Category Archives: Moodle

Putting Names to Face: Improving Communication and Connection through the Teaching Team Activity

October 8, 2026Moodleimproved UX, MoodleElizabeth Walkden

As part of the new Lancaster Moodle template, you will have seen the new “Teaching Team” activity, which usually sits within the “Module Information” section. This activity provides students with the names, faces, roles and contact details of the staff they will come into contact with on their modules and within their department.

Teaching Team activity icon in Moodle

University can feel like an impersonal and intimidating place at first, especially when students are on large programmes. Therefore, the teaching team activity is just one of the small ways that we can combat students feeling overwhelmed and isolated as we put names to faces and make ourselves easier to reach out to. Hopefully, this supports students by encouraging them to seek help early from named contacts and, in turn, this will help strengthen their sense of belonging and confidence in engaging with our community.

On a practical note, it can also help to improve communication efficiency as the teaching team makes it clear to students who the key contacts are, what their roles are and encourages them to send enquiries to the most relevant person.

Adding Contacts

Within the settings of the activity, you can add/edit contacts by selecting the tick box to add a contact to your teaching team activity.

Example of a contact in Moodle who can be added to the teaching team activity contact cards. — Example of a contact who can be selected to be added to the teaching team activity cards

When adding/removing contacts, there are three types:

Team Members
Additional Team Members
General Contacts

The list of “Team Members” and “Additional Team Members” are pulled through from the enrolled participants list on a module and often the roles of these individuals are pulled through as well from LUSI (e.g. course convenor). You can add as many “team members” and “additional team members” to the teaching team activity cards as you need.

The “General Contacts” list, is where you can add contacts such as Professional Services Teams that have shared mailboxes. At the moment, you can add two general contacts per Moodle space, this might increase in the future.

General Contacts section in the Teaching Team activity with blank boxes to add details for the contact such as name, location and email address. — Area in the settings of the activity to add the details of a “General Contact”.

Note: the Teaching Team activity paginates and only allows four contacts to show at once. Use the “key contacts” option to show those contacts on the first four cards whom students are most likely to contact.

Customising Contact Cards

Within the settings of the Teaching Team activity itself, you can customise the following details for each staff member:

Office Hours
Email Address
Job Title

You can also select whether a staff member is a “key contact” which is useful if there is a large teaching team for a module/programme.

More customisations are also available though. These can be accessed via your Moodle profile. Click on the dropdown menu option next to your profile image at the top of the Moodle page and click on “Profile”.

The drop down menu next to a profile picture in Moodle

Then click the “Edit Profile” option.

From here you can add the profile picture that pulls through for you to the teaching team activity. You can also add the following in the “Teaching Fields” section which will pull through to all the teaching team activities you are added to within Moodle:

Office Hours
Office Location
Office Location Mazemap URL
Appointment Booking URL (for Booking with Me or Libcal links)
Pronouns
Academic Title
Job Title

Once you have added as many or as few of these details as you like, remember to click “save profile”.

If you wish to access further support with features of the new Moodle template, visit the Moodle template ASK page. You can also reach out to one of your Faculty Learning Technologists.

Creating videos with our Digital Media Engineers

June 4, 2026Uncategorizedteaching tool, VideoElizabeth Walkden

At Lancaster University, our digital media engineers are available to create video content to support the delivery of our curriculum. This could include:

welcome videos;
lectures;
assets for online courses; and more!

The team can add extra aspects to your videos such as images, captions and titles.

The process takes very little time and by creating high quality recordings, you will be more likely to reuse the resource year on year.

To find out more about how it works, watch this short video produced by the team:

Anonymous Marking in Moodle: An Update

March 27, 2026Moodleassessment, feedback, MoodleElizabeth Walkden

Moodle now allows you to release marks to students while maintaining anonymity.

Previously, staff had to reveal all student identities before releasing grades to ensure students saw both the feedback and the grade/result. This was not ideal especially when some students required longer extensions than the norm.

Moodle has now been updated to “allow partial release of grades while marking anonymously”. This new option can be found in the assignment settings under the “Grade” section. Click the “Show more…” option that is in red at the bottom of this section as shown below:

Assignment settings in Moodle. This image shows the section under the sub-heading "grade" and at the bottom of the section is some red writing: "Show more..." — The grading options on an assignment in Moodle.

