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‘Advanced Moodle Quiz and Question Bank’ self-paced course

By i.niculescu, on 14 December 2023

We are pleased to introduce the ‘Advanced Moodle Quiz and Question Bank’ self-paced course which is now available at https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=40483 

This course is aimed at academics and professional services staff who want to deepen their use of Moodle to create and manage quizzes.

The estimated completion time is 2 to 3 hours. We’ve designed it with flexibility in mind, allowing you to progress through the material in smaller, digestible chunks that fit into your busy schedule.

This is an exciting opportunity to learn how to:

  • Confidently manage the Moodle question bank interface.
  • Organise question banks clearly with categories and tags.
  • Use Moodle’s advanced quiz settings to make your tests more engaging.
  • Analyse quiz results to improve your questions and teaching methods.
  • Build a Moodle quiz that uses advanced features effectively.

The course includes step-by-step guides, links to further resources and knowledge-check quizzes. You also have the option to receive a certificate at the end of the course.

After completing the course, staff can get further support by getting in touch by email via digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

This version of the course will be further developed during term 2 as we receive feedback and input from the UCL community. We will make sure that everyone will be notified when new materials will be added to the course.

P.S: A workshop version of this course will also become available from January 2024. More info to follow!

Getting Started with Moodle and Lecturecast (self-paced courses)

By i.niculescu, on 5 September 2023

The ‘Getting Started with Moodle’ course has been updated in light of the Moodle 4.2 upgrade*. Additionally, we are pleased to introduce the ‘Getting Started with Lecturecast (Echo360)’ course.

These two self-paced courses cover the basics of using Moodle and Lecturecast (Echo360). They are aimed at UCL staff who are new to Moodle and Lecturecast as well as those wishing to brush up on their knowledge.

The courses provide a series of video and written guides, links to further resources and interactive activities. As they complete the course, staff are encouraged to practice using a Moodle Test course.

*Please note, the ‘Getting Started with Moodle‘ course does not focus on the Moodle 4.2 upgrade, for guidance and updates about this, please use the Moving to Moodle 4.2 self-paced course https://42-training.preview-moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=15

Getting started with Moodle

The estimated completion time is up to 2 hours or 3 hours if the assessment is completed. The course covers how to:

  • Navigate: overview of how to navigate the Moodle homepage and course page
  • Build: learn how to add resources and activities
  • Access: give students and colleagues access to your course

The course can be accessed via the following link https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=24915

Please note this is a self-paced course which you can complete in your own time. You also have the option to receive a certificate at the end of the course.

After completing the course, staff can get further support by getting in touch via email or by booking a 15 min consultancy session.

Getting started with Lecturecast (Echo360)

The estimated completion time is 1:30 hours, and the course covers the following:

  • Lecturecast Overview
  • 3-step training guide for beginners
  • Advance training

The course can be accessed via the following link Course: Getting started with Lecturecast (Echo360) (ucl.ac.uk)

Lecturecast online live training

In anticipation of the year ahead, we are also offering online live training sessions to those engaged in preparation for next year’s Lecturecast content. Moreover, we’re committed to tailoring this training to address other pertinent needs within the Lecturecast (Echo360) platform.

If you’re interested or know colleagues who could benefit, kindly complete the form, and we’ll contact you shortly.

Countdown to Moodle 4: Ready, Set, Demo!

By Aurelie, Jason R Norton, Kerry and Eliot Hoving, on 30 May 2023

Welcome back to our fortnightly news update, spotlighting the eagerly awaited Moodle 4 upgrade. Each day brings us closer to this landmark development, and the anticipation continues to build. 

Sprint Update and Progress 

In the current sprint, we have made considerable progress on various elements of the new UCL Theme and its alignment with UCL’s design requirements. This means our theme will align with the UCL brand guidelines and design principles to make the UCL Moodle feel part of the UCL based web experience. 

Our technical team, including developers, analysts, and infrastructure experts, is diligently working on the Moodle software. They’re going through the code, running automated tests, resolving issues, and preparing our systems on Amazon Web Services (AWS), a cloud-based platform we use for our digital resources, for future stress tests next month. In addition, they’re assisting other team members as they add new features and improvements to Moodle 4.2. They’re also ensuring that our current Moodle 3.11 system is running smoothly. 

