I have turned in the draft of my dissertation, which was a study of writing courses and online "learning management systems" such as Moodle and Blackboard. In particular, I was examining students with special needs and if the LMS platforms used within our department adequately accommodated the students.

We have "template" courses, designed by senior faculty. The primary platform is WebVista (Blackboard). There is no template for Moodle, but it is approved by the department for use in comp and technical writing courses.

Really Linux has posted a Moodle tutorial that's supposed to have even newbie Linux users up and running Moodle in 45 minutes: This beginner article by Mark Rais provides step-by-step instructions for installing Moodle, a Learning Management System, on to a Fedora Linux server. It provides everything necessary to setup a full powered intranet web-server that can support course listings, event calendars, student/teacher communication and much more. Best of all, a prototype server can be functional within about 45 minutes. For those not in the know, Moodle is a free alternative to Blackboard or WebCT--nuff said!