This year’s Moodle update focuses on major improvements to the visibility of feedback for students. We also wanted to provide more reassurance about the visibility of grades and feedback to staff during the marking and moderation process.
In our Focus Groups this year, lecturers reported it was not obvious that grades and feedback were hidden from students while grading and moderation were underway.
We also receive a large number of Helpdesk tickets from students unable to access their grades and feedback, because it has not been made available.
To address these issues, we have provided messages within the grading interface for a student’s assignment to alert lecturers and course officers when the grade and feedback is hidden and when it is visible.
Improved assignment grading interface
When grading on Moodle, you will notice some improvements to the grading interface.
You will be able to quickly move between student assignments using the Change user feature at the top of the assignment. The student’s name, or unique identifier if using anonymous marking, is always visible when marking.
* All images from our Moodle Development Environment are subject to final changes before we go live.
Switching off PDF Annotation
A big part of our preparation for the annual Moodle update is to evaluate and review new features in Moodle, to inform our decisions to switch on and off certain features. We want to ensure that any new features have a positive impact on the staff and student experience and are easy to use.
This year, PDF Annotation was incorporated into Moodle assignments. We evaluated this during usability sessions with staff. Staff reported that this online marking feature had great potential, but that it was difficult to use.
We made the decision that the PDF Annotation feature in Moodle was not mature enough to use at City and have switched if off this year. We will be reviewing how this feature develops and testing it for updates in future years.
Which new assignment feature do you think will have the positive impact on your online marking?
For more on what’s coming with Moodle 3.2, all of our posts are tagged as Moodle 3.2