Our team is particularly excited about the launch of the ‘Train the Trainer’ workshops, that will be kicking off today. This three-hour online workshop is designed to equip departmental trainers with the knowledge to navigate the upgraded Moodle 4.2 and pass that knowledge on to their teams. In addition to the live online workshop, participants will have access to an array of support resources to aid them through the transition. 

Demo.Preview Moodle Instance available!! 

Today’s big news: our Demo Preview is live as of the 30th of May! Tutors and course administrators can now explore the upgraded Moodle 4.2 interface, allowing them to preview how their courses will appear post-upgrade. We urge everyone to seize this opportunity to familiarise themselves with the new layout and features in preparation for the late-July upgrade of our production environment. 

Moodle dashboard

What is 4-demo.preview-moodle.ucl.ac.uk? 

This restricted-access instance of Moodle is a copy of our production environment that has been upgraded to Moodle 4.2 and has the new UCL Moodle theme applied (in development). 

This demo.preview instance of Moodle is to give you early access to:  

  1. Experience Moodle 4.2 and its new navigation. 
  2. Experiment the new features that we have highlighted in our previous blogs e.g., improved question bank. 
  3. See how your Moodle courses will look after the late-July upgrade. 
  4. Plan any changes that you may wish to make to your courses. 
  5. Provide feedback on the new UCL Theme via a dedicated form that can be accessed from the bottom banner which is displayed on every page. 

Important notes about 4-demo.preview-moodle.ucl.ac.uk 

While we have made this instance available for you to experience Moodle 4.2 and the new UCL theme, there are several important caveats that users need to be aware of. 

  1. The demo.preview instance will be Moodle 4.2: this will be the version of Moodle that goes live in the late-July upgrade 
  2. The demo.preview instance will be WIPED and UPDATED every fortnight. This means anything you do within the preceding two weeks will be lost. The demo.preview instance should be used for testing and learning only. It should not be used as a “live” environment in any way. The team will signpost this via a banner visible on every page. 
  3. As part of the fortnightly demo.preview WIPE, the Moodle teams will deploy code fixes to both Moodle and to the new UCL theme. 
  4. The new UCL theme is still in active beta development with an intended change freeze to occur from the 30th of June. Prior to that date, all elements of the theme (colour, layout, etc) should be considered as beta and subject to possible change. Our development partners are actively working on feedback already received and changes will deploy as of the fortnightly WIPE. 
  5. The demo.preview is running on a reduced infrastructure. We do not yet have a measure of how many users may access the site, so we will need to adjust the resources for demo.preview as we receive updated metrics. Because of this, you may experience an initial slowness to the site, but we will aim to increase resources as we monitor the load. The speed of this Moodle instance should not be used to compare to our production instance of Moodle which has significantly more resources available to it as well as auto-scaling. 

Moodle 4.2 Pre-release resource Wiki page 

The team have also created a Pre-release resource page, where you can find various resources, report issues and other relevant guidance. This resource and FAQs will grow over the next few months before transitioning to the new Moodle 4.2 resource centre. 

Self-paced course 

Moreover, we’re thrilled to announce the launch of the Moving to Moodle 4.2 training site today. This self-paced course is ideal for staff who may not be able to attend the trainer-led sessions in their respective departments. 

This course is designed to help you familiarise yourself with the new interface and features ahead of the official upgrade scheduled for the end of July. It provides the flexibility to set your own pace for learning and the convenience to revisit the materials as often as necessary.
Plus, you’ll receive a digital badge upon completion of the course as a recognition of your efforts! We believe this training will significantly improve your experience of the transition to Moodle 4.2. 

Moving to Moodle 4.2 course page

Getting in Touch 

Our Digital Education team is on hand to answer any questions or concerns you may have. Don’t hesitate to reach out to the Digital Education team. 

Stay tuned for our next update in a fortnight, where we’ll share more exciting news and progress on the Moodle 4 upgrade. Until then, happy moodling! 

The Virtual Learning Environments Team  

New digital skills training sessions released for Term 3

By Louise Pollock, on 17 February 2023

What’s on offerImage of two badges on a blazer. One of them says Digital Skills

ISD Digital Skills Development Team has released new dates for Term 3. Most of our sessions will be offered remotely using Microsoft Teams with some also on campus only. Scroll down for more!

