Moodle Updates for Fall 2016

We just updated our Moodle site to version 3.1. There are a variety of new features and improvements to make using Moodle easier.

On August 23-24, 2016, the Academic Technologists are holding Moodle Help Desk Hours to meet with individual faculty to provide assistance with getting courses set up in Moodle.  We also have a workshop scheduled for Collecting and Grading Assignments Electronically in Moodle. For more details, times, and to sign up for individual help visit our workshop pages on the campus calendar.

Among the improvements for this Fall:

  • Better online grading: faculty can now mark up and grade a variety of document types, including MS Word, PDF, and text files from within Moodle without having to download files.
  • Recycle bin:  Deleted course materials now go to a recycle bin before being removed permanently.  If you have ever accidentally deleted an item you will enjoy this new feature.  The recycle bin stores deleted items for a week before they are permanently deleted.
  • Moodle Mobile App enhancements:  The Moodle Mobile app for Android and iOS is more useful because it can now display a much wider variety of content.  If you’d like to access your courses from a mobile device, you may want to consider downloading the “Moodle Mobile” app from the Apple App Store or Google Play store and giving it a try.
  • Drag-and-drop Images into the text editor: Moodle has allowed users to drag images onto the main page for a while, but now it is possible to drag images into a text editing box, too.  This makes it easy to add your pictures to a label, forum post, or assignment description.
  • Deleting an entire topic/week: In the past, deleting all the content from an entire topic or week was time consuming.  It is now possible to delete the entire topic/week, which removes all the content inside of it.

For all the details on the enhancements, you can check out the moodle.org site.  We upgraded from Moodle version 2.8 to 3.1, so there are three pages of new features: