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We’re looking at you, Moodle 2

By Matt Jenner, on 7 April 2011

Moodle 2 logo (c) Moodle.orgAnyone who is as fanatical about Moodle as we are (or maybe just me) will know that the latest and greatest version was released late last year. It was hailed as ‘the answer’ to many of the requests of vast community of users and that of the technical developers too. It’s safe to say that as much as we love Moodle, some parts are a little funny-looking to say the least. One thing to note is that Moodle 2 might not look much different to Moodle 1 (although we’re planning a facelift!) If you know Moodle already you will pick up Moodle 2 in no time. The thing about Moodle is that it’s designed for education, although sometimes it’s hard to see past its pedagogical principles when all you want to do is upload a file and share it quickly!

Well, thankfully the 13-odd steps it takes to upload a file have changed, and these changes are coming to Moodle 2. A list of notable changes is below, but this is only the beginning. UCL is taking a good look at Moodle 2 and the opportunity to work with the UCL community to make this upgrade a chance to sit back and think about what Moodle offers UCL, what we can change, what needs promotion and what need attention. We will be publishing more details on this in the coming months, and asking if your department would like a roadshow where we come over and spend some time talking about e-learning with Moodle, hearing your thoughts, showing some exciting new stuff and generally making sure we are listening to everyone to make Moodle better than ever before.  Just get in contact with us if you’re interested – contact details here.

New features coming to Moodle 2:

Major new features

  • Repository support
  • Portfolio support
  • Course completion, prerequisites & conditional activities
  • Cohorts
  • Web services support
  • New blocks

Major improvements to existing core features

  • Blocks
  • Blogs
  • Comments
  • Enrolment plugins
  • File handling
  • Filters 2.0
  • HTML editor
  • Messaging
  • My Moodle page
  • Navigation
  • Ratings
  • Roles and permissions
  • RSS feeds
  • Themes
  • Translation system
  • User profile pages

Major improvements to activity modules

  • Lesson
  • Quiz module and question bank
  • Resource
  • SCORM
  • Wiki
  • Workshop

We understand there is a lot in this list, and please forgive us for not knowing everything about all the new features instantly. For now if you are really keen you’ll need to check the official Moodle 2 Release Notes from Moodle.org – in time we will be publishing more details about these new features and how they’ll sit within UCL Moodle.

We’re quite excited, we hope you will be too.

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