Abstract:

Over the last few years online education has shown a significant boom in Higher Education Institutions. Every day more and more universities are implementing their educational programs through this mode, offering opportunities for those people who cannot carry out their studies face to face. This educational mode offers a series of advantages, to highlight some of them for example, access to materials and content at any time and at any place, all that is needed is a computer and a connection to Internet; the students have an active role in their process of learning, meaning that they are not restricted recipients of information, but that it is part of their formative process; there is an authentic management of knowledge among students (exchange of ideas, opinions, practices, experiences); and feedback.

Derived from the above, the number of students who carry out their studies under this educational mode has increased significantly, generating in Higher Education Institutions the need to acquire the appropriate technological infrastructure and the implementation of the most suitable Learning Management Systems (LMS) to fulfill the academic needs in this mode.

In this sense, this research paper a comparative analysis is carried out between learning management systems with private software (Blackboard y WebCT) and of open source software (Moodle, Dokeos and Claroline). The parameters for comparison employed in this research, are the installation, personalization of the environment, functionality, resources management, groups and profiles, functionalities of Web 2.0 and the management of courses, in order to determine the optimum informatics solution for the implementation of educational programs in the mode of online education at the Computer Science Faculty of Mazatlan at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa.

After the analysis of different solutions, it’s important to find the effects of how the correct selection of a learning management system make an impact in the academic performance of students, comparing, the needs of student use, the ease of the user interface, management, design, etc.

Keywords:

Distance Education, Learning Management Systems, Open Source Software, Exclusive Software, Higher Education.