Greetings Moodle Instructors,
With classes starting up next week, we are here to help you get your Spring Semester Moodle courses underway. This update covers the following announcements:
- Reminder: Removal of Old Moodle Courses
- New in Moodle for Spring 2015
- Coming in July: Moodle 2.8
Reminder: Removal of Old Moodle Courses
On February 9, 2015, courses taught up to and including Spring 2013 will be removed from Moodle at Umass Amherst.
Please back up any course content you do not wish to lose, including course materials, grades and student submissions. See Backup Your Moodle Course.
To help in this process we have developed a new tool to quickly download all files posted in your course by a teacher or course designer. This includes files such as PDFs and videos that you uploaded as Resources or added to Quizzes or Activity descriptions. See Download All Instructor Files from a Moodle Course.
New in Moodle for Spring 2015
Improved Wiki Activity Available
This new, more intuitive and feature-rich Wiki activity, developed by Open University, is now available as Wiki (enhanced). The previous version will also be available through Spring 2015 as Wiki (legacy). Features of the new Wiki activity include:
- Save as template (to reuse in a separate wiki activity)
- Set release time for editing
- Statistics on individual student’s participation
- Easier grading & feedback, including ability for to annotate pages (by teacher or any role given permission)
- Instructors do not need to be part of a group to view, edit or annotate the group’s wiki pages.
For help using the new Wiki, you are welcome to make an appointment with the Instructional Media Lab. You may also find Open University’s documentation helpful: https://sleguidance.atlassian.net/wiki/display/Moodle/OU+Wiki
Letter Grades for Manual Grade Items
Instructors who wish to grade by entering or uploading letter grades (rather than scores), can create manual grade items that are designated as Letter grades. This allows you to directly enter or upload a spreadsheet containing letters rather than numeric scores. For more info, contact the Instructional Media Lab.
Improvements to Grading Workshop Activities
Grading peer review participation is now more intuitive.
Coming in July, 2015: Moodle 2.8
This spring your Moodle team will be busy preparing to upgrade from Moodle 2.5 (our current version) to the latest version, Moodle 2.8.
We are really excited about the many improvements and enhancements to the system, including:
- a new text editor that saves drafts
- more intuitive management and employment of Groups
- the ability to annotate PDFs submitted to Assignments
- many usability improvements such as progress bars for time consuming processes
- docking blocks returns, allowing Gradebook users more screen space for the Grader Report
Stay tuned for more news about Moodle 2.8.
As always, if you have any questions, comments, or suggestions regarding Moodle, please contact the Instructional Media Lab (413-545-2823 or instruct@oit.umass.edu).