Moodle Exam guard

Exam guard will prevent users from editing their course from 10 minutes before the start of a Moodle quiz until 10 minutes after the quiz has finished. Exam guard does this by looking at the “open the quiz”/ “close the quiz”  setting when a Moodle quiz is created. The course editing freeze will only apply where the Moodle quiz is open for less than 5 hours as it is designed to target Moodle quizzes being used for controlled condition exams.  To avoid any disruptions, we recommend setting the “Open the quiz” time to match the exam start time when creating the quiz, as well as leaving the quiz availability setting on “Show on course page” rather than “Hide on course page”. 

A banner will appear at the top of your course when Exam guard is in effect.

For further details, please refer to our wiki guide.

23/24 Moodle course read-only date

The read-only date for many Moodle courses from the 23/24 academic year will be activated on 29th November, 2024.  Once the Read-Only date is reached a course becomes uneditable.  If you will need any 23/24 courses to remain editable after 29th November, please adjust the read only date on the course as needed, and while the course is editable.

For guidance on amending the read-only date before it is globally activated, please refer to our Moodle miniguide.

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

Kind regards

Digital Education team

Portico mappings on Moodle pages were globally deactivated on 1 November 2024.

AI is a fast-moving field, and just a year after we wrote the text for the UCL Generative AI hub, some of it was looking out of date. We wanted to give it a refresh, but also make it less text-heavy. One of the team suggested we might do a series of short (90 second) video clips, similar to the popular UCL Micro-CPD series.

This was a great idea, but videos of real people always cause a problem. They are time-consuming to make, but they are even harder to update. You have to get the same people together again, and editing in a new clip can break the continuity of the original. Even something simple as wearing the same clothes can be a challenge. The web is full of listings of continuity bloopers, even for major movies.

So we looked for an alternative, and saw a growing market in synthetic video generators. One of them, Synthesia, was co-founded by UCL’s Professor Lourdes Agapito, so it seemed a natural choice for us to try. We particularly valued Synthesia’s extensive discussion around its own views on ethical AI use, in-keeping with UCL’s values.

So, we started building a trial video in Synthesia. At the start, it feels like a bit of a cut-down PowerPoint. You have a scene (similar to a slide) and you can add text and graphics to it, with animations. But then you can do something that PowerPoint doesn’t do; add one of many avatars to the scene. Then at the bottom (similar to where PowerPoint notes would be) you add the text that the avatar will speak. You then join your objects on the slide to the point in the text when they should appear. And for a simple video, that is it.

You can see how this looks in the screenshot below:

Once done, you can preview how your avatar will sound. This is useful, as the AI-generated speech will not be perfect. Where it doesn’t sound quite right, you can add an extra pause, or give specific diction that it should use to say a word or phrase. Once you are happy with the speech, press a button and your video will be generated in the background. Our 90-second videos took about 10-15 minutes to be ready to download.

You can watch the first video that we made below, and visit the UCL Generative AI hub to see the full set of eight videos.

The nice thing about this is that when you need to make a change, you just open it up, change your graphic or text, and generated the video again. It’s really simple – in fact, getting the captions right for each video was the most time-consuming part of the process. I’d estimate each video took about a day to discuss, write, make, amend, caption and deploy.

For us, this is a bit of an experiment. We know some people prefer video to text, and vice versa. But we’ve got very little experience of how people – particularly our university community – will respond to synthetic videos. If you have any thoughts on whether this format works well for you, or how it could be improved, please do let us know in the comments below.

As we approach the busy part of the semester, we would like to share a few important reminders about using Lecturecast on Moodle. Recently, we’ve been receiving several questions from both teaching staff and students regarding access to videos and permissions. Below are some key points to ensure smooth access and a seamless experience for everyone. 

How do I get instructor access to my Lecturecast section(s)?

For a given course, Lecturecast activity link(s) need to be added within Moodle and then mapped to the appropriate Lecturecast section. Roles and associated rights within a Lecturecast section are assigned at the point of clicking through the link(s). Rights assigned are: 

Students and Non-editing Tutors on the Moodle course → Students on the linked Lecturecast section
Tutors and Course Administrators on the Moodle course → Instructors on the linked Lecturecast section 

You can find out how to link a Lecturecast section on a Moodle course in the Linking Moodle to Lecturecast training guides. 

Why can’t my students see any videos on Lecturecast? 

Another key point to keep in mind is that teachers must actively make Lecturecast videos available to students. Once a recording is uploaded, it won’t immediately be visible to students until the teacher selects the option to publish it. Make sure to double-check the video settings in Lecturecast to confirm that the content is properly shared with the class.

Additional Reminders 

• If you have selected the ‘Auto available’ option on Lecturecast Scheduler when you schedule the capture, then your capture will be made available to your student automatically when your capture has been processed. 
   
• If you have entered Lecturecast (Echo360) through Moodle, you most likely follow a Moodle LTI activity link that puts you on the course section page that is associated with the Moodle course. If you have logged into Lecturecast (Echo360) directly, then you will be on the ‘Media Library’ page, then you will need to click on the ‘Courses’ tab and select the course tile to access the course section page.  

Please visit this wiki page (Learning Lecturecast Basics) to get a basic understanding of how to navigate around Lecturecast (Echo360). 

The Digital Learning Environments (DLE) team is excited to announce the launch of several new features to support assessment on Moodle: 

• Assessment categorisation  
• Feedback tracker report 
• Mark transfer update 

Assessment categorisation 

Staff can now indicate whether an assessment is summative or formative on Moodle. This will make assessment requirements clearer to students.  This feature will also enable more useful assessment reporting for Departments and Faculties.

