The UCL main instance of Moodle (moodle.ucl.ac.uk) will be upgraded this summer from Moodle 3.11 to Moodle 4.2. The upgrade will take place in mid to late July of this year (2023).

The Road to the Moodle 4 Upgrade

The image below provides a high-level overview of the activities that will be taking place over the next few months leading up to the upgrade in July.

 

• March: Continued user group engagement and a demo site with all courses will be made available to the Moodle Development User group
• April: A Moodle 4 demo site including an “in development” UCL Theme will be made available to all staff
• May: Moodle 4 Train the trainer sessions will begin, Online self pace material will begin to be made available
• June: General staff face to face training will commence, Student resource will be published
• July: Staff training continues, Moodle 4 upgrade occurs
• Post upgrade: Staff training will continue, development of the UCL Theme will continue

 

Why are we upgrading Moodle?

Moodle version 3 was released in 2018 and has now reached its end of life for support, bug fixes and security patches. To ensure our platform remains up to date and our user data is secure we need to move to the Moodle 4.

 

A More Modern User Experience and a New UCL Moodle Theme

One of the biggest changes introduced by Moodle 4 is a revamped user interface and user experience. This was Moodle HQ’s primary focus with the release of Moodle version 4.0, and they have updated the underlying technology, the layout and the navigation. This re-design means that Moodle looks more modern and significantly cleaner in its user interface.

To take advantage of these changes, UCL Moodle is moving to a new Moodle Theme. We are currently working with an external partner Titus Learning and internal and external design teams to bring a customised Moodle Theme that best supports UCL needs. This is an ongoing piece of work and one that will extend into the summer, post the release of UCL Moodle 4.2 in July.

The new theme (code name “Norse”) is currently being developed with input and comments from over a hundred and fifty staff, both tutors and course administrators as well as student focus groups. As you can see from our timeline, we aim to release an “in development” Moodle test platform to all staff that will enable you to look at a Moodle 4 environment with the new Moodle Theme applied in April.

This will enable you to see how the new theme and its interactions with course formats has impacted your course. From the review work and feedback already taken place, it is important to note that impact has been minimal.

The screenshots below of the new Moodle Theme should be taken as “in development”. Overall, the layout of the user interface will not change, however colour, icons, fonts, blocks, accessibility features are all still subject to change. However I hope these images give you a good idea of the new general look and feel.

 

 

 

What will courses look like after the upgrade?

The best way to see the changes coming will be to engage with the Moodle demo site that we will be making available in mid-April. This site will have the latest available version of Moodle 4 and the latest version of the new UCL Moodle Theme. From the development and testing work we have undertaken so far we are expecting impact on existing courses to be minor.

The Theme version on this platform is still in a beta state and will be updated as we work towards the upgrade in July. We expect between 2 and 4 additional updates will occur prior to the July upgrade as we refine the theme based on your feedback and complete accessibility checking and design reviews.

Moving from Moodle 3.11 to Moodle 4.2 will bring both changes and new functionality to Moodle. These changes will be detailed in a series of upcoming blogs and will also be the key focus of the training we are in the process of creating.

 

Staff Training

Staff training will be available via two distinct strands. The first will be an online self paced course that will be available on a Moodle 4.2 instance in late May. This course will walk you through the changes and additions to Moodle functionality including an initial topic on how the new Moodle navigation works. This self paced course will use Moodle activities, videos and course completion activities so that a badge or certificate will be received upon completion.

The second strand of training will be provided face to face or online in a more localised faculty/department context. We are currently working on a train the trainer programme, that will be delivered in May to the following individuals: Faculty Learning Technology Leads, Departmental Learning Technologists and Connected Learning Leads. If you would like to be part of the train the trainer programme, please discuss this with your Faculty Learning Technology Lead.

The online and face to face Moodle 4.2 training will commence from June and continue throughout the summer.

 

Student Support

A student Moodle user tour and updated student wiki guides will be made available in June.

 

Have Questions?

If you have questions please do get in touch with the Digital Education team.

 

 

 

 

The next release in our Course Lifecyle toolset is now ready for deployment and will appear in our Production Moodle site shortly.

This is our first release of our course context freezing or “Read Only” Moodle block.

 

The Lifecycle block will be available in Moodle from 9th January 2023 to allow individual courses to be made Read-Only, and thus prevent the accidental update or deletion of content.

Previously each year we would take a Snapshot Moodle, which we would automatically make it Read-Only at the end of November.

