Digital accessibility materials are now available on Getting Started with Moodle!

The Digital Learning Environments and Digital Accessibility teams decided to embed skills in digital accessibility for Moodle as part of Digital Education Support’s training for new staff members who need to design and/or create Moodle courses. Materials include a section which has been added to encourage staff to begin to consider why accessibility matters for course design and creation on Moodle from both a legal and moral standpoint.

As part of this section, we have added 4 interviews with UCL students with lived experience of accessibility challenges with Moodle (with captions/transcripts) and academic case studies from 3 of our accessibility champions.

Screen shot of students being interviewed about their SoRAs and digital accessibility challenges.

More practical advice is embedded in another section on content creation, tools and resources. There is also a handy checklist for creating accessible content, advice for STEM subjects and guidance on using third party tools or external resources.

As digital education specialists, we know a fair amount about the importance of digital accessibility to promote inclusive teaching, learning and assessment already. However, we have learnt a lot ourselves from this project, especially from the inspiring students and staff we interviewed. So please do share with any colleagues you feel would benefit!

Kerry, Ben and Georgia

The Digital Learning Environments team are delighted to announce the release of the Forum activity block on UCL Moodle. The new feature will go live on UCL Moodle on the 20th March 2025.

The Forum activity block gives you an overview of what people are talking about across your courses, along with the most popular discussion from the last 7 days.  

The block will only show standard Moodle forums and will not include posts from alternative forum plugins such as Advanced forums.  

Students and staff can see the block on the home page of Moodle when they log in. 

If you have any feedback or questions about the Forum activity block, please contact the Digital Education team via My Services. 

We are writing to inform you about an important update to our Moodle default settings. These changes are being made to align Moodle more consistently with UCL practices.

What is changing?

Users with Non-Editing Tutor roles will now be able to manage grades in Moodle assignments. This will allow them to set the marking workflow state on a Moodle assignment submission to Not marked, In marking, Marking completed, In review, Ready for release, and Released.

Previously they could only set the marking workflow state to Not marked, In marking, Marking completed.

Note. Non-Editing Tutors will now be able to release grades and feedback if they select the “Released” status.

Why are we making these changes?

Based on feedback from our users.

When will this take effect?

13th March 2025.

How will this benefit you?

Greater flexibility for marking teams.

Need help?

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Digital Education team via My Services.

The UCL Moodle team are delighted to announce a new Marking block for staff on the Moodle dashboard.

Previously, the My Feedback block on the Moodle dashboard was only accessible to students, providing them with a summary of up to five recent assessments with available feedback.

The latest update introduces a staff Marking block, allowing staff to see up to five summative assessments across Moodle that require marking. This new feature aims to streamline the marking process by making it easier for staff to access and manage their pending marking.

The Marking block includes Turnitin assignments, Moodle assignments, and Quiz assessments that are categorised as summative on Moodle. These assessments are from courses that have started and not yet ended, with an additional three-month extension to accommodate late summer assessments.

Assessments are organized by their due dates, ensuring that the most relevant marking is prominently displayed. To keep the information current, only assessments with due dates within the past two months or the upcoming month will be shown.

This update is part of the ongoing digital assessment workstream of the UCL Moodle team. It follows on from our recent Feedback tracker feature. If you have questions or would like to feedback on early UCL Moodle prototypes please contact the UCL Moodle team via the MyServices portal.

UCL Moodle will be updated to version 4.5 on the 2nd of January 2025. 

The main change staff will notice is that the Moodle assignment submissions interface has been revamped with a new full width display, fixed headers and footers that allow for better navigation, improved filtering as well as easy access to key actions at the top and bottom of the page.

Staff can learn more by watching Moodle’s Assignment improvements in Moodle 4.5 video.  

Other improvements include: 

• Students will now receive notifications when a Quiz is about to open, when an assignment is due (in 7 days or 48 hours) and also when an assignment is overdue. 

• Staff will be able to set assignment resubmissions to be offered automatically if students are allowed more than one attempt.  

• Staff will now be able to regrade specific questions in a Quiz and question categories can be organised using drag and drop or using the three dots action button (for accessibility requirements).  

• The Tiny MCE Editor will now include the option to record the screen and computer audio as well as record video. 

• There are several administrative enhancements, speed improvements and bug fixes. 

You can read more about the changes on Moodle’s 4.5 new features page.  

Please note that UCL has NOT enabled Moodle’s AI subsystems or subsections at this stage as our current focus is on improving UCL Moodle’s performance and reliability. However, those features may be reviewed in the future if there is sufficient demand 

We would like to introduce a new feature in Moodle that provides administrator roles (Course Administrators, Tutors, and Category Administrators etc.) greater flexibility in managing their courses. Previously, unlocking a course site set to Read-Only mode required assistance from our support team. With the new unfreeze functionality, this process is now simpler.

How to unfreeze your course

If your Moodle course site has been set to Read-Only mode, you can unfreeze it by clicking the Enable editing button in the Lifecycle block. A confirmation pop-up message will appear for you to proceed.

By default, the course will automatically revert to Read-Only mode the next day. While the new feature allows you to extend or disable this automatic reset, we strongly recommend using the Read-Only mode to avoid potential data loss within the Moodle courses. If you need to keep a course active indefinitely, it should either be placed in a Timeless category, or have no end date set in the course settings.

If you need additional assistance, please contact us via MyServices.