The UCL Moodle team are delighted to announce a new Marking block for staff on the Moodle dashboard.

Previously, the My Feedback block on the Moodle dashboard was only accessible to students, providing them with a summary of up to five recent assessments with available feedback.

The latest update introduces a staff Marking block, allowing staff to see up to five summative assessments across Moodle that require marking. This new feature aims to streamline the marking process by making it easier for staff to access and manage their pending marking.

The Marking block includes Turnitin assignments, Moodle assignments, and Quiz assessments that are categorised as summative on Moodle. These assessments are from courses that have started and not yet ended, with an additional three-month extension to accommodate late summer assessments.

Assessments are organized by their due dates, ensuring that the most relevant marking is prominently displayed. To keep the information current, only assessments with due dates within the past two months or the upcoming month will be shown.

This update is part of the ongoing digital assessment workstream of the UCL Moodle team. It follows on from our recent Feedback tracker feature. If you have questions or would like to feedback on early UCL Moodle prototypes please contact the UCL Moodle team via the MyServices portal.

UCL Moodle will be updated to version 4.5 on the 2nd of January 2025. 

The main change staff will notice is that the Moodle assignment submissions interface has been revamped with a new full width display, fixed headers and footers that allow for better navigation, improved filtering as well as easy access to key actions at the top and bottom of the page.

Staff can learn more by watching Moodle’s Assignment improvements in Moodle 4.5 video.  

Other improvements include: 

• Students will now receive notifications when a Quiz is about to open, when an assignment is due (in 7 days or 48 hours) and also when an assignment is overdue. 

• Staff will be able to set assignment resubmissions to be offered automatically if students are allowed more than one attempt.  

• Staff will now be able to regrade specific questions in a Quiz and question categories can be organised using drag and drop or using the three dots action button (for accessibility requirements).  

• The Tiny MCE Editor will now include the option to record the screen and computer audio as well as record video. 

• There are several administrative enhancements, speed improvements and bug fixes. 

You can read more about the changes on Moodle’s 4.5 new features page.  

Please note that UCL has NOT enabled Moodle’s AI subsystems or subsections at this stage as our current focus is on improving UCL Moodle’s performance and reliability. However, those features may be reviewed in the future if there is sufficient demand 

We would like to introduce a new feature in Moodle that provides administrator roles (Course Administrators, Tutors, and Category Administrators etc.) greater flexibility in managing their courses. Previously, unlocking a course site set to Read-Only mode required assistance from our support team. With the new unfreeze functionality, this process is now simpler.

How to unfreeze your course

If your Moodle course site has been set to Read-Only mode, you can unfreeze it by clicking the Enable editing button in the Lifecycle block. A confirmation pop-up message will appear for you to proceed.

By default, the course will automatically revert to Read-Only mode the next day. While the new feature allows you to extend or disable this automatic reset, we strongly recommend using the Read-Only mode to avoid potential data loss within the Moodle courses. If you need to keep a course active indefinitely, it should either be placed in a Timeless category, or have no end date set in the course settings.

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

The Feedback Tracker has been updated today (Thursday 12th December 2024).

The update introduces improvements for staff. The display for students will not change.

The display of the Feedback tracker configuration page has been changed to align it with UCL’s design system and improve accessibility and useability.

The update also introduces two new features to assist staff in marking and returning feedback:

• a progress indicator showing the % of marking completed for each assessment, and
• a count of extensions applied on Moodle assignments and quizzes based on user and group overrides.

Configuration options have been relocated to make the editing of the Feedback tracker more intuitive.

Several bugs have also been resolved, with any outstanding issues listed under Known issues.

To learn more about the Feedback tracker, please see the Feedback tracker documentation.

UCL Moodle quizzes now support the CodeRunner question type.

CodeRunner questions allow students to submit code and for teachers to run a program in order to grade a student’s answer.

CodeRunner will be of most benefit to programming courses where students are asked to write program code to some specification and that code is then graded by running it in a series of tests. CodeRunner questions are also relevant for areas of computer science and engineering to grade questions in which a program must be used to assess correctness.

UCL Moodle has support for the following common coding languages: Python, Java, C, SQL, PHP.

CodeRunner questions are an advanced question type. You should always run a practice assessment with students prior to any summative assessments to ensure your questions are working properly and that students are familiar with answering CodeRunner questions.

If you wish to run a summative assessment using Moodle Quiz. Please follow UCL guidance and notify Digital Education in advance to ensure any necessary checks can be completed.

To learn more, please see the CodeRunner documentation.

We would like to inform you that the Moodle text editor will be updated on the 7th of November 2024 (Term 1 Reading week). The new editor, TinyMCE, will replace the old Atto editor. 

What’s new with TinyMCE? 

TinyMCE provides a smooth and intuitive editing experience more akin to modern text editors like Microsoft Word. It is designed with accessibility and usability in mind and has enhanced formatting tools like improved table handling and multimedia integration.   

The old Atto editor

The new TinyMCE editor

Why the change? 

This change is necessary as the old Atto editor has reached end of life and is being retired by the supplier. There are numerous accessibility and usability issues that due to the product being end of life will not be fixed. The TinyMCE editor fixes these issues and provides more powerful editing and formatting options. 

All staff and students will need to use the new TinyMCE editor, but there will be no loss in functionality. TinyMCE retains key features of the Atto editor, such as embedding Moodle Quiz questions, Lecturecast videos, and Mediacentral videos. 

Try it out and give us feedback! 

We encourage all students and staff to access a preview of the TinyMCE editor to try it out. Simply edit any text to see the new editor.  

Your feedback is crucial to ensuring a smooth transition. Please share any comments, suggestions, or questions using the Moodle text editor feedback form. 

Note: STACK math questions 

Users of STACK questions are reminded that these questions are best edited using the Plain text editor. You should not edit STACK questions with the TinyMCE or Atto editor as these editors may remove HTML and JS from your question. You can change your editor to the Plain text editor from the user menu in the top right of Moodle, under Preferences then Editor Preferences.