https://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_3.4_release_notes#Major_Features
The Moodle Summer upgrade will take place between the 22nd - 27th July 2016. It will see us upgrade to Moodle 3.1, which is a more recent version of the Moodle software.
During any Moodle upgrade there will always be improvements to the system. Many of these might be behind the scenes and so difficult to see. Some changes are visible but relatively small, although they can still have a big impact.
With our bigger summer upgrades there will always be highly visible and fairly significant changes, and the Moodle 3.1 upgrade is no different. Although Moodle still works the same as before, and you should not find a significant learning curve with the changes, there are some really nice improvements to the new version.
Below you will be able to access more information about what has changes, and what are the best improvement to look out for.
Overview
You will find a nice overview of the key new features, broken down in a friendly way for tutors and course administrators on the Moodle.org website new features page.
For a detailed look at the changes to Moodle please see the Moodle 3.1 Release notes on the Moodle.org official website.
Highlights of these new features are:
New Moodle Assignment grading interface (annotate PDF assignments online).
- NB - Initially this will only be enabled for PDFs at UCL, however other formats will be enabled soon.
- New Turnitin Assignment grading interface (Feedback Studio replaces GradeMark, with similar functionality, but the menu items now appear to the right).
Competency based frameworks (these are set up centrally so please contact Digital Education)
Pinned forums discussion topics (to keep important topics at the top)
- Staff can check the ‘pinned’ checkbox when adding/editing a post and these will appear before all the other posts at the top of the discussion forum, with a pin icon alongside the title.
***As with any new system, you will notice a few changes/ improvements within new Moodle. These include:***
- New landing page- To give you access to Legacy Moodle and Moodle 2018/19
- New course overview page: You will notice three tabs. In progress, Future and Past. Courses appear under each of these tabs based on the course start and end dates within a course. If you do not see your course after you initial log-in, check under each of these three tabs. Course start end dates can be edited by doing the following: Navigate to the course > Administration> Edit settings.
- Colour scheme, layout and view options to improve navigation and accessibility. This inlcudes the ‘My courses’ and ‘This Course’ tabs at the top of each Moodle page, the ability to ‘Dock’ and ‘Undock’ blocks and also switch between ‘Standard’ and ‘Full screen’ view. These options allow user's to personalise the way they navigate within Moodle.
●Theme
○Colour scheme
○Layout and view options
○Navigation - quicker access menus
●Functionality
○Deprecated - Campus Pack, old Blackboard Collaborate recordings,
○Lecturecast, Turnitin, Blackboard Ultra links
○Improved - calendar, Moodle rubric
●Admin
○Categories - Faculty > Department > Academic Entities
○Roles rationalised
Other changes
- LightBox Gallery replaces the SlideShow tool, and allows you to easily display multiple images.
- Single version of Turnitin, mean that now only one version of Turnitin is available in Moodle, this is the most recent version 2 of the plugin.
As always if you have any questions please contact the ISD Service Desk.
