Lancaster University Moodle has been updated to version 4.5 today! We were previously on version 4.3. So what’s changed and how will this impact users?
Some of the main improvements include:
- Updates to activity icons
- A new ‘subsections’ feature
- Updates to the grading table
- Improvements to accessibility
- A screen recording function in the editor
- A new ‘ordering’ question type in the quiz activity
For the general user, the three biggest changes are probably the updates to activity icons, the new ‘subsections’ feature and the updates to the grading table. I’ll go through each one below:
Activity Icons
The activity icons are now a greater variety of colours and a small number have a different design. Apart from being more visually appealing, this will help users distinguish between activity types more quickly.
Subsections
The new ‘subsections’ feature is probably the most significant change and something many of us have wanted in Moodle for a while. You might have previously created your own subheadings using the text and media area activity. However, these subheading often took up quite a lot of room on the page and didn’t reduce the amount of scrolling a user had to do. This new feature changes all that!
The first thing to note, is that the subsections feature looks slightly different depending on which layout you are using in Moodle.
Moodle ‘all sections on one page’ layout example:
Moodle ‘one section per page’ layout example:
This new feature is useful for Moodle spaces associated with lengthy modules (e.g 10 weeks or more) with lots of resources and activities for students to engage with each week.
In addition to the reduction in scrolling on the page, the new subsections now appear in the left-hand navigation bar which makes it easier for a user to jump to that subsection. You can also restrict access to subsections as well as (e.g. by date or group).
Grading Table
Don’t panic! No functionality has been removed from the assignment grading table.
There have been 4 changes of note:
1.The “view all submissions” button (red button) has now been removed. To view all submissions there is now a tab at the top of the assignment activity.
2.In the previous version, at the top of the grading table you had the option to filter submissions by name. To filter by other options such as marker or workflow state, you had to scroll to the bottom of the grading table (….a bit of a pain!). Now, all the filters appear at the top of the grading table.
3.The third change is that when you select submissions, you used to be able to enable bulk actions by scrolling to the bottom and using the “with selected” filter. Now, when you make selections, a floating bar will appear (much like it does with the bulk options feature on your Moodle course page) and you can select different actions from there (e.g. lock, download etc.). It will save you some scrolling!
4.On individual submissions, the ‘grade’ button has now been tucked away under a three dots menu under the ‘grade’ column of the table. It is still there, just not quite as visible as before.
Watch this video for a more detailed breakdown of the changes.
Please note that the video uses the Exams Moodle platform for the purposes of the demonstration but that the changes remain the same across the different platforms.
Other changes
The following features were removed as they weren’t often used here at Lancaster and some are no longer supported in the newer versions of Moodle.
- Atto text editor
- Realtime quiz activity
- Lightbox Gallery
Ongoing news
Full lists of improvements can be seen on the Moodle website, but please note that not all features listed will be made available in the Lancaster University Moodle:
Ongoing news about the upcoming improvements will be posted to the Moodle discussion channel of the Digital Education Network group in Teams as it becomes available.
If you’re not currently a member of the Digital Education Network, you can request access by clicking on the link above and selecting to open it in Teams, then clicking the ‘Join’ button.
If you have any questions about any of the changes or want to have a look over your Moodle spaces for the upcoming academic year, please feel free to get in touch.