A new dawn in the City
As has already been mentioned in Educational Vignettes, City University London’s educational technologies are receiving an investment boost. Moodle, being the chief technology we use, is getting the greatest investment, with it undergoing an upgrade (to move to version 2, rather than the 1.9 we are currently on) and a a re-design with the help of City’s HCID Centre. The Moodle upgrade will have more tools available, meant to give you more choice and flexibility when it comes to designing the electronic component of your course.
Now this sounds like a lot of change, we can hear you (and us!) saying; it should mostly translate into a lot of change behind the scenes, and a slightly different-looking but improved system for its users. The plan is to have Moodle 2 launched from April 2013, but not used by students until the start of the 2013-2014 academic year (with the existing Moodle continuing to exist and be used as normal throughout this time). That will give the Schools and the LDC time to transfer modules (which will be done by IS after meeting with School Educational Technologists to plan which modules to make available first), showcase the system, and make training and guidance materials available to everyone before the system is used fully at the start of the 2013 term. Different Schools will be approaching training in different ways, but every School will have a professional development programme in place; your local Educational Technologist will be contacting you with more information as the time gets nearer.
About Moodle 2
Moodle 2 works in a similar way to our current version of Moodle; there will be some changes around navigation and file management that make the system nicer to use, and as these two areas are accessed a lot when setting up a module, we are aware of the big impact this may have on users – which is why our training and guidance will pay particular attention to these areas. This release of Moodle brings with it a number of new features that we think are improvements as well:
- a drag and drop interface to upload files
- greater flexibility in linking to files across modules
- an improved assignment activity which can also handle group-based assignments
- conditional release which provides for greater control of when resources and activities are released to students
- an improved Quiz tool with clearer navigation for staff and students and improved handling of quiz attempts not submitted to deadline.
We are finalising what exactly Moodle 2 will look like, and what additional tools it will contain, over Winter 2012-2013 in order to get it ready for its April launch. The Educational Technology Community at City have created a number of working groups to support the upgrade to Moodle 2. A series of blog posts will be provided through Educational Vignettes to keep you up-to-date on what is happening with Moodle 2 and the other educational technologies. But if in the mean time, you have any questions, please be in touch with the LDC or your School Educational Technologist, and we will do our best to help you.
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