Benchmarking Learning Management Systems Against a Structured MERN-Based Platform: A Comparative Analysis of Student Engagement and Completion Metrics

Prasad M. Mahind , Umesh A. Patil , Varsha A. Olekar , Aditya L. Patil , Pravin K. Rathod

MERN stack, learning management system, personalized learning paths, role-based access control, real-time progress tracking, online education platform, e-learning, React.js, MongoDB, blended learning

Over the past decade, the number of learning management systems available to institutions has grown considerably, but most comparisons between them never get past feature lists or vendor- backed reviews. Very few studies actually look at how real students behave on these platforms under controlled conditions, and that gap is what pushed us to run this study. We took four platforms-- Moodle, Google Classroom, Coursera, and Edu-Platform, a MERN-stack system we built and deployed ourselves--and put them side by side across six dimensions that we think matter most when an institution genuinely needs to control how students move through a course: whether learning paths can be locked in sequence, how clearly students can see their own progress, what approval mechanisms exist for content, how long setup actually takes for a busy instructor, how engaged students end up becoming, and how much technical effort the whole thing demands to configure. The numbers we use come from a four-week live deployment at D.Y. Patil Technical Campus, Talsande, where 48 undergraduate students across two Computer Science and Engineering courses used the platform for real coursework--not a controlled lab exercise, but actual teaching happening in real time. Engagement metrics include course completion rate, average days to completion, module access frequency, and a System Usability Scale (SUS) score. The study finds that structured sequential delivery with real-time progress feedback produces a completion rate of 87.3%, compared to 50.5% in a group using unstructured cloud-folder delivery--a statistically meaningful gap that aligns with prior MOOC attrition research. Qualitative dimensions of the comparison reveal that existing platforms trade governance and engagement depth for scale and ease of onboarding, a trade-off that may be inappropriate for institution-controlled curricula.

Volume 14 Issue 4, April-2026

Pages : e696-e704