Then change the dropdown menu to “yes” as shown below (this is not enabled by default):

The "partial release of grades while marking anonymously" option in Moodle with the drop-down menu highlighted. — The new option to release grades while maintaining anonymity.

Now, when releasing grades, you do not need to then “reveal student identities” beforehand. Students will receive both the grade and the feedback if the option to “allow partial release of grades” has been turned on.

Please note: lifting anonymity entirely remains the same and is a one time action.

Did you know you have access to Copilot Chat?

December 15, 2025UncategorizedAIElizabeth Walkden

As part of our institutional license with Microsoft, staff and students have access to Copilot Chat. This is different to Microsoft 365 Copilot which integrates with files, emails and other Microsoft programmes. Copilot Chat is a generative AI tool that creates responses based off web content. It can be used for lots of tasks such as searching ideas, session planning, summarising text, image generation, generating code and more! To access Copilot Chat you will be prompted to login with your University login details.

The benefit of using Copilot Chat, as opposed to other generative AI tools like the free version of ChatGPT, is the enterprise data protection agreement offered through Lancaster University’s licensing agreement. Microsoft states that “prompts and responses are protected by the same contractual terms and commitments widely trusted by our customers for their emails in Exchange and their files in SharePoint”. This means that your what you input is private, not used to train AI models and you are protected from security and copyright risks.

While the use of generative AI can be transformational for processes and tasks inside and outside of work, there are concerns around the ethical use of AI, its environmental impact and protecting personal data. There are also concerns around information security with the use of AI and staff and students are asked not to input personal data into AI systems such as email addresses, recordings of people or peoples names. For more information on Lancaster University’s AI usage guidance, visit the ASK page.

Moodle Update 2025: What’s New?

July 31, 2025Moodleaccessibility, improved UX, Moodle, upgradeElizabeth Walkden

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:

All sections on one page layout example with two subsections added.

Moodle ‘one section per page’ layout example:

Example of the one section per page layout with two subsections.

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.

Grading table summary page with the submissions tab circled in blue pen.

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.

Grading table with new filter options at the top.

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.

Add GenAI RAG categories to Moodle at the click of a button

March 19, 2025MoodleAI, assessment, MoodleElizabeth Walkden

Written by Dr. Richard Floyd, Digital Learning Facilitator (ISS)

Each assignment in Moodle needs to have a Red, Amber, or Green category for the use of generative AI. The University has provided some guidance for staff covering what these categories mean and how this should be communicated to students.

To make it easier for staff to share this information with students, we have now added a set of custom components to the text editor in Moodle. This will allow you to choose your category and automatically insert the official icon and text into your assignment description.

How to add an AI RAG category to your assignment description

Edit your assignment settings
In the description field, click the three dots to expand the toolbar, then select the Components for Learning (C4L) option (the Lego brick):
Under the Custom tab, select the relevant category and then click save:
The component will then appear in your assignment description:

If you require any further support, get in touch with a Faculty Learning Technologist or a Digital Learning Facilitator.

What is ‘Open Learning’ and how might I use it?

January 24, 2025MoodleMoodle, Open LearningElizabeth Walkden

At Lancaster University we use Moodle as our learning management system (LMS) or virtual learning environment (VLE). However, what isn’t often known is that we actually have several instances of Moodle used across the University for different institutions or activities such as exams. For example, our partner campus in Weihai, Lancaster University College at Beijing Jiaotong University (LUCBJTU), has its own instance of Moodle and so does our partner campus in Ghana, LU Ghana. Aside from these, there are three different instances in use at our Bailrigg campus: Lancaster Moodle, Training and Development Moodle, Exams Moodle and we also have Moodle ‘Open Learning’.

Open Learning has most of the same features as the ‘Lancaster Moodle’ which we use daily with our students. It is used by staff, including teaching staff and researchers, to host courses to external groups of people. For example, it is used by the Centre for Child & Family Justice Research for the Giving HOPE Project. Training is provided through Open Learning to those who take an active role in the project such as those who provide care to mothers and babies. Open Learning is also used by the Library to provide support to school aged learners who are completing an EPQ (Extended Project Qualification). The students use the Open Learning space alongside in-person library sessions to learn more about how to search for relevant literature, how to reference and other key project skills.

