Over the summer there will be a number of outages and changes to the Moodle service. These are needed to deliver:

• A Moodle version upgrade
• Yearly Moodle Shapshot and consolidation of previous Snapshots to ensure GDPR compliance
• URL changes will also be made

A summary of the outages, changes and timelines is provided in the table below:

Moodle Summer Upgrade Overview

Moodle Summer Upgrade Timeline

We apologise for any inconvenience the outages and changes cause.

If you have any questions, please contact digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk

This year 18/19 sees a significant increase and change in practice to the late summer assessments process:(https://www.ucl.ac.uk/academic-manual/recent-changes/late-summer-assessments-2018-19).

In order to facilitate this change the new 18/19 Snapshot will remain read/write however until the 20^th September for the reasons detailed below.

Please note: If you have any assessment due after 20th September 2019, this will NOT apply to you. Please follow your existing processes.

Change in Practice of Moodle Use and Late Summer Assessments

To facilitate the changing combination of required end of year tasks in combination with the late summer assessments, we now request that all late summer assessments take place within the 18/19 Moodle Snapshot that will be created on the 26^th of July 2019.

The reason why we are asking that you follow this guidance is as follows:

• All associated course content and student/cohort data will remain consistent and associated with the correct Moodle snapshot in this case 18/19
• Completing late summer assessment within the 18/19 Snapshot allows all the “live” Moodle courses to be reset and normal end of year course activities to take place from the 29^th July, so course teams can begin immediately on 19/20 courses
• Additional Moodle course creation is kept to a minimum within the live Moodle instance, and aids in Moodle housekeeping activities (reducing dead/unwanted courses, improving long term database performance).

What are we doing to facilitate this change?

• The Moodle 18/19 Snapshot will remain read/write until the 20^th September 2019 (2 weeks after the final assessment date for late summer assessments)
• Digital Education will retain the current two Moodle selection/landing screen however, it will be re-purposed to direct students to the Snapshot Moodle for late summer assessments
• Digital Education will create a global banner within “live” Moodle directing students to the Snapshot for the duration of the late summer assessment period
• Digital Education will place other redirection adverts/links within “live” Moodle to highlight to students that late summer assessment activities can be found within the 18/19 Snapshot

How can you prepare for Late Summer Assessments?

If you wish to prepare in advance courses that will have late summer assessments requirements, we recommend the following: –

Within any course where late summer assessments will be taking place create a hidden section and place any material or submission points within that section. This can be done in the current “live” Moodle up until the 26^th July 2019 as preparation. Alternatively, it can be done within the 18/19 Snapshot which will be available on the 27^th July 2019.

When you are ready to make late summer assessment material/submission points available simply unhide the section within the course on the 18/19 Snapshot.

Details on how to create and hide sections within Moodle can be found in the following miniguide: https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/x/RgxiAQ

For any questions regarding Moodle and Late Summer Assessments please email digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk.

We also have a page which has some commonly asked questions about Late Summer Assessments which may help:

https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/MoodleResourceCentre/Late+Summer+Assessments+-+2019

I had the opportunity to attend the 2019 UCL Education Conference on Monday 1st April 2019. The conference was themed around:

• Widening participation
• BME (Black Minority Ethnic) Attainment
• Assessment and Feedback
• Supporting student success
• Digital education and innovations

Although it was April Fool’s day, and Brexit loomed large, the conference was full of sober analysis and creative initiatives.

The opening plenary by Anne-Marie Canning MBE challenged Universities to play a greater role in promoting inclusivity in their internal practices, and in the broader public sphere as powerful and influential institutions capable of bringing about change. A subsequent panel discussion raised plenty of questions over the structural and everyday challenges to inclusivity, including whether inclusivity was a process or an outcome. This set the tone for the workshop sessions for the remainder of the day. I attended three sessions, which were part of the Digital education and innovations stream of the conference. Each session demonstrated a creative and pragmatic way to improve inclusivity in the classroom.

Photo by Kane Reinholdtsen on Unsplash

Multisensory and personalised feedback

Maria Sibiryakova presented her approach to teaching writing in Russian. She highlighted the challenge of teaching to a diverse cohort where students can have different experiences of living in Russia and different interests in learning Russian. In the course, students complete seven mini-essays (500 words each) and Maria provides audio and written feedback to students, which combine to “feedforward” into the next assessment.

Maria presented some of the benefits of using audio feedback, including:

• Multisensory feedback – hence more accessible,
• Improves teaching presence – students hear you and your voice,
• Conversational and personalised feedback, and
• Often quicker to produce.

Maria used a tool called VoiceThread, which has some intriguing features. It’s also possible to deliver audio feedback using Turnitin Assignment.

