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Removal of obsolete Zoom recordings stored in Lecturecast (Echo360) on 11th March 2024

By Silvia Giannitrapani, on 4 March 2024

As per the UCL retention policy, any Zoom-recorded content in Lecturecast will be deleted if it meets the following criteria: 

  • Zoom recordings that have never been shared with a Lecturecast course section 
  • Zoom recordings that have never been viewed.

Staff members impacted by this will be contacted with further details. Should they wish to retain these recordings, they are advised to ensure a copy is stored in their Zoom account, unless they have manually deleted them. Alternatively, a copy of the recording can be downloaded before the 11th March 2024 by following the instruction below.  

 Please note: Teaching events captured or uploaded to Lecturecast (Echo360) will not be affected. 

If you have any questions regarding this matter, please get in touch with the Lecturecast Support Team and we will respond as promptly as possible. 

Online Learning: Community of Practice

By Oliver Vas and Jo Stroud, on 13 February 2024

black smartphone and laptop near person

Photo by Headway on Unsplash

Online Learning is a rapidly expanding area in higher education around the world. While it became a necessity during the pandemic, an increasing number of students and short course learners are choosing to study their degrees fully online. Currently UCL offers around 40 postgraduate programmes with a significant distance learning component, just over half of which are delivered fully remotely.

As such, we’re setting up an Online Learning Community of Practice (OLCoP; catchy, we know) to bring together staff who teach and support online programmes, modules, and short courses at UCL.

At this stage, OLCoP is an informal group, and we hope to use regular meetings and the Teams space to:

  • Share best practices in online teaching and learning
  • Build a communication hub between academic departments, central, and local services
  • Identify and recommend professional development opportunities
  • Disseminate new and changing information relating to policy, quality assurance, pedagogies, technology, and more
  • Ensure that issues relating to equity, diversity, and inclusion in online learning are properly represented
  • Gather actionable feedback from staff and students regarding online learning experiences.

If you are interested in joining, please complete this short form. This will also send you an invite to our Teams space.

We will be holding our first meeting of OLCoP on 13th March 2024 at 2:30pm.

This first meeting will take place as a hybrid event and act as an opportunity to get to know other staff teaching and developing online courses.

Those who wish to attend in person can join us at the training suite at the Anna Freud Centre, not too far from King’s Cross station, while those who prefer to join online can do so via Teams. We will have facilitators in both spaces.

You can register to attend using the form linked above.

We hope you can join us!

The Lecturecast Clinic: Appointments now open

By Katy O Foster, on 6 February 2024

As part of the suite of support for users of Lecturecast available for UCL staff, colleagues from the Educational Media team will now be offering one-to-one consultations via The Lecturecast Clinic.

These one-on-one online appointments can be used to address any queries or topics related to Lecturecast, aiming to assist staff with their teaching needs.

Before booking an appointment, staff are also advised to complete the short online course Getting started with Lecturecast (Moodle) to gain a foundational understanding of Lecturecast.

To book, visit the booking page. New available sessions will be continually added.

Other Lecturecast support resources available:

Moodle Boards Update

By Kerry, on 17 January 2024

Just a quick update for Moodle Board users or former or future users! The issues with staff and students not being able to move posts between Board columns have been resolved in the latest version which is available on Moodle 4.3. A few other improvements have also been made.

If you are not aware, the Board module for Moodle is a plugin that enables a post-it or sticky note type of activity for students (think Padlet but with restricted access on Moodle). This is a collaborative activity where tutors set out a number of columns with optional headings and then students add contributions to the columns. Students do not see who has posted what.

Screenshot of an example Moodle Board

Screenshot of an example Moodle Board

There are several useful pedagogic applications of Moodle Boards including:

  • Icebreakers, introductions
  • Exit tickets – e.g. posting something that is still not clear (“muddy”) or providing general feedback
  • Collaboratively sharing content, resources or links
  • Students’ reflections during group breakouts
  • SWOC analysis for group projects

To see a guide for Moodle Boards, please view our updated mini guide.

Upgrade to Moodle 4.3

By Eliot Hoving, on 20 December 2023

UCL Moodle is being updated from Moodle 4.2 to Moodle 4.3 on Thursday January 4th 2024. The Digital Learning Environment team expects minimal disruption. 

Moodle is expected to be unavailable between midnight and 04:00am on Thursday January 4th 2024. 

The upgrade to Moodle 4.3 will bring several benefits including: 

  • streamlined display of course activities including smaller icons, less white space, and a drop down menu for activity completion which should save screen space and improve the user experience on course pages, 
  • the ability to add titles to text and media areas or “labels”, 
  • quicker to access editing menus for visibility and completion criteria to make editing content easier for staff, 
  • and a number of bug fixes and security updates. 

For a quick summary of the changes see Moodle’s new features page. Please note that UCL Moodle doesn’t use Matrix communication or MoodleNet. 

If you have any feedback or questions about the upgrade, please get in touch with the Digital Learning Environment team. 

‘Advanced Moodle Quiz and Question Bank’ self-paced course

By i.niculescu, on 14 December 2023

We are pleased to introduce the ‘Advanced Moodle Quiz and Question Bank’ self-paced course which is now available at https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=40483 

This course is aimed at academics and professional services staff who want to deepen their use of Moodle to create and manage quizzes.

The estimated completion time is 2 to 3 hours. We’ve designed it with flexibility in mind, allowing you to progress through the material in smaller, digestible chunks that fit into your busy schedule.

This is an exciting opportunity to learn how to:

  • Confidently manage the Moodle question bank interface.
  • Organise question banks clearly with categories and tags.
  • Use Moodle’s advanced quiz settings to make your tests more engaging.
  • Analyse quiz results to improve your questions and teaching methods.
  • Build a Moodle quiz that uses advanced features effectively.

The course includes step-by-step guides, links to further resources and knowledge-check quizzes. You also have the option to receive a certificate at the end of the course.

After completing the course, staff can get further support by getting in touch by email via digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

This version of the course will be further developed during term 2 as we receive feedback and input from the UCL community. We will make sure that everyone will be notified when new materials will be added to the course.

P.S: A workshop version of this course will also become available from January 2024. More info to follow!