The main advantage to Open Learning is that enrolment is not limited to people with a Lancaster University IT account. It can be accessed by anyone depending on what enrolment type the creator of the course chooses. For example, you could choose that users can self-enrol with a key (password) or you could choose that users are automatically enrolled when they click a link to the course.

Open Learning has a wealth of activities which can be used with your learners including the ability to embed Xerte packages and videos. You can also create quizzes to test the knowledge of your learners and interactive H5P (HTML5 packages) activities.

Another feature of Open Learning which is popular is the ability to create badges and certificates for those learners who have successfully completed a course. A template for a certificate is provided and you can also import your own badge design so that learners can add the badge to their profiles for example, on LinkedIn.

To find out more about Moodle, visit the ASK page. To find out more about creating an Open Learning course, get in touch with myself or a member of the central Digital Learning Team via the IT Help Centre.

The home page for Open Learning which includes the users name and an image from Lancaster Bailrigg campus. — The ‘Home’ page for Open Learning.

The rise of the “Weekly” Resource List

October 29, 2024Moodle, Moodle Momentsimproved UX, Leganto, library, MoodleElizabeth Walkden

Every module space in Moodle has an associated resource list (sometimes called a reading list). Lancaster University uses the Leganto system which is a platform that holds all of the University Library’s resources in its database including books, e-books, journal articles, websites databases and more! It is important that teaching staff use the Leganto resource list system rather than for example, a list of resources on a .pdf because then the library can track what students are expected to read. This informs the material the Library purchases and the subscriptions they need to maintain. Leganto also takes care of issues around copyright so you won’t be in breach of any regulations.

At the start of every module, you might notice that the resource list appears at the top but is “hidden from students” by default. This is to give teaching staff a chance to check and update the list before they make it visible to students for their upcoming studies.

To be able to edit or add to the resource list, you need to be added to the module in LUSI (the student registry system) in an appropriate role such as administrative staff or teaching staff otherwise the add button and the ability to manage sections won’t be visible to you.

Options in Leganto to add, manage sections, filter or search. — Editing options at the top of a reading list in Leganto.

Resource lists can become very large especially with modules that span several weeks or in some cases, the whole academic year. As a result, it is worth knowing about how to use the embedded resource list activity in Moodle which allows you to make weekly or topic based resource lists based off the larger module one.

Why have “weekly”/“bitesize” reading lists?

We all know that students aren’t going to read all of the recommended resources and of course, we don’t expect them too. Resources may be added to the list to expand students’ horizons if they take an interest in a particular sub-topic but aren’t essential to completing the module with a positive outcome. However, when resource lists get very large they become unwieldy for both staff and students. It can be difficult for students to determine what is “essential” reading and what is most relevant to them at that point in their studies even if the material is organised into sections.

Adding a weekly reading list or an equivalent for a series of lectures or activities is helpful and encourages students to get stuck into their reading. It more easily highlights the essential resources for that week or topic. If there is a particular set text for a module, you can also select specific chapters to accompany the content delivered to students that week.

We know, from the survey I so frequently mention, the Moodle Student User Experience Survey from November 2023, that students like weekly reading lists and want to see more of them! 14 of the students who responded to the survey specifically mentioned in that they wanted to see better organised reading lists to help them navigate to the relevant material. One student said:

“It is helpful to see content in chronological order grouped by week and including slides, worksheets, recordings and resources together. Apart from that it I don’t find long lists of information helpful, especially when it seems to be unorganised. Suggested readings should also be clear and systematic.”

As a result, we should, where possible, try to utilise smaller resource lists to support students in their learning.

How do I set up weekly reading lists?

Firstly, you must have a resource list associated with the module, usually found at the top of the module space in Moodle. If resources are added to this list, you can then pull them through into a weekly/bitesize reading list. Therefore, it is important to make sure you have set up a complete module resource list in Leganto first.

Once this has been done, turn on edit mode in Moodle.

Click “add an activity or resource” to add the weekly reading list where you need it to be. You can always move them after creating them if required.

The activity to choose is the “Resource List (Embedded item)”.

Resource list (embedded item) activity option in Moodle. — The resource list (embedded item) activity option in Moodle.

Once selected, many of the activity settings are the same as other activities in Moodle. However, this activity has a section called “Select citations from [name of module resource list]”. This list reflects your Resource list and you can tick the boxes for the resources you wish to add to the smaller list for your topic or week.

