Moodle will be updated to Moodle 2.4 on Thursday July 11th from 8pm-2am. There is no expected service interruption; however there may be brief moments of connectivity errors. If possible we ask that you refrain from using Moodle during this time.
The Moodle/Joule Summer 2013 release is made up of a few primary components highlighted below.
Moodle Core 2.4 release:
- Performance Improvements
- Assignment Module (Updated)
- Integration of External Calendars (New)
Joule Enhancements:
- Express Theme (Updated)
- Outcomes (New)
- Joule Grader (Updated)
- Commenting (New)
Moodle Core 2.4 Release:
The following information is just a snapshot of the Moodle 2.4 release. The full release notes are found here.
Performance Improvements: A variety of improvements have been made under the hood to improve performance in a number of ways.
Assignment Module (Updated): You can find full notes about the Moodle 2.4 Assignment Module, here, but we have listed highlights of the new capabilities below:
- Group Assignments: Now it’s possible to setup an assignment that a group can work on collaboratively and each student can receive a common (or individual) grade.
- Blind Marking (not knowing the students identity when grading): Randomly generated Participant numbers will replace Students’ name.
- Submission Date Extensions: Teachers can set a cut-off date (and time) beyond which submissions will no longer be accepted. They can also grant extensions for those who miss the deadline.
- Submission Statement: It will be possible to set a submission statement so students have to check a box promising their work is original before submitting.
- Offline Marking: Teachers can download all assignments plus the grading sheet, view, grade and give feedback offline and then upload back to Moodle and have the grades/files/comments transferred into Model’s Gradebook.
Integration of External Calendars (New)
- You can now stream your external calendars (such as Google Calendar) into Moodles calendar via the iCal standard
Joule Enhancements:
Express Theme (Updated)
- Improved Performance: Greatly improved client-side caching to reduce the overall time to load a page.
- New “Minimal” Template: Designed with a tablet user in mind.
- Maximizes content space and reduces block space/usage.
- Easy access to important features by making them no more than two clicks away.
- Crisper look to icons.
Outcomes (New):
Outcomes is a brand new tool for connecting educational content to teaching goals and objectives. Outcomes, including state standards, institutional objectives, or professional standards can be easily imported and mapped to interactive learning objects, static content items, rubric items, and even quiz questions. What’s more? Outcome reports can easily show student performance against standards, as well as specific outcomes covered by content within courses.
Outcomes Use Cases: Below is just a sample of the possibilities created with Outcomes.
- Instructor browses available outcomes and maps course to appropriate outcomes.
- Instructor maps content items (resources and activities) against standards.
- Instructor maps quiz questions against standards.
- Instructor maps rubric rows against standards.
- Instructor needs to determine coverage of standards by course content.
- Instructor is required to show student performance against outcomes.
- Student successfully masters outcomes in a course.
- Graduating student required to provide evidence of skills.
Joule Grader (Updated):
- Usability: Last Summer, we released Joule Grader to make grading quicker and easier. With this summer’s update, we have improved the feature’s usability and accessibility.
- Full Screen Mode: More room to view documents/activities.
- Assignment Comments: Assignment comments are now fully integrated with Joule Grader.
- Commenting: Joules new Commenting feature centralizes commenting into one fully functional system. Now, leaving comments/feedback is even easier and users can attach files to a comment or configure external notifications when comments are received.
If you would like to see any of these features first hand you may log-in with your L# and Passphrase to our test site at http://lanecc-sandbox.mrooms.net. Please do not develop any courses in this site as it is only used for testing purposes.
If you have any questions please contact the ATC.
We hope you and your students enjoy the new features and updates coming to Moodle this summer. Again the full list of Moodle Core 2.4 release notes can be found here.