🍁 Fall 2025: Ready. Set. Go!

🍁 Fall 2025: Ready. Set. Go!

by Josh Manders -
Number of replies: 0

Instructors,

Fall 2025 courses and enrollments are already syncing regularly with Moodle. If you don’t see your section listed, please check the class schedule to ensure your department administrator has added you as the instructor of record prior to contacting the ATC. As a reminder, all courses are hidden by default. Instructors are required to manually update the course visibility setting when they are ready for students to gain access.

➡️ Here is a guide that will walk you through how to make your course visible to students. Follow our recommended Moodle course Start of Term and End of Term procedures to help you close out a previous course or to open an upcoming course.

Have you sent in your Fall META course request?
Submit a meta course request (online google form) or email the ATC (atc@lanecc.edu) while you still have time.

➡️ For those new to Metacourses: a Metacourse allows you to combine enrollments from multiple course sections into a single Moodle course shell — reducing the need to duplicate resources, activities, etc. when you are teaching multiple sections or course sharing between multiple instructors.

-Josh
LMS Admin

💥 New to LaneCC? 

Academic Technology Center (ATC) Help Documents: specific college LMS procedures and tips that the ATC makes available and keeps updated.
Moodle Training Resources
  1. MoodleHQ "Teaching Basics" YouTube Playlist – Our quick “go to” resource for those who need to get started ASAP. Watch a few videos and then ask for ATC assistance when you need it.
  2. Moodle Academy teaching “basics” is being regularly maintained and has the most updated support documents and training resources.
  3. Linkedin Learning Course “Moodle Basics” — not quite as dry and a bit friendlier than MoodleHQ's trainings. If you're already logged into classes.lanecc.edu you can jump directly to the Linkedin Learning Training without signing in.

🤔 Are We Migrating to Canvas?

On May 16th, 2025 the LMS Advisory Team successfully delivered it's recommendations to the College administration and faculty union. A detailed summary of the groups findings and rationale is available to all staff and students. Over the summer, both the LCCEA and ATC independently recommended that the College migrate to Canvas.

At present, there is no finalized decision to move from Moodle to Canvas. The College has received a bargaining demand from LCCEA regarding the potential impacts of a possible LMS transition. Consistent with collective bargaining obligations and to maintain the status quo while negotiations occur, the College is not moving forward with any Canvas-related activities (eg. product acquisition & required Board approval, vendor contract negotiations, migration & integration planning, training, ect).

If you’re interested in how a future transition might be structured, section 43.1.5 of the LCCEA proposal (May 23, 2005) outlines proposed contractual language for notice, dual-LMS availability, and faculty support  — should a change occur. That proposal — and any related negotiations — are matters for the union and the College to work through, and your feedback to LCCEA can help ensure your interests are represented.

We’ll provide timely updates if any decision is made following bargaining. Until then, no planning or preparation for Canvas is underway.

🎓 What's New in Moodle?

In a few words — not much. We were informed by our Moodle hosting company (OpenLMS), that we will not be upgraded to version 5 (or later) until July, 2026. OpenLMS explained that they’re holding on v4.5 because it keeps the platform stable, avoids an upgrade during finals/holidays, and lets their team focus on Snap (theme we don't use), Personal Learning Designer (PLD), and reporting work while preparing a smoother jump straight to v5.1.

This summers upgrade (v4.5) had a few interface tweaks and small improvements within the gradebook. The headline features of v4.5 won’t be enabled on our instance of Moodle anytime soon as AI tools require paid services and subsections don’t play well with our default course layout (Collapsed Topics). Most of the improvements centered around bug fixes leaving only a handful of note worthy changes.

  • Assignments: Key actions now stay visible, a sticky footer streamlines bulk grading, and you can allow extra attempts automatically.
  • Quizzes & Question Bank: Drag-and-drop category management, selective regrading, and better control over default settings.
  • Badges, Cohorts & Reports: bulk cohort deletion, and more report fields for competencies.

For more details, visit the Moodle 4.5 Release Notes or OpenLMS's v4.5 update notes.

ℹ️  Academic Technology Center (ATC) Fall Schedule
The Academic Technology Center (ATC) is a one-stop support center for faculty and staff. We provide troubleshooting, training, production assistance, and a drop-in lab (Center 208, down the hall from J&J Coffee Shop) to support the use of a wide variety of technologies for instructional and academic purposes.

In-person: Monday-Friday 9am-4pm
Virtual (via Zoom): 10am-2pm --> Join Live
Email: atc@lanecc.edu | Phone: 541-463-3377

If you are no longer teaching at LaneCC and wish to be removed from this News & Announcements forum, email a removal request to moodleadmin@lanecc.edu