As we announced in our previous blog, when City upgrades to Moodle 4 on July 17th 2023, this year’s modules will be copied to the new site so you can roll over the content to your new 2023/24 modules.
As with any move, this transition offers a great opportunity to look at your Moodle pages and ask – What do we keep? What should we discard? What’s popular and what isn’t? If you spring clean your module now, once the transition is made to Moodle 4, you can hit the ground running.
Assess your module
A good starting point is to assess the usage of your modules’ activities and resources. One way of doing this is look at Activity report and see how many views each activity and resource gets.
If activities aren’t as popular, ask yourself whether they are out of date or not relevant, or perhaps they are not signposted properly.
Some Dos and Don’ts
- Don’t embed moving images. They can be a distraction on the page and in some cases can trigger fits.
- Don’t use long labels. In Moodle 4, labels will not be visible to students in the new module index. To introduce resources or activities, add descriptions and display the description on your module. If you need to add a lot of text, consider creating Moodle pages or books.
- Don’t embed more than three short videos. The more embedded videos, the slower the module will be. Too many embedded videos can cause a module to crash and be unusable to students.
- Do add descriptions for URLs. Add descriptions that tell the student what the URL links to and whether the site will open in a new window or take them away from Moodle.
- Do name your sections consistently. Sections that are inconsistently named can cause confusion. Decide on a consistent naming convention e.g. “Topic 1” or “Week One” and then maintain that naming pattern throughout the module.
- Do add video resources. To share your videos on Moodle, use the video resources which link to Mediaspace. They also have the advantage of captions and a transcript.
- Do check that your module is accessible. Check the accessibility of existing resources with Anthology Ally. Ally looks at the entire Moodle page and alerts you to accessibility issues and how remedy them. It identifies the problems and give you a step-by-step guide how to fix them. When creating new resources, always have accessibility in mind. Use the accessibility checkers that come with Word, PowerPoint etc.
- Do delete old resources – Often we hide old or outdated resources on our Moodle pages. If there are items that are no longer relevant, delete them.
- Do learn about H5P. H5P makes resources and session more interactive and engaging. This is turn helps with better student engagement with Moodle. Previously it was only available to those with pilot access. But in Moodle 4, everyone will be able to use H5P.
- Do update (or create) your Reading Lists. If you already have a reading list, the library will be in touch to encourage you to update it. If you don’t have one, please contact your subject librarian who will help you create one.