This period would have given teams on average three months to complete the Late Summer Assessment period, and to make any adjustments or hide courses before they become part of our Moodle course archive in line with UCL’s data retention policy.

As we now have one Moodle, we need to provide the Read-Only function at the individual course level and not the entire site, (you can think of it as a course level snapshot).

 

NOTE: The block will display only the year category and the course’s start and end date, prior to the course end date being reached. Once the course end date is reached the additional functionality and automatic Read-Only date will be displayed.

 

The new Lifecycle block has several functions:

• Provides an automatic default read only mechanism.
• Provide a mechanism for course administrators to override the suggested default date and to choose a custom date.
• Display the year category (Moodle 2021/22, Moodle 2022/23)
• Display the course start and end date.

 

Once the Read-Only date is reached, the Moodle page will be automatically queued for processing overnight, and will become Read-Only to staff and students the following day.

 

Automated Read-Only Process

The automated Read-only date will be based either on the course end date, or the end of the Late Summer Assessment period (whichever is later), plus eleven weeks. This should provide enough time any final marking or updates to the course. Once the automatic suggested date is reached the course will become Read-Only.

If you take no further action, the Moodle page will become Read-Only to staff and students at the end of this date.

 

NOTE: For modules which follow the standard academic calendar, Automatic Read-Only will occur normally at the end of November each year (eleven weeks after LSA’s have bene completed).  However, as this is the first time the Lifecycle block will be used, the default Read-Only date will be artificially moved forward to the end of February 2023 to allow course teams time to review the use of the new block and seek guidance as needed.

 

Local Course Override Process

The automation aspect of the Read Only Tool we hope will satisfy most of our course administration teams requirements. However, we are aware that some course teams may require to make their courses read-only later than the automatic function. At the initial release of the tool, you will not be able to make a course read-only prior to the automated date suggested.

The Digital Education Services Team, do have an override function that they can employ to make a course Read-Only upon request at any time. We will review the number of these requests and feedback to see if we need to build that functionality into the tool for end users.

We have created several override settings which will allow course teams to either disable the course read-only setting or to set a specific date for the course to be made read-only.

 

 

Making a Read-Only course editable again

In the same manner as the existing Moodle Snapshots, teaching teams cannot reactivate a Moodle course once it has been made Read-Only.

If you do require edit access to a Read-Only course this will need to be requested by contacting the Digital Education Support team at:   digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk

Further details for using the Lifecycle Block are available in our Moodle Mini guide M30i

 

NOTE:- we will develop and alter the user interface and experience based off of feedback we receive from our users regarding this tool. All updates will be documented within the Moodle Mini Guide M30i.

 

Jason Norton

Head of Virtual Leaning Environments

During the week commencing  04/04/22, UCL Moodle will be upgraded to version 3.11.  With this upgrade, there are number of key changes designed to enhance the user experience for both staff and students. This upgrade will include features from Moodle 3.10 and 3.11

The key new feature is the introduction of Turnitin functionality for the following activities:

• Moodle quizzes- for Essay Type Questions
• Moodle forums
• Moodle Workshop

Each of the activities will allow students to make submissions which will be checked against the Turnitin database and will generate a similarity score.  These activities will behave in a similar way to a Moodle assignment with Turnitin integration.

For guidance on how to set one of these activities up on your Moodle course, please see our online guides:

Enabling Turnitin for essay type questions

There are also several smaller changes coming, with changes most noticeable to students.  Course completion will be enhanced, and will include:

• Activity dates and completion conditions being shown at the top of the activity page
• Manual marking option for students
• Additional display settings (or staff)
• Improved activity completion reports

 

For full details about the new features in Moodle 3.10 please see Moodle 3.10 features

For full details about the new features in Moodle 3.11 please see Moodle 3.11 features

Please note at the current time we are still evaluating/reviewing the Accessibility Toolkit feature and will not be releasing this feature with the Moodle 3.11 release.

 

Or watch this  YouTube playlist of 3.10 New features created by Moodle HQ

Or watch this  YouTube playlist of 3.11 New features created by Moodle HQ

 

For a comprehensive list of all changes in Moodle 3.10, please see the Moodle release notes.

For a comprehensive list of all changes in Moodle 3.11, please see the Moodle release notes.

If you have any questions about this changes, please email digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

 

 

Digi-Ed is pleased to announce the following activities have been released into live Moodle.

