Moodle vs Seismic Learning

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Our analysts compared Moodle vs Seismic Learning based on data from our 400+ point analysis of LMS Software, user reviews and our own crowdsourced data from our free software selection platform.

Product Basics

Moodle is a customizable, open-source training solution used by corporate organizations, K-12 schools and higher educational institutions. From interactive lessons for K-12 to complex courses at large campuses, it lets you create tailored learning experiences to suit your students’ unique needs.

You can track student progress using analytics and reports, and integrate with third-party video conferencing tools like BigBlueButton. Out-of-the-box capabilities include course creation, calendars, dashboards, text editing, SCORM compatibility, reporting, learning paths and group management.

Moodle is an excellent choice for small businesses with technical expertise or access to IT resources. Its open-source nature allows for significant customization, making it a cost-effective solution for those who can manage their hosting and support.

User reviews praise its flexibility, user-friendly interface, interactive features and cost-friendliness. However, its sharp learning curve and lack of certain capabilities, like video conferencing, could be improved.

Moodle’s starter plan with up to 50 users costs $130 per year, while more advanced plans range from $400 to $1,730 per year.t

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Seismic Learning (formerly called Lessonly) is a software platform designed to help businesses manage their learning and development programs. It caters to companies seeking to enhance employee training and development, offering features like course creation, content management, and reporting. Seismic Learning is particularly well-suited for medium and large businesses aiming to improve employee training, engagement, and retention while reducing training costs.

The platform boasts popular features such as course creation, content management, reporting, analytics, and social learning. Users appreciate its ease of use and customer support. Seismic Learning's pricing structure is not publicly available, so interested businesses should contact Seismic directly for pricing details.