See our latest schedule and details of how to book below.

We are offering a wide range of courses covering data analyis with SPSS, RStudio and Stata; productivity with Microsoft apps; multimedia and graphics creation; and much more.

New highlights include the following:

  • DSD: Enhancing the Accessibility of your Moodle Courses
  • DSD: User access and multiple instruments in REDCap
  • DSD: Managing participants in REDCap
  • DSD: Qualtrics tips and tricks
  • DSD: Scripting Stata’s new Tables and Collections.

What’s New? Learn Along Fridays!

As part of our never ending quest to promote digital skills at UCL, Jim Tyson will be hosting two sessions on 5 May covering topics that fall outside of our usual Digital Skills Development programme:
Zotero: Citation Power Moves (10 am – 12 pm) and Starting up right with Git, GitHub and RStudio (1 – 3 pm).

The first of these will be an opportunity for users with some basic Zotero knowledge to share what they do know and to learn new stuff.  Jim will start by giving a quick introduction to the Citation Style Language (CSL) which is a standard for specifying citation and referencing styles and to support that a brief outline of XML – the standard text-based language for representing all kinds of structured information.  This will also be an opportunity to share how we are using Zotero, to get support with any issues we are facing and to talk about Zotero training needs.  We would be pleased to talk about using Zotero for annotation and reporting for example.

The second session is rather different.  Many R data analysts would like to use git and git-hub with R and RStudio, but even after following online videos and guides, actually setting up your repositories and linking them to your RStudio projects can be a bit daunting; you may encounter problems that no one else has documented or be unsure of the best set up for your use case.  In this session, we will step through – collectively – installing the software (a desktop git client for example), creating projects in RStudio and on git-hub and then setting up a simple and effective workflow.  So this is a practical session where you should end up ready to roll with version control for your RStudio projects.

We hope these sessions will be informal, interactive and above all practically useful, so see you there!

How to book our scheduled sessions

As a reminder, please note that most of our events are interactive training sessions and are not recorded. Therefore, we ask that you please ensure you are able to attend before booking and cancel your place if you are no longer able to attend. If you have any accessibility requirements, please let us know by emailing the ISD Digital Skills Development mailbox in advance: isd-digiskills@ucl.ac.uk

Please ensure you are using Desktop@UCL or the UCL VPN when booking.

Prizes to be won!

We have new monthly term-time prizes to be won by staff and students who attend and evaluate our courses.  All you have to do to be in the running to win £20 ‘Love to Shop’ Gift Voucher is complete one of our training sessions, and submit our course evaluation form. The evaluation form should take no more than 1 minute to complete. Good luck!

Find out more

For more information on how to book and join a session on the day, please visit our Practical Course Information page.

Drop-ins

We are also hosting our usual weekly drop-in sessions remotely and on campus for those who would like individual support on a specific issue. The dates and times of the sessions are available on our ISD Digital Skills Development drop-in page.

More digital skills development opportunities…

Learn online with a vast range of high-quality video-based courses from LinkedIn Learning.  These cover technical skills but also business, personal and creative skills as well.  Visit the UCL LinkedIn Learning page to find out more.

 

Latest schedule:

