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Initial release of Marks Transfer available on UCL Moodle!

By Kerry, on 18 March 2024

What is it?

A new UCL Moodle integration is now available to facilitate the transfer of marks from Moodle to Portico, aimed at improving the overall process. The marks transfer integration has been tested during two pilot phases and has received very positive feedback.

You can complete marks transfer for the following assessment scenarios:

  • One Moodle assessment activity is linked to one assessment component in Portico
  • One Moodle assessment activity is linked to multiple assessment components in Portico

Using the following Moodle assessment activity-types:

  • Moodle Assignment
  • Moodle Quiz
  • Turnitin Assignment (single submission)

In addition, the following conditions must be met:

  • A Portico enrolment block must be used to create a mapping with a Module Delivery to your Moodle course.​
  • An assessment component (or components) exists in Portico to map against.​
  • Assessment marks are numerical and 0-100.​
  • The assessment component(s) in Portico is compatible with SITS Marking Schemes and SITS Assessment Types.​
  • For exam assessments, the Portico assessment component is the exam room code EXAMMDLE. 

The flowchart below provides a visual overview of when you can use this initial release of Marks Transfer.

Flowchart indicating when you can use the initial release of Marks Tranfer.

How do I use it?

For guidance on how to use marks transfer, you can view our general overview, how to guide and FAQs.

There will also be demonstration and drop in support sessions: open to all to find out how to use the wizard / ask questions (note – you are welcome to “drop in” to these sessions with questions and do not need to stay for the whole duration). Please use the links below on the specified date / time to join the sessions (alternatively, if you would like to receive a calendar invitation to join one of these sessions, please email currentstudent@ucl.ac.uk specifying which session).

What should I do if I require support?

Please review our detailed FAQs, if you cannot find your answer there, please use one of the following contact points:

  • For any issues with using the marks transfer tool, please contact digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk
  • For any issues with Portico data eg. incorrect assessment or student information, contact lifecycle@ucl.ac.uk
  • Please provide any feedback about the Marks Transfer Wizard to your Faculty Champion.

What next?

Following this initial release, we will continue to develop the integration by adding further marking scenarios and functionality.

Current development priorities are:

  • Grade Book items and categories including external LTI resources
  • Handling of SoRAs, ECs and LSAs
  • Turnitin Multipart Assignments

This is a very exciting development for assessment administration at UCL. We hope you find the new Moodle Marks Transfer integration beneficial!

Many thanks,

Digital Learning Environments and the Student Records Team

UCL Moodle theme update – Thursday 14th March

By Eliot Hoving, on 8 March 2024

The Digital Learning Environment team have made a number of changes to the UCL Moodle theme to improve the functionality, speed and accessibility of UCL Moodle for students and staff.

The planned update is scheduled for Thursday 14th March between midnight and 4am. There will be a small outage of 15 minutes during this time. The period is a very low usage period so should have minimal impact on students and staff.

A highlight of the key improvements are outlined below.

Course search

Each course now includes a content search in the course index menu (left hand menu on course pages). Students and staff can search by content name or activity type.

 

Left hand activity menus

Book, Lesson and Quiz menus no longer show on the right side of page where they can easily be hidden by students and lost. Instead they now appear on the left hand side which should improve the readability of the navigation menu.

Footer search

The search for courses and for UCL Moodle content (known in Moodle terminology as Global search) has been moved to the footer and is now available on every page.

Course breadcrumb improvements

The course breadcrumb will now appear fixed on the top of course pages and includes the course icon for easier navigation.

Additional changes:

  • Course index menu (left hand menu on course pages) set to closed by default to avoid distracting students.
  • Notifications redesign with links to view source of notification, images, and persistence of notifications (i.e. not disappearing once read).
  • Messaging UI improvements.
  • Footer user menu.
  • Course section indentation on large screen to create visual hierarchy.
  • Colour changes to course section toggles, expand / collapse all sections button, to create better emphasis.
  • Back to top on all pages.
  • Large tables (e.g. grading) fill full available screen width.
  • Site admin links (those found most used in survey) moved to user menu.

Feedback or questions?

Please get in touch with the DLE team to provide feedback at digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

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. 

The Moodle Flexible course format is being phased out from July 19th.

By Eliot Hoving, on 14 February 2024

Why is this change being made?  

The Flexible format plugin has reached end of life and is no longer supported by its maintainer. The plugin has multiple usability and accessibility bugs. The planned upgrade to Moodle 4.4 over the summer will further impact both the function and look of the plugin making the format unusable. 

What do staff need to do? 

