To enable continued access to migrated recordings, essential integration work is being carried out to link over 30,000 Moodle course pages with Panopto, UCL’s new recording platform replacing Lecturecast (Echo360).  This work is critical to ensuring that recordings appear in the correct Moodle spaces and remain accessible to staff and students during the Late Summer Assessment period and beyond.

The process will begin on Friday 11 July and may take up to 10 days to complete.  During this period Moodle may experience slower response times, due to the increased processing load which we are unable to mitigate.

Unfortunately, there are no alternative pathways to achieve this outcome, and we sincerely apologise for any disruption this may cause to Moodle-based activities.  The timeframe has been carefully selected to coincide with a period of historically low usage, in order to minimise the impact as far as possible.

If you have any concerns or experience significant issues, please contact Digital Education Support via our MyServices Request Form.

The Digital Learning Environment (DLE) team will be making updates to the Moodle Quiz activity on Thursday 17^th July 2025. This update is designed to enhance both accessibility and usability, ensuring a more inclusive and user-friendly experience for all students and staff.

All existing quiz functionality will remain unchanged. The update focuses on improving the interface and aligning the Quiz more closely with UCL’s design system, resulting in a more consistent and intuitive look and feel.

These changes are part of our ongoing commitment to improving the digital learning experience at UCL. If you have any questions or feedback, please get in touch with us via MyServices.

Before:

After:

The number of SITS assessment types eligible for marks transfer has now been broadened to include:

• EC01 – Written examination (main exam period)
• EC02 – Written examination (December/January)
• ED01 – Written examination (Departmentally managed)
• ED05 – Exam (In Person Written) (Departmentally Managed)
• PDO1 – Practical examination (Departmentally managed)
• XD01 – Exhibition

If you are using these assessment types on a module, they will now appear in the Moodle marks transfer table and you will be able to transfer marks to these components in Portico from your Moodle assessment activities in the same way as the other eligible assessment types.

For more advice on marks transfer, please see the detailed guide.

The Moodle Accessibility Tool has been restored to UCL Moodle. We were aware that some people missed it and were not comfortable with using free browser extensions, so decided to revisit it for our latest version of Moodle.

To access the tool, simply go to your Moodle profile and choose “Accessibility Tool” from the drop-down menu.

You will then be given options to personalise your colour scheme, font style, text size and readability of UCL Moodle. The readability features also include the option to add more space between lines. Your preferences are saved to your Moodle profile so you don’t have to reset these every time you log in.

Screenshot of Moodle accessibility tool options accessed from your Moodle profile.

To access more information on the Moodle accessibility tool, please access the tool and read the guidance below.

The advantage of using free browser extensions instead of the Moodle accessiblity tool is that your settings will be available across your whole browsing experience and not just for Moodle so it is worth considering these in general. For more advice on browser and other free inbuilt accessibility tools, please see our accessibility statement.

Following feedback from the Faculty of Mathematics and Physical Sciences, the DLE team have implemented an enhancement to Moodle Exam Guard which allows a quiz close time to be extended in exceptional circumstances for a whole group when a cohort is currently sitting an exam and exam guard is in place.

As a reminder, Exam Guard was introduced last year to prevent staff from editing a course while an exam is underway due to its risk to Moodle performance. In the past, this caused some exams to be disrupted, particularly for larger cohorts.  It works by preventing staff from editing their course or indeed the quiz itself from 10 minutes before the Moodle quiz opens until 10 minutes after the quiz has closed.

However, we were alerted to a use case where editing the duration of a quiz might be necessary – for instance, if a fire alarm were to go off and the assessment needed to be extended for everyone currently sitting it. Therefore, it is now possible to add more time to an exam which is in progress when Exam Guard is in place.

Editing tutors on the Moodle course in question or site admin roles can now see an “Extend time” button in the quiz when the exam is in progress should such a scenario occur and they can then add the extension time duration in minutes.

Screen shot of “extend time” button for exam in progress.

Shot of screen showing how to add extension time in minutes.

Please note: if other users or groups are taking the same quiz at a different time (e.g. in the case there are different sittings or for students with SoRAs), it will not affect the close time for their quiz as it will only extend the time for those who are currently in the process of undertaking the assessment.

For further details, please refer to our wiki guide.

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.