TERM 3

Start date Start time End time Booking Link Venue
02/05/2023 10:00 11:15 DSD: Basic image editing using free tools This session will take place via MS Teams
02/05/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Basic video editing using iMovie on a Mac This session will take place via MS Teams
02/05/2023 14:00 16:00 DSD: In a Nutshell: Excel functions we should all know Rescheduled This session will take place via MS Teams
03/05/2023 11:00 13:00 DSD: Software for success: Survey tools This session will take place via MS Teams
03/05/2023 15:00 16:00 DSD: Word tips and tricks This session will take place via MS Teams
04/05/2023 10:00 17:00 DSD: Introduction to Matlab (Campus based) (1 of 2)  (To be rescheduled) Campus-based session
04/05/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Introduction to Stop Motion Animation (Campus based) Campus-based session
05/05/2023 10:00 12:00 Zotero: Citation Power Moves (booking via Eventbrite) Campus-based session
05/05/2023 13:00 15:00 Starting up right with Git, GitHub and RStudio (booking via Eventbrite) Campus-based session
09/05/2023 11:00 13:00 DSD: Charting with Excel This session will take place via MS Teams
09/05/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Digital book making This session will take place via MS Teams
09/05/2023 10:00 11:00 DSD: Podcasting made easy – workshop This session will take place via MS Teams
10/05/2023 11:00 12:00 DSD: Excel Essential Skills – WORKSHOP 1 (Campus based) Campus-based session
10/05/2023 12:00 13:00 DSD: Introduction to REDCap for research This session will take place via MS Teams
11/05/2023 14:00 15:15 DSD: Creating accessible PowerPoint presentations This session will take place via MS Teams
11/05/2023 10:00 17:00 DSD: Introduction to Matlab (Campus based) (2 of 2) (To be rescheduled) Campus-based session
25/04/2023 11:00 13:00 DSD: Pivot Tables in Excel – Workshop This session will take place via MS Teams
16/05/2023 12:00 13:00 DSD: PowerPoint for Researchers and Presenters: Words, Images and More This session will take place via MS Teams
16/05/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Filming advice for a short film This session will take place via MS Teams
18/05/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Creating Infographics using free web-based tools This session will take place via MS Teams
18/05/2023 12:00 13:00 DSD: Qualtrics tips and tricks This session will take place via MS Teams
23/05/2022 17:00 20:00 DSD: An Introduction to R with Rstudio (Campus based) 1of 2 Campus-based session
23/05/2022 14:00 15:30 DSD: Creating accessible Word documents This session will take place via MS Teams
23/05/2023 14:00 15:30 DSD: Managing your digital profile and social media presence This session will take place via MS Teams
23/05/2023 10:00 11:00 DSD: Mentimeter for Continuous Module Dialogue (CMD) This session will take place via MS Teams
24/05/2023 11:00 12:00 DSD: Excel Essential Skills – WORKSHOP 2 Campus-based session
24/05/2024 14:00 15:00 DSD: Online social interaction platforms – Cancelled, register interest here for the next one!
25/05/2023 17:00 20:00 DSD: An Introduction to R with Rstudio (Campus based) 2 of 2 Campus-based session
25/05/2023 14:00 16:00 DSD: Getting Started with SPSS (Campus based) P1 Campus-based session
25/05/2023 14:00 15:30 DSD: Make a short film using your iPhone This session will take place via MS Teams
DSD: Planning a short film Add your name to the waiting list for the next session.
30/05/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Design an impactful research poster using UCL templates This session will take place via MS Teams
30/05/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Excel tips and tricks This session will take place via MS Teams
DSD: Record a narration over your PowerPoint on a PC Add your name to the waiting list for the next session.
31/05/2023 12:00 13:00 DSD: Managing participants in REDCap This session will take place via MS Teams
31/05/2023 10:00 11:00 DSD: User access and multiple instruments in REDCap This session will take place via MS Teams
01/06/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: An introduction to free graphic design tools This session will take place via MS Teams
01/06/2023 14:00 16:00 DSD: Getting Started with SPSS (Campus based) P2 Campus-based session
01/06/2023 10:00 12:00 DSD: Scripting Stata Graphs This session will take place via MS Teams
06/06/2023 10:00 10:45 DSD: In a Nutshell: Git version control
06/06/2023 11:00 14:00 DSD: Dive into Git version control This session will take place via MS Teams
06/06/2023 10:00 12:00 DSD: In a Nutshell: Excel functions we should all know This session will take place via MS Teams
06/06/2023 15:00 16:00 DSD: Word tips and tricks This session will take place via MS Teams
07/06/2023 10:00 11:00 DSD: Best practice for video captions and transcripts This session will take place via MS Teams
07/06/2023 14:00 15:00 DSD: Explore the potential of UCL Mediacentral This session will take place via MS Teams
07/06/2023 11:00 12:00 DSD: Excel Essential Skills – WORKSHOP 3 Campus-based session
08/06/2023 10:00 12:00 DSD: Format your Thesis (Windows) This session will take place via MS Teams
08/06/2023 14:00 16:00 DSD: Scripting Stata’s new Tables and Collections (Campus based) Campus-based session
07/06/2023 12:00 14:00 DSD: VLookup in Excel – workshop This session will take place via MS Teams
12/06/2023 14:00 15:30 DSD: Enhancing the accessibility of your Moodle courses (Campus based) Campus-based session

 

 

Assessment hackathon event – Collaboratively exploring the digital assessment challenge  

By Anisa Patel, on 28 March 2022

“In a digital era, how can we design assessments differently and better?” 