Photo by Adi Chrisworo on Unsplash

Open in class discussion with Moodle Hot Questions

Rebecca Yerworth and one of her students, Xu Zhao, demonstrated how Moodle’s Hot Question activity can facilitate in-class discussions.

The Moodle Hot Question activity allows for students to submit questions and/or answers via Moodle on their phone or laptop. This facilitates class discussion by increasing the participation of students who otherwise wouldn’t speak up in class due to personal or cultural reasons. Rebecca moderates the discussion live in class, answers questions, and draws out connections between different student answers. She also finds the Hot Questions activity flexible to use as it can be enabled in Moodle and switched on with a click of a button when a new discussion is needed.

Photo by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Welcoming new Chemistry students through a Moodle module

Dr Stephen E. Potts presented on the development of a Moodle module for welcoming new Chemistry students.

The UCL Chemistry Undergraduate Welcome Page introduces students to the Department, their degree programme, a typical timetable, Lab safety, and even how to submit an assignment on Moodle. It also includes some fun stuff like how to join the UCL Chemical and Physical Society and a collection of molecules with silly names. The module is designed to be delivered completely online, so is Baseline+ compliant, and is released to students when they are registered but before they arrive on campus.

I found the module was a great example of making Moodle look good (yes, it’s possible!). It was visually enticing, clearly structured, and combined quiz activities, video, text and image to engage students. The course has received positive feedback so far, and Stephen plans to build on the module, possibly to include multi-lingual content. I was also really impressed by the virtual tour of the Department. Students click through main buildings and labs, in a similar manner to Google maps, and can also click on information points to view location specific information. The tour was created using a 360 camera and Google Poly.

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These three presentations demonstrated some of the everyday ways that inclusivity can be improved through teaching practice and technology. They also showed that improving inclusivity can often be accomplished as part of improving student engagement overall. There was much more to the conference than can be summarised here, and you can read the conference Abstracts to find out more. A tremendous thank you to all the organisers and presenters!

Portico enrolments will be globally deactivated in Moodle on 5^th March 2019.  This is usually done six weeks from the start of each term.

How will this impact students on my course?

• Students who are already enrolled on a Moodle course WILL continue to have access to their course (s) and WILL NOT be unenrolled.
• Students enrolling on Portico after the deactivation WILL NOT be automatically enrolled  onto the corresponding Moodle course. Students can still be manually enrolled.
• Students who leave the course WILL NOT be automatically un-enrollled

Moodle and Portcio enrolments

When Portico enrolments are active on a Moodle course, student enrolments on the course are automatically updated overnight to mirror the Portico student list for the associated module. Consequently, students who change courses, or withdraw from their studies permanently or temporarily, are automatically un-enrolled from their Moodle courses. Usually, this is desirable when students change/drop modules within the first few weeks of term. However, if Portico un-enrols students after they have been awarded any grades, these grades become inaccessible, which can be very problematic.

Note: the ‘inaccessible’ grades, submissions and logged activity are not deleted, and can be accessed again if the student is re-enrolled manually. But, when a student is no longer enrolled on a course, there is just no way to view their content.

Why deactivate Portico enrolments?

To reduce the likelihood of this particular ‘inaccessible/missing grades’ problem occurring, Portico enrolments are de-activated globally in Moodle, six weeks from the start of each term.

Can I re-activate Portico enrolments on my course(s)?

Yes. However, please assess whether you risk losing access to some students’ grades before you do this. See instructions on re-activating Portico enrolments

Note: Portico enrolments can be ‘deactivated’ within the course at any time by anyone with Course Administrator or Tutor access, thereby stopping any updates to the list of enrolled users on the Moodle course.

The Digital Education team is running two new training courses, Hands on with Turnitin Assignment, and Hands on with Moodle Assignment. Each session is practical, from a staff and student perspective you will experience the process of submitting, marking, returning marks, engaging with feedback and managing records. Both courses are applicable to Tutors and Course Administrators new to online marking or needing to refresh their knowledge.

Register through the HR Single Training Booking System or follow the links below:
Hands on with Turnitin
Hands on with Moodle Assignment

Email digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk for more information or to inquire about specific training for your Department.

Users of the Lecturecast system will notice that there has been an update to the user interface. The new interface makes finding content and courses easier. It also provides improved search and sort functionality as well a new filtering system.  The change mainly affects staff. Most users may not notice the change but users who frequently access the ‘Library’, now known as ‘My Content’ and who use the engagement tools should familiarize themselves with the changes. The new interface is quite intuitive but if you find yourself wondering where some aspect of Lecturecast functionality now sits, you will find these guides useful.

Note that all content you had access to will still be available.

For any queries regarding this change, please email: digi-ed@ucl.ac.uk