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Product Insights

  • Simplifies Data Exchange: Moodle uses open industry standards to support integration and content usage from third-party sources. It allows authentication via protocols like LDAP, direct database lookup, Shibboleth, IMAP and FirstClass. It also supports content import using SCORM, AICC and IMS Content Packaging standards.
  • Offers Key LMS Features: For those seeking an all-in-one LMS solution, Moodle is an excellent choice. Our analysis indicates that it delivers 82% of essential LMS functionalities straight out of the box, with only 5% of key features missing. Supported features include collaboration, mobile capabilities, reporting and dashboard, user management and gamification, and compliance.
  • Award-Winner: In the 2024 SelectHub Awards, our research analysts awarded Moodle best-in-class honors for assessments, collaboration, compliance, learning delivery, mobile capabilities, user management, gamification, and integrations and extensibility. it also achieved an 'excellent' rating as a user favorite.
  • Easily Accessible: Moodle offers features like text-to-speech tools and accessibility checkers to support learners with disabilities.
  • Provides Greater Customization: You can customize to fit a varied range of learning needs, no matter how specific or unique. Modify the source code or add functionality from a library of over 1,600 plugins.
  • User-Friendly: In our testing, we found that Moodle's interface is modern, intuitive and user-friendly, making navigation effortless. For organizations with learners unfamiliar with LMS platforms and limited training budgets, Moodle offers an accessible solution. The layout is designed to display all key features prominently, and all team members can effortlessly locate and access courses, resources and tools without the need for additional support.
  • Top-Performer: With an analyst rating of 85, Moodle stands out as our top LMS product, comparable to top-tier systems like D2L Brightspace and LearnUpon. It offers a comprehensive set of features, including collaboration, compliance, reporting and dashboard, and user management and gamification, all of which are fully supported.
  • Supports Collaborative Learning: Moodle supports social constructionist pedagogy, a teaching method that focuses on collaboration and active learning. It encourages students to interact with the course material and each other to create a more engaging and participative learning environment. Students can work together on projects, share ideas and engage in discussions and more.
  • Facilitates Community-Building: Attend online conferences broadcast worldwide to gain and share knowledge amongst Moodle users. MoodleMoot Global is an annual event where Moodle enthusiasts from around the world gather to share ideas, collaborate and learn from one another. This event is perfect for both newcomers and experienced Moodle users, and offers a chance to connect with like-minded individuals and contribute to the future of education and lifelong learning.
  • Provides Insights into Key Training Activities: Our testing revealed that Moodle offers extensive reporting features, allowing you to generate custom reports on nearly every aspect of your training. It offers insights into comments, backups, configuration changes, event lists, antivirus failures, logs, live logs, performance overviews, question instances, security checks, system status and theme usage.
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  • Simulate Real-World Scenarios: Seismic Learning helps learners master skills by providing tools that help them practice situations similar to their daily activities. For example, users can pitch on video, give a presentation, practice chat conversations and ticket support, and more. For each lesson, you can provide feedback via a star-rating system and comments. 
  • Uncover Insights: The system lets you view a range of metrics related to training. Visual charts and graphs make information easy to digest. You can track things like satisfaction and engagement rates, course assignment and completion totals, quiz results, popular searches, event attendance, active users, overdue modules, and more. 
  • Add More Capabilities: Seismic Learning integrates with several popular applications to extend the system’s functionality to tools for HR, collaboration, sales, customer service and more. Supported integrations include Slack, Chrome, Zendesk, BambooHR, Zenefits, Namely and Salesforce. 
  • Manage Roles and Groups: Permission settings allow you to define the role each user falls under: learner, manager, creator or admin. This determines their access within the platform. When creating new users, you can also assign them to custom groups. By grouping users according to teams, you can ensure they all receive the right training. 
  • Support In-Person Training: The events feature is a means for conducting live, offline or instructor-led training. You can invite learners by giving them the link directly, sending an email, or publishing the event on the event dashboard. 
  • Create Unlimited Lessons: There’s no limit to the number of courses, learning paths and lessons you can build. Such flexibility lets you customize your training to the extent your organization needs. 
  • Organize Content: A tagging feature lets you organize each lesson and makes searching for specific information easy. It also allows you to group content together based on which team it’s for or the purpose it serves. 
  • Access Seismic Learning on Mobile: The Seismic Learning platform is mobile-friendly so users can access it from phones and other devices besides a desktop or laptop. This gives them freedom to log in to the site anywhere with an internet connection. 
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  • Course Development: Create courses from scratch or upload existing ones to the system. The course builder tool allows you to:
    • Add name, category, start and end date, ID number, summary, number of sections, cover image, participants, tags, groups and other specific details.
    • Insert resources like checklists, files, forums, quizzes, wikis and more into sections. You can also set up virtual classroom sessions via BigBlueButton.
    • Add questions, files, competencies, course completion conditions, add-on apps and badges.
    • Generate reports to analyze competencies, log actions, live logs, training activities and course participation rates.
    • Import, back up, restore, copy and reset courses to reuse them.
    • Enable learners to request new courses and download course content.
  • Assignments: Use the assignment activity module to communicate tasks, collect tests and quizzes, and provide grades.
    • Allow students to submit any type of digital content, such as documents, spreadsheets, images or audio and video clips, or type text directly into the text editor.
    • Use assignments to remind students of offline tasks without having to make digital submissions.
    • Let students submit work individually or as a group. When reviewing, leave feedback comments and upload files like marked-up submissions, commented documents or audio feedback.
    • Grade assignments using numerical scales, custom scales or advanced methods like rubrics. Record final grades in the gradebook.
  • Forums: Use forums to encourage students to socialize, make course announcements, discuss learning content, host face-to-face sessions online and more.
  • Checklists: Allow teachers to create checklists and help students track tasks and to-do lists.
  • HTML5 Packages: Upload and add HTML5 Packages (H5P) to the platform. H5P allows you to integrate interactive content like presentations, videos, quizzes, games and more into course materials. Automatically grade questions attempted in H5P activities and record them in the gradebook.
  • Calendar: Log important events like assignment deadlines, upcoming meetings, and course start and end dates and more on the company calendar.
  • BigBlueButton Integration: Integrate with BigBlueButton and conduct live online classes, virtual office hours or group collaborations. Use features like audio, video, chat, slides, screen sharing, a multi-user whiteboard, breakout rooms, polling and emojis in real time. Record sessions for playback later.
  • Feedback: Design surveys with multiple-choice, yes/no or text-input questions to gather participant input. Keep responses anonymous if needed, and decide whether to share results with participants or restrict them to teachers only.
  • Notifications: Track updates and alert users when a new event occurs. Enable triggers for new course additions, upcoming deadlines, published grades, schedule changes and more.
  • Course Tracking: Monitor course progress and the number of activities completed by each learner. View their completed assignments, course start and end times, achievements and other details for each course.
  • Quizzes: Create assessments with various question types, such as multiple-choice, matching, short-answer and numerical questions, and include them in course exams, topic tests, practice sessions and more.
    • Configure options for multiple attempts, randomize question order from the question bank and set time limits.
    • Automatically grade each attempt, excluding essay questions and record results in the gradebook.
    • Customize when to display hints and feedback and correct answers to students.
  • Multi-Device Support: Access the site from any device via the free mobile app for Windows, iOS and Android. It's compatible with mobile layouts and can be used in any browser for a consistent experience.
  • Plugin Management: Manage all plugins from one interface for quick access. Provides plugins for different types of educational needs (e.g., universities). Connect with MS Office 365 and Google Apps.
  • Personalized Dashboards: Organize and access training information like checklists, badges, latest announcements, timelines and course overviews on a customizable dashboard.
  • User Management: Add new users, set user preferences, define user profile fields, upload user pictures and more.
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  • Lesson Builder: A visual drag-and-drop interface enables you to build lessons. You can add elements like images, videos, text, test questions and more. The system also supports SCORM files, including xAPI, AICC and cmi5. 
  • Learning Paths: This feature lets you build different learning paths to fit the needs of your company and ensures every learner receives relevant lessons. For example, you could create a learning path for sales reps with courses that pertain to their role. 
  • Content Hub: Seismic Learning University contains templates and best practices you can use. It also acts as a repository for pre-built courses, which your organization has full access to. Let Seismic Learning know which content you’d like to use and the support team will copy it to your platform. 
  • Single Sign-On (SSO): This capability allows users to log in to Seismic Learning with their credentials from another application. The platform integrates with Google Suite, SAML 2.0 and Azure Active Directory to provide this option. 
  • Admin Tools: Seismic Learning has several admin tools that make it easier to perform common tasks. Bulk uploads let you add a large number of employees at once, and PDF exporting lets you download files for offline use. The program also has webhooks for automatically sending information like reports to another database. 
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Product Ranking