Moodle Zoom Integration: 

You can now create a Zoom meeting from Moodle. Firstly, Tutors need to set up a UCL Zoom account. Then in Moodle, a Tutor can simply turn editing on, click Add an Activity and select Zoom to create a Zoom meeting. Students will then be able to join the Zoom meeting from Moodle. The Zoom meeting will appear automatically in a student’s Moodle calendar to help them stay organised.  

To learn how to add a Zoom meeting to Moodle, see the Moodle Zoom wiki page. For guidance on using Zoom, see the Zoom SharePoint site. 

Guidance on making the correct platform choice for can be found HERE.

 

Other Moodle Changes

The Moodle Hub page has now been removed. When you now go to moodle.ucl.ac.uk you will be directed to the home page of the 20/21 Live Moodle. If you require access to the 19/20 LSA Moodle, this can be achieved by following the link from the Moodle Snapshot page which is located in the Services drop down menu in Moodle. Or from the link in the top block of your Moodle home page once you have logged in.

 

 

We have changed the colour of the Moodle headings after recieving feedback from end users and our accessibility team. The new colour is more accessible for those with some visual impairments and has a better contrast ratio with their respective backgrounds.

Previous Colour

New Colour

 

Further work on a range of other enhancements, are currently underway. To stay up to date with the latest learning technology enhancements at UCL, see the Moodle Release Roadmap. 

 

This year UCL Information Services Division (ISD) is closing one of its data centres in London and relocating the technology and services that run from that location to a new state of the art facility in Slough.  This is a major undertaking by ISD and nearly all services from finance and HR through to the Digital Education services such as Moodle, Lecturecast and MyPortfolio are impacted.

In order to complete this exercise all Digital Education services will be required to have a limited period of downtime to make the switch from one location to another.

To ensure we minimise the downtime and to avoid two shut-down dates, we intend to combine the migration exercise with our normal yearly upgrade and snapshot process.

As you may be aware from previous years, we normally advertise a period of 5 days of possible outage for our major Moodle upgrade (Friday evening till Wednesday Morning). This year we intend that this period will remain unchanged and that we will complete both the snapshot, upgrade and the data centre migration within the 5 day period. It will be our intention to restore services as early as possible within this 5 day window.

Moodle Snapshot and Upgrade

In response to the survey that went out to all our Moodle course tutors and administrators asking for your least inconvenient downtime window we had 201 respondents, I thank all of your who responded for doing so.

There is never going to be one date that is ideal for all users, however the survey does highlight the dates which would appear to have the least impact for the most number of users. We have also run internal reports within Moodle to identify the period with the least or no current Moodle/Turnitin submissions planned.

The selected date range is from: 6pm Friday 22^nd July > 12pm Wednesday 27^th July 2016

Please let me make it clear that the period that students will be without ANY access to Moodle will be less than 24 hours (Friday evening > Saturday lunch time). This is the time taken for the team to create the Snapshot which is then made immediately available.

The Snapshot is a complete copy of the live Moodle and provides students with “read only” access to ALL of the material they had prior to the snapshot being taken.

What the Snapshot does not provide is the ability for students to take part in activities, add to or change Moodle for example the following activities cannot be done:-

• Submission of assignments via either Moodle or Turnitin
• Quiz based activity
• Posting new forum topics or replies

Please take account of this when planning Moodle activities during this period.

After the Snapshot is made available there will be a period of time when the current, live version of Moodle is unavailable to allow for the upgrade and migration to take place.  During this time, students will be immediately redirected to this version upon entering the normal Moodle URL.

The publicised outage will be until 12pm Wednesday 27th July, as this “at risk period” is required in case any issues arise. The “at risk period” should be treated as if the service were unavailable and no Moodle dependant activities planned for that period.

If the chosen date range affects your course significantly in regard to Moodle usage that cannot be resolved by the use Snapshot e.g. a critical assignment submission or Moodle Exam date that cannot be altered, please contact us at digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk and we will work with you to provide the best possible alternative solution for your requirements.

Do you have an interest in games, gamification and games-based learning?

If so we would be really interested in hearing from you, we are looking to put together a special interest group at UCL around these areas. The aim of the SIG will be to encourage interaction and discussion on these topics and others, ranging from research on games and play to their implementation within teaching practice (plus hopefully have a bit of fun along the way).

Please join via our Moodle page if you are interested in taking part along and we will arrange an initial meeting of the group soon.