Information Services (IS) will be updating Moodle on Tuesday 30th June 2015 as part of the annual summer update. Moodle will be unavailable for 2 hours during the regular Tuesday ‘at risk’ period from 7am-9am as the update is performed, with a precautionary at-risk period for 48 hours. This will bring our Moodle up to the latest version (2.8) and will contain tools and improvements informed by staff feedback from the Annual Educational Technology survey and results from student usability testing.
This post provides an overview of the improvements for staff and students in the update, and will be supplemented with further posts as we continue to blog more details around each major improvement.
The New City Course Format
A new City Course Format has been developed to replace templates, combining best practice from School templates across the University with student user evaluation feedback. This will be available following the update and aims to save staff time and effort when setting up their modules for the new academic year, and improve consistency across modules for students.
For more detailed information on the new City course format was developed and a list of features please go to the extended blog post.
Developments in Moodle 2.8
This table provides an overview of new features, with further details in upcoming blog posts.
| Functionality | Improvements |
| Assessment Improvements | Including better navigation in the Gradebook, improvements to Moodle and Turnitin Assignments, and easier building of quizzes. |
| Effective Moodle Module Design | Better visibility of editing functionality and icons, as well as more appealing visual design, and options for text layout. |
| Improvements to personalising module content | Staff now have more options to structure pathways through content, based on a greater variety of criteria and conditions. |
| Forum Improvements | Draft Forum posts will now auto-save, and you can now subscribe to individual discussions and ‘Like’ posts. |
| Scheduler Activity | The volatile slots feature in Scheduler has been removed, meaning slots are no longer deleted if an appointment is cancelled. |
| Choice Activity | Students can now make more than one choice. |
Training and Guidance
Guidance for these new features and existing functionality in Moodle 2.8 will be available from the 30th of June from www.city.ac.uk/edtechhelp/staff.
To support staff in exploring the new features in Moodle 2.8, LEaD will be running a series of initial workshops on What’s new in Moodle 2.8 after the update on 30th June. These sessions will run for 90 minutes and are suitable for all staff who have responsibility for designing, managing and/or administering Moodle modules. Staff can book a session using this form: www.tinyurl.com/newinmoodle
