Following a request for a dedicated Library Staff role in Moodle, the Digital Education Support team have created this role at course and category level with customised permissions for the needs of library staff. These permissions include posting to Forums and adding the Library Resources and Library Search blocks, as well as resources and activities such as Books, Files and Reading Lists.

For library staff needing basic Moodle guidance, we recommend the Getting Started with Moodle course. However, as the role’s permissions do not include grading or enrolling other users, this removes the requirement to complete the more advanced Administering your Moodle training for category level enrolment. At category level the role still needs to be requested by a Head of Department or with their written authorisation, using this MyServices form for category enrolments.

If you have any questions about the new role, please contact us using our Staff Query Form.

The Digital Learning Environments team is thrilled to introduce the new staff view of the Feedback tracker. This feature allows staff to view an overview of  assessments from all their Moodle courses on a single page.

Assessments are displayed by academic year, term and assessment type. Each assessment includes a count of submissions, applied extensions or overrides for Moodle assignments and quizzes, and a marking progress indicator.

To access the Feedback tracker, simply log on to Moodle, click your profile image in the top right and select Feedback tracker.

The new staff view follows on from the launch of the staff marking block and student view. You can read the Feedback tracker wiki guide to learn more.

Next, the team will be working on an institutional report.

If you have any questions or suggestions about the Feedback tracker, please contact the Digital Education team via My Services.

Global deactivation of Portico Mappings

Portico mappings on Moodle pages were globally deactivated on 26th February 2025.

Enrolled students will retain access to their Moodle courses.

How will this impact students on my course?

• Students who are already enrolled on a Moodle course WILL continue to have access to that Moodle course.
• Students who join a Module on Portico WILL NOT be automatically enrolled onto the corresponding Moodle course.  Students can still be manually enrolled.
• Students who leave the module on Portico WILL NOT be automatically unenrolled.

Moodle and Portico mappings

If Portico mappings are active on a Moodle course, student enrolments on that course are automatically updated overnight to mirror the student registrations held in Portico.  Consequently, students who change courses or withdraw from their studies are automatically enrolled (or unenrolled) from the Moodle course when their Portico record is changed, and according to their Portico status code.  This is desirable when students change/drop modules within the first few weeks of term, however, if students are automatically unenrolled after they have been awarded grades, these grades become inaccessible, which can be very problematic.

Note: the ‘inaccessible’ grades, submissions and logged activity are not deleted.  These can be accessed again if the student is re-enrolled manually, with the option ‘Recover users old grades if possible’ ticked, however while a student is no longer enrolled on a course, there is no way to view their content.

Why deactivate Portico mappings?

To reduce the likelihood of the problem of ‘inaccessible/missing grades’ from occurring, Portico mappings have been globally deactivated on all Moodle courses.

Information on the global deactivation of Portico mappings is also available on the wiki guide – Deactivating Portico enrolments.

Can I re-activate Portico mappings on my courses?

Doing so may inadvertently enrol (or unenrol) students whose data is not accurate in Portico.  Before making any changes, please contact us via MyServices.

The Digital Education team are unable to manually unenrol students from Moodle courses while they remain registered against the course item in Portico.

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.

Back in early November I attended ePIC 2024: Opening and scaling up digital credential initiatives, the 22nd International Conference on Open learning and recognition practices, technologies and policies.

Unsurprisingly there was a lot of discussion about emerging AI tools and the roles they could play in this space, but what did come as a surprise was digital badges.

Back in 2010 the Mozilla Foundation and MacArthur Foundation developed open badge prototypes and in October 2012, the Mozilla Foundation launched the Public Beta of the Open Badge Infrastructure. Since then over 43 million digital badges have been issued worldwide.

The white paper Open Badges for Lifelong Learning (updated 2012) authored by The Mozilla Foundation and Peer 2 Peer University,
in collaboration with The MacArthur Foundation noted that badges were specifically able to support the Capturing and translating the learning across contexts, Encouraging and motivating participation and learning outcomes, and Formalizing and enhancing existing social aspects of informal and interest-driven learning.

