For the attention of all UCL Moodle teaching and support staff.

At 5 PM  04 July 2014 Moodle will be made unavailable to allow the yearly snapshot copy to be created.  Once the process is compete the snapshot will be made available for staff and students, this is expected to be completed by mid-day on 05 July 2014.  We will also be taking this opportunity to upgrade the Moodle system, to improve security and reliability, as well as introduce some new features.  The live Moodle service will be returned to service on 09 July 2014.

New Moodle Upgrade Features

– Annotate PDFs in Moodle Assignments

– Gradebook Scrolling

– Permanently Docked Blocks

You can see more new features in the Moodle Resource Centre wiki on the New Features, Moodle 2.6 – Summer 2014 upgrade page.

If you would like to find out more about the Moodle snapshot, including its intended purpose and how you can hide content, please visit the Moodle Resource Centre wiki for more information.

What do I have to do?

If your module ends in June and you would like the snapshot copy to be made available then no further action is required.

What if my course(s) doesn’t finish in June?

We recognise that not all Moodle courses end in June.  Some run into August/September and others may run later, several times a year or never stop.  More information on the process of requesting a manual snapshot can be found here in the Snapshot section of the Moodle Resource Centre.

What happens after the snapshot? 

Once you have a snapshot copy of your course we strongly recommend you take some time to consider resetting and reviewing your course so it can be used for the next cohort.  For more information on preparing your Moodle course for the next academic year, see the Preparing your Moodle course for the next academic year page in the UCL wiki.

To see the snapshot for yourself, visit: http://moodle-archive.ucl.ac.uk

All times are for the UK (GMT or BST), for other locations please convert.

With the end of term fast approaching we are sure many of you will be running exams or tests, which may be via Moodle quizzes. If this is the case then E-Learning Environments would like to kindly request you let us know of any summative exams/ tests being run through Moodle. You can notify us via the link in the Help menu on Moodle or by finding the exam notification form on the ELE website. When you notify us of an exam this enables three things:

1. We can check the settings of the Moodle quiz
2. We can ensure a member of staff is available for support during the exam
3. We can notify the team that look after the cluster rooms, who can then check computers are working

If you would like to learn more about Moodle online exams, or would like a copy of the Exam Settings Checklist or Moodle Invigilator Checklist then visit the Moodle Resource Centre.

Some users may have experienced problems with Turnitin between 15:00 and 16:25 PM on the 12 June 2014. These issues have now successfully been resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience caused by these issues, and thank you for your patience as we worked with Turnitin to correct them.

All times are for the UK (GMT or BST), for other locations please convert: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

Last week saw the final session in the current series of Summits and Horizons, a seminar series jointly organised by the Centre for the Advancement in Learning and Teaching (CALT) and E-Learning Environments (ELE). Appropriately, the session focused on the predictions of the 2014 NMC Horizons Report, in the context of use of emerging technologies to support teaching and learning at UCL.

Fiona Strawbridge highlighted the trends, challenges and emerging technologies identified in the report:

Fiona’s slides, and a video précis of the report are also available.

Ros Duhs highlighted the need to consider the relevance of what students are learning at university for the future workplace, and stressed the importance of authentic learning, teaching and assessment strategies.

Janina Dewitz considered recently emerging technologies including semantic aware applications and smart objects (predicted in the 2009 NMC Horizons report) and affective computing. Her take on these technologies was that although many are being taken up by the consumer market, they have yet to make a substantial impact on higher education. Janina also mentioned individuals’ right to privacy and the lack of trust surrounding commercial access to their personal data. Similarly, students may object to the transparency associated with learning analytics; there is also the difficulty of measuring learning online since learning happens all the time and in other places.

Clive Young presented the results of a survey ELE conducted with teaching staff about their use of external cloud-based tools. The survey revealed that a large range of external tools, which are used personally, are also being used to support teaching, research and administration, but more support may be necessary to increase adoption beyond the early adopters. The results are being reported in more detail in another blog post.

Nick Grindle looked back at the technologies predicted in earlier NMC Reports. While some technologies such as mobile computing and apps, cloud computing and geo-everything have materialised within the predicted timeframe, one area which has still to reach its potential is gaming and gamification, first mentioned in the 2005 report. This is one of the themes of the forthcoming call for submissions for the E-Learning Development Grants, so hopefully at UCL we can make progress in this area.

A closing panel discussion highlighted the role of the Arena Scheme, in partnership with ELE, in promoting digital scholarship. There was also a discussion about the importance of the institutional learning environment for security and support in using e-learning. While Moodle works extremely well and is very highly rated by students, we should be alert for the emergence of other platforms which might best serve longer-term future needs. Finally, thanks were given to Moira Wright for overseeing the successful and smooth administration of all nine sessions this year.

Some users may have experienced problems with Turnitin between 15:01 and 16:25  on the 12 June 2014. These issues have now successfully been resolved. We apologise for the inconvenience caused by these issues, and thank you for your patience as we worked with Turnitin to correct them.

All times are for the UK (GMT or BST), for other locations please convert: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/converter.html

In July 2014 Turnitin will end its support for Internet Explorer 8.  In their message issuing they news Turnitin stated:

‘At Turnitin, we are continually improving the experience of providing rich feedback on student work. As the internet, web browsers, devices, and Turnitin all evolve, Turnitin will be ending support for Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) browser starting in July 2014.

Come July 1, 2014, we will no longer test or fix features and bugs found only in Internet Explorer 8. This does not mean that Turnitin will immediately stop working in IE8, only that we can no longer guarantee full functionality long term. We recommend that Internet Explorer 8 users move to a current version of one of these supported industry standard browsers:

Firefox | Chrome | Safari | Internet Explorer 9

With this change Turnitin will be able to move forward towards full compatibility with the touchscreen capabilities of browsers for document interaction (leaving marks and comments). Users can already navigate to certain aspects of the Turnitin service via touch, for example to submit files or modify assignment settings. For a full touch compatible grading experience, if you have an iPad, please try the Turnitin for iPad app available in the App Store for instructor use.’

At UCL we do not offer support for the use of the Turnitin iPad app however you will find a page on the Moodle Resource Centre wiki which does have some guidance and known pitfalls. We also recommend the use of Firefox over Internet Explorer currently, and this advise will not change.