This year, there will be only a minor refresh of Moodle, and so across the summer the Digital Education Team are offering guidance and training to staff on how they can prepare for the new academic year and refresh their knowledge of Moodle.

We’re putting together a series of posts to help you prepare for the new year on Moodle. This first post is about module start dates and our summer training programme.

When modules for the new academic year are first created in Moodle, they are automatically hidden from students.  Depending on the type of module, you will need to take action to either ensure that modules stay hidden or are made available to students on the date you want.

If the Date for first class field was not completed in e:Vision, SITS-coded Moodle modules for Term 1 will become available to students on 26^th August 2024. You can manually set a later start date in the module settings.

GEN (taking enrolments from business rules) and MDL (taking enrolments from meta links) modules are set to hidden and you will need to manually make these visible in time for the start of term.  

If MDL modules (meta link modules) are taking enrolments from SITS coded modules, please note that the associated SITS modules will be visible to students on 26^th August or on the date populated in the Date for first class field. If you do not want students to access the associated SITS modules and use only the meta module, you will need to manually hide the SITS coded modules via module settings so that they are not available to students. 

All 2024/25 SITS modules must first be created on SITS. Within 24 hours, the associated module space will be created on Moodle. 

Non-SITS modules which take enrolments from SITS modules (using the course meta link enrolment method in Moodle) and GEN modules which take enrolments from business rules were created for the new academic year on 21^st June, provided they were in use in 2023/24. 

Lecturer enrolments on SITS modules will be copied over from 2023/24 modules on a weekly basis from July to September. 

Lecturer enrolments were copied over to GEN and MDL modules for this academic year on 21^st June. Any additional Lecturer enrolments/unenrolments on modules should be handled as normal through the schools’ Course Office teams.

Our training programme this summer will concentrate on revising Moodle basics, especially choosing, creating and markings assessments. There is a new workshop on tips and tricks to make working with Moodle 4 as efficient as possible, and one that compares and contrasts all the assessment tools available in Moodle. There will also be regular hands-on, in-person introductions to the teaching room presentation systems nearly every Tuesday and Thursday. To see details of the full range of workshops and to book, please see the LEaD training calendar.

The next post in this series will focus on consistency and content in modules.