Updates to the the Open Badges standard have enabled embedded evidence, endorsements, version control and internationalization (Open Badges 2.0), and the facilitation of federated backpacks via the Open Badges 2.1 (Badge Connect) API. By 2021 24 products from 19 organizations headquartered in 8 countries that have gone through the IMS conformance certification process for Open Badges v2.x.

However, understanding the “value” of a badge with regards to credentially in educational settings has proven difficult.

In December 2024, the implementation guide for the Open Badges 3.0 and Comprehensive Learner Records 2.0 standards was published.

Section 1.5 states :

The core of both Open Badges and Comprehensive Learner Record is an assertion about an achievement. As defined in Open Badges Specification v3.0 and Comprehensive Learner Record Standard v2.0, an assertion is specific to one learner. It contains a claim that the learner has made a particular achievement and metadata about the achievement, the issuer, and the learner, including possible evidence that provides support for the claim. (https://www.imsglobal.org/spec/ob/v3p0/impl)

This is something to get excited about. Updates to the metadata capability enable the inclusion of multimedia content that make it possible to embed evidence within the badge. Additionally, the standard has adopted the use of the W3C verifiable credentials data model and introduced the use of Decentralised Identifiers (DIDs) gives badge earners more control over their personal data and how it is shared. It is also now easier and more transparent to revoke badges which may be outdated or have expired in some way, potentially increasing trust in the potential.

At ePIC2024 there were a few projects which looked to leverage these new capabilities to support lifelong learning initiatives. One example is Odznaka+, co-funded by the European Union that has expanded upon the open Badge standard. The application enables the issuing, collecting, storing and sharing digital badges and equivalent PDF certificates. It allows users to digitally certify different types of skills and achievements.

This new generation of digital badges may be able to address some of the concerns raised in the Landscape report undertaken by the UK Badging Commission on the trustworthiness and verification of badged credentials.

In addition to verification, data sovereignty was a key discussion point. Who owns the credential, the learner of the issuer? Who chooses what information is shared and with whom?

The UK Badging Commission recognise that digital skills wallets are an ideal platform for communicating a comprehensive picture of an individual’s skills and experiences from a range of learning opportunities. These can be facilitated through the new Open Badges 3.0 and Comprehensive Learner Records 2.0 standards in transferable and verfiable ways.

Paragraph 15 of the COUNCIL RECOMMENDATION of 16 June 2022 on a European approach to micro-credentials for lifelong learning and employability (2022/C 243/02) begins:

Education and training systems should cater for the diverse individual needs, abilities and capacities of all learners. They should also offer learning opportunities to all, including in non-formal and informal settings as underlined by the Council conclusions on equity and inclusion in education and training in order to promote educational success for all (11).

Most importantly this learning should be portable, in the recommendations portability is defined as:

‘Portability’ means the ability for a credential-holder to store their micro-credentials in a system of their choice, to share the credential with a party of their choice (whether national or transnational) and for all parties in the exchange to be able to understand the content and verify the authenticity of the credentials. This enables portability between and within education and training sectors, in the labour market and across countries.

The new generation of badges and associated learner records could become a key tool in facilitating these requirements.

What does that potentially mean for UCL?

In addition to our degree programmes, UCL provides a wide variety of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) opportunities. Could these be credentialed and verfiable digital badges to make them a transferable microcredential where appropriate?

Should we be looking to credentialise smaller pieces of CPD offered both internally and externally to better facilitate skills recognition and lifelong learning?

As stated by a speaker at ePIC2024 “we do not have a skills shortage, but a recognition of skills shortage”.

Could this new generation of badges help address this recognition issue?

References:

• Blog post: Why Open Badges 3.0 Matters
• Open Badges – History
• Blog post: Reflecting on the Open Badges journey
• Open Badges Implementation Guide – Spec version 3.0
• Odznaka+ Application
• Badging Commission
• Council Recommendation of 16 June 2022 on a European approach to micro-credentials for lifelong learning and employability 2022/C 243/02

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