Comparing LMS and CMS platforms supporting social e-learning in higher education

Content and learning management systems (CMSs/LMSs) exist in abundance, providing a software platform for supporting web-based applications in an easy-to-use way. In educational contexts, the exploitation of these platforms offers integrated solutions on the distribution of course material, student management and interaction between stakeholders. This paper evaluates the use of representative LMS/CMS platforms for supporting social e-learning systems in higher education, in terms of technical and educational perspective. To this direction, respective prototypes were developed using the LMS platforms: Schoology, Moodle and Atutor, and the CMS ones: Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress, and a comparative analysis was conducted. One major conclusion is that these platforms facilitate the development of e-learning environments with social features through a user-friendly dashboard and a variety of education-oriented services.