Moodle Course Reset Process – 2019

As we have now completed our Moodle upgrade, all your work for the last academic year will be captured in the Moodle Snapshot 18-19 and will be editable up until 20th September once the Late Summer Assessment Period finishes. We would now advise you to start resetting your courses on Moodle 19-20, that have completed their yearly cycle or are no longer in use .

DO NOT Reset your Moodle course if teaching will continue past the Snapshot date (26th July 2019) or you have Dissertations that will be submitted over the summer period. If this is the case, you should follow the non-standard reset instructions. Also note that Late Summer Assessments/ UCL Summer Schools should be completed in Moodle 18/19. We advise that you hide your course on Moodle 19/20 if you are using Moodle 18/19 to complete LSA’s. If you have completed your course reset and did not read the new instructions below, please go back and complete the additional steps.

NOTE:  The reset process has changed slightly. Please read through the following to see the changes:

Why we need to do a course reset?

There are many reasons to do this. Primarily course resets are an essential part of the Moodle housekeeping process, clearing out old data and preventing our systems from being weighed down by unwanted content.

What happens if we do not do course resets?

In short, Moodle will be slower to load content and will have an overall derogated performance, due to excess dead data clogging up the system.  Courses that have not been reset will also have two different cohorts of students on them with no easy way of separating them.  Makes it less Messy!

How do I do a course reset?

Instructions on how to do a reset for undergraduate courses are linked below:

Step 1: Course Reset for Undergraduate courses

The process has changed slightly. Please note you must now carry out the additional steps briefly outlined below:

Step 2: New Additional Steps (these are also explained in detail with guides in Step 1 linked above):

1. Hide your course in Moodle 19-20 if you have a Late Summer Assessment running in Moodle 18-19 or a UCL Summer School in the snapshot.
2. We now run Moodle with yearly instances – during your course reset you must add the new academic year for the course full name in the suffix for e.g. ECON0001: Economics of Financial Markets (19/20)  and the course code/short name in the suffix for e.g. ECON0001_19-20
3. Unlink old Lecturcast mappings and create new ones  for 2019/20
4. Reset your Turnitin dates – edit assignment Start, Due, Post and Cut off dates
5. Reset any activities with start/end dates such as Quizzes, Workshops, BB Collaborates.
6. Ensure your assignments are set up with Moodle Grade Scales which are in use
7. Remove and Re-activate Portico mappings – Note. The automatic updating of enrolments in Moodle from Portico is currently unavailable until 20th August. 

If you wish to keep existing students on a Moodle course (for example masters course, courses with an end date after 26^th July) then please DO NOT reactivate the Portico mappings.

The Moodle Snapshot

For anyone worried about a loss of historical data, please remember on the 26nd July 2019 we took the Moodle annual snapshot. This snapshot is a point in time capture of Moodle including all the student data. This year as we are running Late Summer Assessments and UCL Summer Schools 2019, the Moodle Snapshot 18-19 will not be read-only until October 2019.

My Course requires a reset at a different period of the year. What do I do?

For those courses such as postgraduate, medical and other non-standard timetabled courses and modules please see the guidance for non-standard reset process.

For any questions regarding Course Resets please contact digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk

Once you have completed your course resets, please see the  Moodle Start of Term Checklist to ensure you are ready for your new academic year.