Staff using the Flexible format should manually change their course format by the 19th July so they can ensure their course is correctly updated and so they can communicate guidance or notice to students on the course.  

After the 19th July, Flexible format will no longer be available and courses in this format will be automatically converted to the Topics format to ensure that the course continues to function for students and staff. This includes course from the current academic year and those from previous years. 

You can view which course format you are using by going to your course page and clicking settings. 

Course page showing the settings option.

 

Under Course format you will see the format in use. 

Editing course format menu

Research by the Moodle UX team suggests many staff switched to the Flexible format for its visual appeal and to avoid accessibility issues in the Grid format. Recent updates to the Grid format have significantly improved its accessibility and in this respect it is now preferable to Flexible format.  Staff may be tempted to switch back to the Grid format. However, further research by the Moodle UX team shows that using images for each topic/week is not effective unless you take considerable time to design your images. In most cases, images take up space without providing meaningful information to students, or worse they are confusing to students. Staff can continue to use Grid format, however Moodle UX research shows using the Topics format is a better approach for academic courses. 

Before (Flexible format) 

Flexible course format

 

After (Topics format) 

Topics course format

Changing course format will remove any section images, so staff should save these images prior to changing formats if they wish to re-use them.  

Staff can experiment with how their course looks in another course format using the 4-demo environment. 

The recommended steps for staff to complete would be to

  1. Test out new course format in the 4-demo environment.
  2. Save any section images you want to re-use on your live Moodle course (optional).
  3. Notify your students with a Moodle announcement.
  4. Change your course format from Flexible Format to the format of your choice.
  5. Re-add any section images (optional).
  6. Do a quality check.

Courses from previous academic years and snapshot should be left to automatically switch over to Topics.

Questions?  

If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with the Digital Education team. 

Moodle-SITS Marks Transfer Pilot Update

By Kerry, on 9 February 2024

As some of you may be aware, a new Moodle integration is due to be released in the spring which has been designed and developed by the DLE Team to improve the process for transferring marks from Moodle to Portico. It is called the Moodle-SITS Marks Transfer Integration and we are currently trialing this with around 40 course administrators across the institution.

The pilot kicked off on 8 January and will run until 29 February 2024. The purpose of the pilot is to test the Moodle-SITS Marks Transfer Integration using the newly designed Marks Transfer Wizard and its marks transfer functionality that was developed following the Phase 1 Pilot, which took place with a very small group of course administrators at the end of last year. This wizard provides a more streamlined experience for end users by putting the core assessment component information at the centre of the tool which can then be mapped to a selection of Moodle assessments.

Pilot Phase 2 is the last pilot phase before an initial MVP (Minimal Viable Product) release into UCL Moodle Production in late March 2024. Currently, users can take advantage of the integration if the following criteria are met:

  1. They have used the Portico enrolment block to create a mapping with a Module Delivery on their Moodle course.
  2. Either of the following assessment scenarios is true:-
    1. Only one Moodle assessment activity is being linked to one assessment component in SITS.
    2. Only one Moodle assessment activity is being linked to multiple assessment components in SITS.
  3. An assessment component exists in SITS to map against.
  4. The Moodle assessment marks are numerical 0-100.
  5. The assessment component in SITS is compatible with SITS Marking Schemes and SITS Assessment Types.
  6. For exam assessments, the SITS assessment component is the exam room code EXAMMDLE.

The Marks Transfer Wizard currently supports the transfer of marks from one of the following summative assessment activities in Moodle:

  • Moodle Assignment
  • Moodle Quiz
  • Turnitin Assignment (NOT multipart)

We intend to collect feedback on the new Marks Transfer Wizard from pilot participants to improve the interface and workflow for a general UCL-wide release in late March 2024 and also to prioritise next step improvements and developments following the launch.

So far informal feedback has been very positive: users say the assessment wizard works well and will save them a lot of time. The pilot has also been useful for exploring where issues might arise with Portico records or Moodle course administration as well as for gathering frequently asked questions and advice on best practice which will feed into our guidance for wider rollout.

So what are the next steps? Well, we will continue to support our pilot participants until the end of February. In mid-February, the Marks Transfer Assessment Wizard will be updated with some interface improvements so participants will be able to feedback on these too. Towards the end of February, participants will be asked to complete a survey and some will take part in a focus group to help us evaluate the success of the MVP integration and to prioritise our plans for future developments. In addition, our Change Manager is working with us on a communications plan for wider release on UCL Moodle Production and is currently in the process of recruiting a network of champions to cascade guidance and best practice on Moodle-SITS Marks Transfer across UCL, as well as to help us to continue to gather feedback on the user experience. More information about this exciting new development will be available in the coming months!

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.