Moodle Updates

ITS recently upgraded to Moodle 3.11 for both Moodle and Spaces. This upgrade includes some minor changes to the look and feel of Moodle as well as new functionality and improvements to existing tools. The following highlights the most significant of the changes. Other Moodle help documentation on the Help website will be updated in the near future to reflect the changes.

Turn Editing On

The Turn Editing On button is back! To edit the content of your Moodle or Spaces course, click the [Turn editing on] button in the upper right corner of the screen. When finished, click the button again to turn editing off.

Activity Chooser

The interface for adding Activities or Resources to your course now has a new look and feel. Choose from a visual display of all available activities and resources or ‘star’ your favorite activities/resources by clicking the star on the activity/resource icon to create a tab of all your “Starred” activities/resources.

Preview Folder Contents

Folders are a useful way to group content together and now have the option to allow students to preview the folder contents on the main course page as well as an optional [Download folder] button to download the contents.

Enable Folder Preview

In the “Edit Settings” interface for the folder, set “Display folder contents” to “Inline on a course page” to display a preview of the folder contents. Check the box for “Show download folder button” if you would like the [Download folder] button to display.

Download Course Content

Course participants now have the option to download course content, allowing them to download files, folders, pages, and labels contained in the course. Course participants will see a [Download course content] button at the top of the course page and instructors can access the option in the gear icon drop-down for the course. Instructors may choose to disable this option by going to the “Edit Settings” page for the course and selecting “No” in the “Enable download course content” option.

Whole Forum Grading

Whole forum grading is a new feature that allows the instructor to view and grade the entirety of a student’s forum postings on a single, intuitive page. To set it up:

Add Grading to the Forum

1. Add a forum and expand the “Whole forum grading” option
   
2. Choose either point or scale grading and set additional grading settings as desired

Grading the Forum

1. Once students have submitted their forum posts, you can choose the [Grade users] button to grade all the posts and replies for a single student
   
2. On the next page, you will see a single student’s entire collection of posts (including replies to other students) on the left side of the screen
3. The grader panel can be hidden and expanded using the buttons located at the top right of the screen
   
4. Use the arrows to navigate to the next student’s posts
5. Click [Save] to save the grade or [Close] to return to the main forum page

Forum Summary Report

Located in the Gear icon drop-down list, the forum summary report allows the instructor to see a report of all student activity on a forum as well as export a file (.csv, .xlsx, .pdf, etc) of all of a students posts and replies for that given forum.

Show Activity Date

Instructors can now display the due date on activities on the course page by enabling “Show activity dates” in the course settings.

Enable Show Activity Date

1. Click the gear icon for the course and select “Edit settings”
2. Expand the “Appearance” section and set “Show activity dates” to Yes
   
   
3. Click [Save and display]

Setting the Activity Date for an assignment

For assignments that have a due date (i.e., Moodle assignments, Forums, etc), the activity date as well as the “opened” date (date activity is available to students) can be displayed on the course page once the “Show activity date” is enabled.

The opened and due date can be set in the settings for the assignment under “Availability.” To show the opened date, set a date in the “Allow submissions from” field and check “Enable.” To show the due date, set a date in the “Due date” field and check “Enable.”