#4

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#2

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Analyst Rating Summary

85
64
21
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93
71
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50
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Collaboration
Compliance
Mobile Capabilities
Platform Capabilities
Reporting and Dashboard
Reporting and Dashboard
Content and Course Management

Analyst Ratings for Functional Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

Moodle
Seismic Learning
+ Add Product + Add Product
AI-based Capabilities Assessments Collaboration Compliance Content And Course Management ECommerce Learning Delivery Mobile Capabilities Platform Capabilities Reporting And Dashboard User Management And Gamification 21 93 100 100 92 50 80 100 100 100 100 0 71 50 50 88 50 76 39 71 94 81 0 25 50 75 100
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Analyst Ratings for Technical Requirements Customize This Data Customize This Data

93%
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User Sentiment Summary

Great User Sentiment 4011 reviews
Excellent User Sentiment 923 reviews
86%
of users recommend this product

Moodle has a 'great' User Satisfaction Rating of 86% when considering 4011 user reviews from 5 recognized software review sites.

94%
of users recommend this product

Seismic Learning has a 'excellent' User Satisfaction Rating of 94% when considering 923 user reviews from 4 recognized software review sites.

4.8 (12)
5.0 (14)
4.1 (398)
4.7 (576)
4.3 (3249)
5.0 (145)
4.5 (112)
n/a
4.1 (240)
4.4 (188)

Awards

SelectHub research analysts have evaluated Moodle and concluded it deserves the award for the Best Overall LMS Software available today and earns best-in-class honors for Assessments, Compliance, Mobile Capabilities, Platform Capabilities and Integrations and Extensibility.