You also get the option to change how this type of resource list will be shown in Moodle to students under the “appearance” section of the settings menu. You get three options:

On a separate page
Inline on the course page (initially collapsed)
Inline on the course page (automatically expanded)

My recommended setting for the appearance of the resource list is “on a separate page”. That way, it does not clog up the main page and you can more easily track engagement with the list in Moodle through the activity logs if this setting is selected.

Once finished, click “save and return to course” or “save and display”.

For more information on resource lists you can visit the LibGuide for staff. You can also contact your Faculty librarians for support in managing resources for your module.

A new year, a new look!

September 20, 2024Moodle, Uncategorizedaccessibility, improved UX, interactive, MoodleElizabeth Walkden

Over the past couple of months, in preparation for the new academic year, I have been supporting staff across the Lancaster Medical School (LMS) and the Division of Health and Research (DHR), to redesign their Moodle pages. The aim has been to create more attractive spaces, that are easier to navigate and more engaging for learners.

Last year, while still working in ISS, I led the Moodle User Experience (UX) Project. We did a student survey as part of the project and we got 273 responses. 82% of respondents were undergraduates and 18% were postgraduate taught students. 139 students said that a good Moodle space was a well-organised one and in many of the free-text responses they mentioned the need for images and colour to make the spaces more visually appealing. Overall, students like Moodle but just find the way content is uploaded difficult to navigate. When asked if Moodle was easy or difficult to use, 83% of students found Moodle easy to use or had a neutral impression of it as “neither easy nor difficult”. As part of the UX project, we also surveyed staff. Like the students, staff also want to see more attractive Moodle spaces with more colour and images. So enter…the ‘one section per page’ layout.

I have written about this layout before but, over the past few weeks, I have moved several LMS and DHR Moodle spaces to this new layout and want to share with you all the ‘new look’.

Some of the spaces that have undergone this transformation (or are currently undergoing it) include:

MBChB Hub
Year 4 Primary Care
Medicine Year 4
Medicine Year 5
407: Mental Health: Theory, Research and Practice
DHR Autumn Academy
MBCHB101: Problem Based Learning Year 1

A snapshot of the MBChB Hub Space — The newly reorganised MBChB Hub space.

A snapshot of the Year 4 Primary Care Moodle space. — A snapshot of the newly reorganised Year 4 Primary Care Moodle space.

How do you set this up?

Before changing settings and choosing images, consider the organisation of material on your Moodle page. Try to have a clear welcome section at the top with introductory materials such as a handbook, learning objectives etc. This section should not be over-filled though and consideration needs to go into whether some of the material should be on the Moodle space, in a Moodle hub space or even in the Lancaster Student Portal instead. Then group materials into larger sections with sub-headings created using the ‘text and media area’ activity. Folders in Moodle, although a good way to group materials, can mean that students can’t quickly find what they are looking for so avoid using too many of them.

To get the ‘one section per page’ layout, you need to have the following settings under the ‘course format’ section of your Moodle page settings:

Course format: topics
Course layout: one section per page

Once you have chosen the above options, click ‘save and display’.

To add the summaries:

Click the three dots menu next to the topic/section you wish to add a summary too.
Type in your summary. For example, the summary could be some information on what students can find in the section or a ‘to-do’ list for the week.

To add images, choose high quality, landscape images for the best results. These could relate to the topic or subject material or just be high quality photos from around the Lancaster campus.

Click the image icon.
Choose a picture from your file explorer. You can add in information about the ‘Author’ and the licence.
Click ‘upload file’.
Untick ‘auto-size’ and the best size that I have found is 262wx143h (in pixels).
The default option for the image alignment is ‘top’, I would recommend leaving this.
Click ‘save image’.
Once done, click on the image again and change to ‘left alignment’.
Then click ‘save changes’.

A full-video explaining how to set up the above, can be found here:

How else can you improve a Moodle space?

Looking beyond the start of term, there are more things that we can do to improve Moodle spaces and the resources stored in Moodle.

