The Educational Potentialities of the Virtual Learning Environments Moodle and Canvas: A Comparative Study

The advancement of digital information and communication technologies allowed the development of Virtual Learning Environments, which are the spaces where classes offered in distance education take place. Currently there are several virtual learning environments, but the most noteworthy are Moodle and Canvas, which are software that have open programming codes and are freely accessible and provide features such as usability, reliability and mobility. That is why these virtual environments have been adopted by many educational institutions in Brazil. Thus, the present study aimed to compare the technological parameters of the Virtual Learning Environments Moodle and Canvas, in order to facilitate the choice of a virtual environment to be used for educational purposes. It was chosen the qualitative, exploratory and descriptive research which was carried out in 2017. At the end of the research it was possible to realize that both Moodle and Canvas present similar evaluations. However, Canvas was more complete, collaborative and intuitive interface in the results analyzed, in relation to Moodle. In addition, Canvas uses a programming language more modern than Moodle, presenting an updated technology: cloud computing, which represents an advantage over Moodle.