Analysts' Pick Award
Assessments Award
Compliance Award
Mobile Capabilities Award
Platform Capabilities Award
Integrations and Extensibility Award

Seismic Learning stands above the rest by achieving an ‘Excellent’ rating as a User Favorite.

User Favorite Award

Synopsis of User Ratings and Reviews

Customizability: According to 80% of users who reviewed this, Moodle lets users add custom HTML and CSS, integrate with third-party applications, and select modules related to rubrics and outcomes.
Ease of Use: 90% of users praise its intuitive interface which is easy to navigate, especially for students. Its simple and intuitive features make it suitable for beginners.
Advanced Feature Set: 75% of reviewers highlighted Moodle’s wide range of features, such as course creation, third-party integrations, notifications and feedback, and grading rubrics.
Mobile Compatibility: According to 60% of users who discussed this aspect, Moodle's mobile app is very user-friendly and offers all necessary tools to support on-the-go learning. It lets users access course content, connect with team members, download learning materials and more.
Affordability: 80% of reviewers who discussed costs appreciated that Moodle is free to download and use and offers flexible pricing models for various needs.
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Intuitive UI: Over 95% of all reviewers who mentioned the ease of use found it simple to learn and adopt the system.
Friendly Customer Service: Reviewers who mentioned the customer service loved the staff and felt well-supported more than 90% of the time.
Pricing: A total of 90% of users who mentioned price were happy with it and felt they got a good value for their money.
Excellent for Company Training: The reviews felt this solution was excellent for training and onboarding over 80% of the time.
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Steep Learning Curve: Regarding this, 45% of users said Moodle has a steep learning curve for administrators. They feel its interface can be confusing to explore since it has a lot of features, and users need to know what they’re looking for to use the platform effectively.
Lack of Video Conferencing: 45% of users who discussed this con point out Moodle's lack of built-in video conferencing capabilities, which are increasingly important for online learning.
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Poor Customization Options: Just under 60% of all reviewers who mentioned customization said there weren’t enough options – and they couldn’t even access the CSS.
Formatting Issues: Around 60% of reviewers couldn’t get the font or color options they wanted and didn’t feel the design was adaptable enough.
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Moodle is an open-source LMS that's really popular among educational institutions like K12 schools and colleges. Its workplace version is designed to address various corporate training needs such as onboarding, compliance training and skill development.Moodle is packed with features – you can create courses, collaborate with learners, grade assignments and more. Plus, it works quickly on mobile devices so that learning can happen anywhere. We love how flexible it is, and it can be customized to your heart's content with HTML, CSS and third-party integrations.Its user-friendly interface is another highlight, and it is known for its intuitive navigation and ease of use, particularly for students. This makes Moodle a suitable choice even for those new to LMS platforms. A strong focus on social constructionist pedagogy emphasizes collaboration and active learning. And with Moodle’s large and active global community, you can get active support and contribute to its ongoing development.While its interface is great for instructors and students, we found that it may be complex for admins, and an extensive feature set can require time and effort to master. The lack of built-in video conferencing capabilities is another drawback, though the solution does integrate with virtual classroom tools like BigBlueButton.Being open-source, Moodle eliminates licensing fees, making it an attractive option for budget-conscious institutions. The availability of free plugins and themes further adds to its cost-effectiveness.Moodle is a fantastic choice if you're looking for a powerful and adaptable LMS, especially for education. Its multi-tenancy architecture supports various business structures and types, making it adaptable to different corporate environments. Its open-source nature, emphasis on collaborative learning, and scalability make it a viable option in the LMS market.

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Seismic Learning is an LMS that works particularly well for corporate training. Reviewers liked how easy it was to use and adopt. Many used it to spread information to their employees and partners. They felt it was especially great at spreading new product information and helped train sales staff and customer service teams. Course and lesson creation were said to be extremely easy with this solution and users like the testing facilities in over half of the comments that mentioned it. On the other side, users weren’t happy with the customization and formatting options. They said that they weren’t able to find the options in text, colors and other design elements they wanted. It was also hard to adapt to all devices and change the more general look and feel of the platform. This solution is suited for small and medium businesses looking to train employees, especially in the sales and customer service departments.

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