Assessment categorisation is available for the following activities, with more to follow: 

• Moodle assignment 

• Moodle quiz 

• Turnitin assignment 

• Moodle workshop 

Staff will be prompted to add an assessment category when creating or editing an assessment.

Categories can also be added in bulk for all assessments on a course using the date management report tool.

Assessments will be automatically listed as summative where staff have mapped their assessments to Portico using the Mark Transfer tool. So staff preparing courses should map their assessments early and then use assessment categorisation to indicate any formative assessments.

You can learn more by reading the Assessment categorisation documentation. 

Feedback tracker report 

The Feedback tracker is a new report on Moodle that shows students the status of their Moodle assessment submissions and feedback on one single page. 

The report will make it easier for students to access feedback. 

It will also give students and staff a clearer view of feedback turnaround. A status is shown for when a student submits on time or late, and whether feedback is returned within UCL’s policy of 20 working days. 

The report will also show whether an assessment is summative or formative based on Assessment categorisation.

Staff can customise the report with the option to add additional information or exclude items.

The following video provides an example of how the Feedback tracker can be accessed, and configured (6 mins 48 seconds).

The DLE team will focus next on early life support for the Feedback tracker. Followed by developing a Department report to allow Departments and Faculties to better monitor feedback turnaround and to improve marking workload planning.  

You can learn more by reading our pre-release blog, and the Feedback tracker documentation. 

Mark transfer update 

Finally, if you wish to transfer marks for Late Summer Assessments from Moodle, it is now possible to do so with the Moodle-Portico Marks Transfer tool. 

This works in a similar way to marks transfer for standard assessments. However, when accessing the dashboard for completing the set up, you choose the Re-assessments page. When transferring marks, they will be sent to the relevant reassessment record in Portico. 

For more information, see the Reassessments How to Guide on the Marks Transfer wiki. 

Should you experience any issues using the tool, please check the FAQs wiki page. 

If you are unable to resolve the issue, you can request support as follows: 

• For any issues with Portico data, contact examboards@ucl.ac.uk 

• For issues with incorrect assessment set up, contact lifecycle@ucl.ac.uk 

• For general questions, feedback or suggestions, contact your Faculty Champion 

Questions and support

For any issues with using these new features, please contact Digital Education via MyServices

Next week the Digital Learning Environments team will launch a new Feedback Tracker Report in Moodle. This report will show students the status of their assessments and feedback and is inspired by the manual feedback tracker created by the School of Pharmacy in 2023. 

Please note you can click on any image in this blog post to expand the image.

The initial release will only display the following Moodle activities: 

• Moodle Assignment 

• Turnitin Assignment 

• Moodle quiz 

• Moodle lesson (where graded) 

• Moodle Grade items 

Student View 

Students will access the Feedback Tracker Report via the Feedback tracker link on the Moodle dashboard or via their user profile menu – both access options are illustrated. 

Access via the Moodle dashboard 

Access via the user profile menu  

The Feedback Tracker Report gives students a personalised view of their assessments. If a student has adjusted submission times, the adjusted submission times will be shown to them. 

The report displays all courses that a student is enrolled upon, showing all assessments that are not set to be hidden from students.  

If an assessment has been categorised as summative or formative, either manually or by using the Marks Transfer feature, this information will also be displayed. 

 

For each assessment, the following information is shown: 

• Assessment Name: displayed as a link to the assessment. 

• Submission Date: The date the submission is due. If a student has an extension, their individual submission date will show.   

• Student Submission indicator: 

• • Submitted (green) = student submitted before the assessment due date. 

• • Submitted late (yellow) = student submitted after the assessment due date. 

• • Overdue (red) = student has not submitted, and the assessment due date has passed. 

• Feedback Due date: This date is based upon UCL’s academic policy on Assessment feedback requirement that feedback should be delivered within 20 UCL working days excluding all UCL holidays.  

• Feedback Status Indicator: The Feedback indicator will display:  

• • Released (green) = Feedback has been released within 20 working days from the assessment due date. 

• • Released late (yellow) = Feedback has been released but it took longer than 20 working days from the assessment due date.  

• • Overdue (red) = Feedback has not been released and more than 20 working days has passed from the assessment due date. 

•  Staff can add the following information to their course assessments via the configuration page: 

• • Feedback method – the kind of feedback being returned e.g. written, oral, video, in-class. This helps signpost the different kinds of feedback students are receiving.  

• • Contact – a staff contact point for students. 

• • Additional information – any note relevant to students, for example you could explain that cohort feedback was provided in a Moodle forum post and link to that post.  

Staff View 

Staff will be able to view a course level Feedback Tracker Report by going to the Reports tab for any Moodle course and clicking the Feedback tracker link as illustrated below. From this view, staff will be able to select to view as a course administrator or view as a specific student on that course. Staff will only see assessments for the course that they are accessing. 

 

 

Administrator feedback tracker configuration page 

Every course will have its own Feedback Tracker configuration page. From this page course administrators and tutors will have a full unfiltered view of the assessments on the course and will be able to select overrides on features such as visibility. Course administrators will also use this page to add any of the free text fields that are available into the report. 

From this page, Course Administrators can: 

• Hide assessments from the Feedback Tracker Report, these will still appear on the course but won’t appear in the student report. This allows staff to focus student attention on the most important assessments. 

• Indicate where an assessment has received cohort feedback. This will change the feedback status for the assessment to “Released”. 

Future Developments 

The Digital Learning Environment team will continue to work on the Feedback Tracker Report including: 

• Early life support and bug/issue resolution as required. 

• Developing a staff version of the reporting dashboard that will contain additional information. The team will be working on the specification within our next Agile termly increment. 

• Add additional functionality to the feedback tracker report e.g. the ability to bring other non-Moodle assessment information from SITS. 

If you have any questions or feedback, please contact the Digital Education team via MyServices.