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Moodle Platform Updates – August 2020

By Anisa Patel, on 13 August 2020

Moodle Platform Migration

Last night UCL Moodle was relocated from our UCL data centres into the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud. We are very happy to inform you that the operation went smoothly, and Moodle was returned to full service just before 02:00am this morning.

This move to the cloud and a new working partnership with Catalyst IT (a leading Moodle partner), ensures that our Moodle’s infrastructure is now on firm footing for the start of session and the future. Moving forward from this point, that increased confidence in our platform will enable the Moodle team to focus more on delivering functional improvements that directly impact upon our service stakeholders both staff and students.

Please note Moodle will not look any different this morning or have any added functionality as the work was with Moodle’s underlying infrastructure.

 

New Moodle Maintenance Hours

Due to our cloud migration and our new partnership, we will be altering our main UCL Moodle maintenance hours. All planned Moodle maintenance will now take place between the hours of 1am – 4am GMT / 2am – 5am BST on a weekday morning. Exact maintenance days will be communicated on the News ticker of the Moodle homepage and ISD news. Please note this will not impact Moodle LSA or Snapshots.

 

Additional Functionality (LTI’s, Plugins and Upgrades)

The Moodle team will continue to work on aspects of the cloud platform over the next few months. However, the completion of the deployment will now enable members of the team to focus on the backlog of requests that we have received.

These requests for plugins and LTI’s originate both from individuals as well as from project teams and COVID working groups. While we can give no specific timeline for individual items, we are aiming to deliver the majority of known plugin and LTI requests, before the start of session.

Please note that all new additional items must be rigorously tested by the Moodle team, to ensure they do not impact the existing Moodle platform and the data it contains.  Once testing is complete, a decision is made based on the results, as to whether the requested feature can be deployed safely onto the UCL Moodle platform. If you have any specific requests for feature or plugins in Moodle please follow our Moodle customisation instructions at the customisation wiki page.

 

Moodle/Portico Enrolment Block

Moodle has now been connected to the 20/21 enrolment data from SITS. The Portico Enrolment block will be available in Moodle from Monday 17th August to allow course enrolment mappings to commence. For full details on configuring enrolments please refer the following wiki page M06a – Portico enrolments.

 

Moodle 3.9 upgrade

The Moodle team are planning to upgrade from our current version of Moodle 3.7 to Moodle 3.9 prior to the December 2020 closure. More specific information around this deployment will be announced soon.

 

If you have any queries or concerns, please contact moodleproject@ucl.ac.uk

Digital Education

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