The Digital Education team is launching new Moodle training packages.

Who is this training for?

These training packages are aimed at staff who are comfortable navigating the Moodle interface and understand its basic functionalities.

It is aimed at both academic and professional services staff.

What does the training cover?

Moodle Advanced Quiz and Question Bank

• an overview of Moodle question types
• building a Moodle Quiz that uses advanced features
• accessible and inclusive quiz design considerations
• advanced quiz settings such as feedback, question randomisation, and adaptive mode
• an overview of the Question Bank interface
• how teams can manage question banks
• organising question banks clearly with categories and tag
• analysing question usage and quiz results

Moodle Gradebook

• an overview of the Gradebook interface
• basic functionalities and how to access key features
• advanced features such as grade calculations, scales, outcomes and customised reporting
• considerations for regular checks and maintenance of gradebooks

How can I learn?

Self-paced online course, workshops, or a combination!

The same information is covered by both the self-paced online courses and the online synchronous workshops, the only difference is the delivery mode.

How do I access the self-paced courses or book a workshop?

Self-paced courses

The estimated completion time for each course is between 2-3 hours.

• Advanced Quiz and Question Bank: https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=40483
• Moodle Gradebook: https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=40525

Online synchronous workshops (equivalent to self-paced courses)

You can register using MS Forms, this will automatically generate an Outlook calendar invite which includes all the necessary information for joining the workshop.

Each workshop is 90 minutes long and will take place online.

Advanced Quiz Management in Moodle

• 05.03.2024 – https://forms.office.com/e/7meqB3Pdpu
• 14.03.2024 – https://forms.office.com/e/3KjwTWsUbT

Question Bank & Question Analytics in Moodle

• 05.03.2024 – https://forms.office.com/e/LQjMxbykHq
• 14.03.2024 – https://forms.office.com/e/BLgytQaMC7

Moodle Gradebook

• 07.03.2024 https://forms.office.com/e/ZAwd0bEzPN
• 19.03.2024 https://forms.office.com/e/6CT1jCpF1p

Depending on your role, existing knowledge and availability, you can choose the combination which best suits your needs e.g. one workshop for Question Bank and self-paced course for Advanced Quiz. After completing the online courses or workshops, staff can get further support by getting in touch by email to digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

The training packages will be further developed as we receive feedback and input from the UCL community. Course participants will be notified when new materials will be added to the courses.

If you missed one of our workshops, please use the ‘Registration of interest’ form and we will contact you as soon as it becomes available again.

Portico mappings on Moodle pages were globally deactivated on 22nd February 2024.

Why is this change being made?  

The Flexible format plugin has reached end of life and is no longer supported by its maintainer. The plugin has multiple usability and accessibility bugs. The planned upgrade to Moodle 4.4 over the summer will further impact both the function and look of the plugin making the format unusable. 

What do staff need to do? 

Staff using the Flexible format should manually change their course format by the 19th July so they can ensure their course is correctly updated and so they can communicate guidance or notice to students on the course.  

After the 19th July, Flexible format will no longer be available and courses in this format will be automatically converted to the Topics format to ensure that the course continues to function for students and staff. This includes course from the current academic year and those from previous years. 

You can view which course format you are using by going to your course page and clicking settings. 

Under Course format you will see the format in use. 

Research by the Moodle UX team suggests many staff switched to the Flexible format for its visual appeal and to avoid accessibility issues in the Grid format. Recent updates to the Grid format have significantly improved its accessibility and in this respect it is now preferable to Flexible format.  Staff may be tempted to switch back to the Grid format. However, further research by the Moodle UX team shows that using images for each topic/week is not effective unless you take considerable time to design your images. In most cases, images take up space without providing meaningful information to students, or worse they are confusing to students. Staff can continue to use Grid format, however Moodle UX research shows using the Topics format is a better approach for academic courses. 

Before (Flexible format) 

After (Topics format) 

Changing course format will remove any section images, so staff should save these images prior to changing formats if they wish to re-use them.  

Staff can experiment with how their course looks in another course format using the 4-demo environment. 

Questions?  

If you have any questions or concerns, please get in touch with the Digital Education team. 

Add/Configure LTI External Tool

In Moodle 4.3 the add/configure “LTI External Tool” function is no longer accessed by opening the add Activity/Resource button.

The add/configure option is now located by going to Course navigation > More > LTI External tools.

Moodle 4.3 LTI category Level Restrictions

Moodle 4.3 brings the ability to restrict the visibility of LTI tools to any category within Moodle. This enables LTI tools that are faculty or departmentally licensed to be made visible to those specific categories in Moodle. Previously, LTI’s were restricted to either site wide or to specific courses. This could cause frustration in multiple configuration setups across many individual departmental courses. To make use of this function, please contact the Digital Education Support Team via digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk as restrictions are only available to site administrators.

Full Details of Moodle 4.3 changes to LTI External Tools can be found on Moodle Docs at the following URL https://docs.moodle.org/403/en/LTI_External_tools  a video covering these changes can also be viewed below.

UCL Moodle is being updated from Moodle 4.2 to Moodle 4.3 on Thursday January 4th 2024. The Digital Learning Environment team expects minimal disruption. 

Moodle is expected to be unavailable between midnight and 04:00am on Thursday January 4th 2024. 

The upgrade to Moodle 4.3 will bring several benefits including: 

• streamlined display of course activities including smaller icons, less white space, and a drop down menu for activity completion which should save screen space and improve the user experience on course pages, 
• the ability to add titles to text and media areas or “labels”, 
• quicker to access editing menus for visibility and completion criteria to make editing content easier for staff, 
• and a number of bug fixes and security updates. 

For a quick summary of the changes see Moodle’s new features page. Please note that UCL Moodle doesn’t use Matrix communication or MoodleNet. 

If you have any feedback or questions about the upgrade, please get in touch with the Digital Learning Environment team. 

Please note that the Read-Only dates for many Moodle courses from the 22/23 academic year will be activated in the next couple of weeks. Once the Read-Only date is reached a course becomes uneditable. If you still need any 22/23 course to be editable in the immediate future, please check the Read-Only date on the course and adjust it as needed.

For further details and guidance on amending the Read-Only date, please refer to the Moodle miniguide. If you still need additional assistance, please email us at digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk

Kind regards,

Digital Education team