Moodle isn’t OneDrive or Dropbox. It shouldn’t just be a list of Word documents, PowerPoints and PDFs! For a more engaging online learning experience, consider creating high quality videos for students to watch that include some interaction where possible. You can ask a Learning Technologist to support you in filming the material if it is something like a ‘Welcome video’ and the University also has Digital Media Engineers who are on hand to create very high-quality videos. Using the H5P activity (HTML5 package activity) in Moodle, it is possible to create an interactive video with quizzes, text boxes and other interactions popping up for students to engage with. H5P can also be used to create over 50 different content types. More information on H5P activities can be found in another post. These activities can support students to engage with your Moodle space more and can support effective revision/review.

It is a legal requirement that the resources posted on Moodle are digitally accessible. This is something that should always be on our minds when we create resources. For more information on how to improve the digital accessibility of your Moodle course, you can read this article on my ‘10 top tips’. One of these tips includes using Blackboard ALLY, the accessibility tool that is integrated into our Lancaster Moodle spaces, to check how accessible your resources are and use the guidance it gives to improve this if necessary. The score gauge provided by ALLY should always be green in colour.

For support with learning design and Moodle, feel free to get in touch with me. More training sessions on how to create H5P activities, digital accessibility and more will be forthcoming in the next couple of months – keep an eye on your emails!

Group Work: Tips, Tricks & Technology

September 10, 2024Moodleassessment, feedback, group work, Moodle, participation, sharing practice, teaching toolElizabeth Walkden

Group work…often dreaded by teachers and sometimes by students too! When I first started teaching in 2017, I was reluctant to use group work activities. They were tricky and time-consuming to set up and I quite often didn’t get the outcomes I was looking for. I had very little experience with educational technology as it didn’t form part of my PGCE at a time when Microsoft Teams had only just been launched and the Covid-19 pandemic hadn’t happened yet.

Since that time though, I’ve picked up some tips and tricks that have helped me to facilitate successful group projects both inside and outside the classroom. Now working in higher education, post-pandemic and in a world where technology enhanced learning is much more centre stage, I’m more comfortable with facilitating successful collaborations. Group work isn’t something I dread anymore! As a result, I thought I would share some tips and tricks as well as suggestions of activities/tools that are available at Lancaster University that could be utilised when asking students to work together.

Create Connections

Connecting with strangers is hard! Students are forced into a learning environment together and often expected to collaborate and discuss things with each other when they have only just met. This situation is a daunting one for many, even for staff! We have all been asked to “turn to the person next to you” to complete some activity…I don’t know about you, but sometimes this makes me wish I hadn’t attended the session and it can get awkward fast. Creating a comfortable and connected learning community is important to help facilitate successful group work. The community building often needs to happen in advance of the activity or project too so that students have time to form connections and get comfortable in the moment.

One tip is to encourage a digital “water cooler”; a place where students can chat freely. Many staff already encourage students to create their own groups, for example via WhatsApp. However, as staff we can also create spaces, for example a forum in Moodle that you don’t access and leave for students to communicate with each other or a Microsoft Teams space for students. There are many tools and ways to create a communication space for students, I’ve only mentioned a few but it will certainly help create those connections that will support students when they are asked to work together. OneHE has a page full of ideas for “warm up activities” to help students engage in low-stakes conversations which will help facilitate the start of those connections that will eventually support collaborative work.

Roles and Responsibilities

Getting everyone to participate in group work is a difficult task for every educator or facilitator. One recommended, tried and tested method is to establish roles and responsibilities within the group. The roles themselves can be varied and may be specific to the project or task that you set your students. For example, you might have a team leader, a note-taker, an external stakeholder manager, a proof-reader, a meeting chair…the possibilities are endless! AdvanceHE has some excellent guidance with top tips and resources on how to set up groupwork. They too suggest giving students roles and asking them to reflect on the diversity of skills in the group to ensure effective collaboration.

As an institution who uses Moodle, we have the ‘Board’ activity available to use. This activity can be set up in group mode so that each group can collaborate. One use case for group activity is to set it up as project management board with columns such as “to-do”, “in progress”, “done” and “blocked”. That way students can manage their workload together and keep track of their progress. Below is an example of a Moodle ‘Board’ activity set up in this way:

An example of a Moodle "board" activity. — An example of a ‘Board’ activity in Moodle

A similar thing can be created using Microsoft Planner within a Microsoft Teams space. For training and support in creating either of these resources, get in touch.

Continue reading Group Work: Tips, Tricks & Technology →

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