This is the question that a group of more than 35 key partners in UCL’s teaching and assessment community gathered to consider last week. Hosted jointly by ARENA and Digital Education, the group comprised academics, students, the Digital Assessment team, Faculty Learning Technologists, professional services staff and representatives from UNIwise (suppliers of our digital assessment platform, AssessmentUCL).  

Attendees were split into teams of mixed disciplines to share their experience of assessment at UCL and bring forward ideas and recommendations on how digital assessments could look in the future. 

The breadth of representation made for a rich and varied discussion and enabled each partner to express their principle areas of focus: 

  • From our student representatives we heard a genuine desire both for continued improvement enabled through assessment feedback not just marks and for assessments to test modern-day marketplace skills (e.g. distilling information, writing reports).   
  • Our academic representatives expressed their overarching concern to do the right thing by our students: seeking to understand and share methods and tools for designing assessments to help students in future life.
  • Our Digital Assessment team focussed on ways to build and share capabilities within faculties enabling us to connect academics, students and technologists and ways to understand and share how technology can support innovative assessment design both now and in the future.  
  • Like our students, our Faculty Learning Technologists focussed on the importance of feedback (or “feedforward”) which is easily accessible, timely and meaningful: enabling students to act upon it.  
  • Our Professional Services representatives focused on how to connect people to ensure that fantastic work around assessment design is shared widely and to ensure that academics and faculty teams are all aware of the tools and supporting resources available to them. 
  • Our UNIwise representatives were interested in all points raised: keen to consider how future enhancements to the AssessmentUCL platform might facilitate the continued evolvement of digital assessment. 

Group discussions were wide ranging and often raised more questions than answers but surfaced a clear desire to continue the conversations about the issues raised and to focus on how we share knowledge to maximise the depth of expertise in assessment design across departments. 

Next steps 

As a result of the discussion, Arena and the Digital Assessment team will focus their attention on the following key themes over the coming months:  

  1. Enabling assessment design knowledge sharing: Helping academics and others involved in assessment design to understand what is possible and how to achieve it. Ensuring clear information channels and networks are established to enable academics and others involved in assessment design to share experience and learn from the experience of others as well as raising awareness of existing resources and support.  
  2. Continuing to improve the markers journey: Exploring how to enable flexibility in marking where one may allocate all work to all markers and each takes one off the top of the pile and can go to the next unmarked (or not yet started to mark script), to ensure that there is no loss of marks when marking allocations change pre/post marking. 
  3. Continuing the conversation: Building on the foundations and links established during this event, we plan to set up a learning lab through which staff and students can continue the discussion around how we can design digital assessments differently and better using existing mechanisms like the Chart tool, as well as rethinking how assessments are delivered currently to make them more applicable to real-world situtations and careers.
  4. Working collaboratively with suppliers and academic colleagues to shape enhancements / design solutions to particular issues: We hope to connect key members in Departments with our suppliers Uniwise to workshop and work through desirability and current system functionalities.

If you would like to join events like this in the future, please let us know by contacting assessments@ucl.ac.uk.

Global Search in Moodle

By Rod Digges, on 22 November 2021

Moodle’s newly introduced global search function allows anyone in Moodle to locate a range of content including documents, forum posts, descriptions of activities and more. Search is accessed by clicking on the magnifying glass symbol found at the top right of pages within Moodle.

Staff and student searches are restricted to courses and areas within those courses where their Moodle permissions give access, i.e. courses on which they are enrolled either as students, teaching or administrative staff and where searched materials are visible to them. Students, for example, would not have search results returned from hidden courses or hidden sections/content within visible courses.

After entering a search term and pressing the return key, results are shown with additional fields allowing searches to be more narrowly focused. In addition, a range of search modifiers including wild card, boolean and proximity search characters give even more ways to refine searches.

For details of the tool and how to refine searches see this guide.