the classes. Except for the Assignments feature, every other adjustment to classes has to be made separately in each Team (class).  Also, all the Teams were autopopulated by our sys admin, and there is no way to combine Teams to match my course schedule, unless I do it myself, and then what happens when sys admin runs an update to my rosters as students enter the district throughout the year. Granted, in GC I have to set up the classes, but I can create sections and materials for all classes at once, rather than one at a time. I think the learning curve for younger kids is too steep with Teams. I teach 6th graders, and they were lost in Class Notebook, I can't see them figuring out Teams any faster. My vote for younger students goes to Google Classroom. 

[#17]

I wouldn’t suggest having students use Classroom Notebook directly, at least not witho frequent reinforcement. The great thing about Teams is you simply attach the work to an assignment (e.g. a notebook page) and the student clicks it and does it on the page that loads, whatever program it uses, right in the assignment area. No extra windows or tabs like in GC. They don’t have to know where the notebook page is located in the folder structure. They’re just linked there. Teams definitely wins on that front. Being able to type in scanned sheets or to print and “scan” in Their completed physical work for a teacher to then digitally mark up is something impossible without paid third party tools like Kami.