Teaching: moodle- any good?

So Helen turned me onto to this course content management tool called Moodle:

http://moodle.org/ I’m not sure what I think of it. It makes two things easier:

• handling of electronic submissions
• students get to see their grades.

But it mucks up a lot of other things:

• The forum interface sucks. NOT good for power-email users.

What it does do is force students into doing work from week1. You can set and monitor homework assignments. Everyone gets going from the get-go.

But I need to talk to the students, get their feedback on the merits of the above. I’m still lukewarm.