Previous Changes - from the 2014/15 AY 
Previous Changes - from the 2015/16 AY 
Previous Changes - from the 2016/17 AY 


New from 2017/18

a) The recent (Moodle 3.2) upgrade focuses on improving the user experience and interactivity of Moodle courses.

- A new theme with better navigation, improved messaging, step-by-step user tours, recycle bin for deleted files and many more.
- Assignment grading gained a new display, and all PDF and Word submissions can be annotated directly in Moodle from now.
- Course sections can be directly deleted now, and newly uploaded files now display the date a file resource was uploaded or changed, giving students a better user experience.
- Forum discussions can be locked after predetermined periods, and you can make a selection on behalf of students in the Choice activity.

Please read about details here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

b) In addition to the core Moodle upgrade, we managed to improve the system with custom self-designed functions / changes based on the user feedback from the previous years.

- Detailed activity view: on the course main page, important information and quick links are displayed by default (assignment deadline, turnitin info, last post at a forum)
- Changed core menu design: The new administration Block – highlights the often used functions, the new navigation drawer shows the most important links in a course.
- Course Header redesign: Important notifications appear at the course headers instead of the Quicksets block. The redesigned “user managegement” menu allows all user related actions on one page.
- New, enhanced course format: When you select a section either from the drawer or from the main section, only this selected section will be shown, avoiding the long, unnecessary scrolling for really long courses. A table of contents also appear at the top of the course and in the navigation drawer.
- Redesigned forms to simplify activity creation, more prominent place for add an activity menu, terminology changes (instead of hide/show -> published/unpublished, instead of topics and weeks -> sections).   
- Summary improvement – The course summaries are now displayed in the course footer as well, and you can restrict this information to CEU students or by departments
- Main course forum – based on faculty feedback, the old News forum is changed. Students can use it to start topics themselves, to ask important questions or reply to announcements.

- Rearrange sections button (to easily drag and drop sections)
- Hide blocks button
- Numerous CSS changes 
- New theme design
- Redesigned global view: Course summary files always visible, additional information for coordinators.
- Improved "import" interface

c) New modules / changes

- Turnitin feedback studio Turnitin changed the design of their reports, the new integrated view is called "Feedback studio".
Quick help for feedback studio , Video about feedback studio

- Bookmarks: You can bookmark any page to the “user bookmarks” block.
- H5p – Create interactive presentations and videos with a new, user friendly method directly from Moodle. Note: the activities created could be used for practice activities for now (no grading available). How to create one?
- Enhanced resource – create a new “page” resource which opens either in a pop-up window, or toggles with “open/close”.        
- The "my enrolled courses" block is now filterable by academic years as well. The hide feature were confusing for some users, so this is available from only a submenu now.

-  Mass actions block: You can enable it at the navigation drawer - add block. This block enables mass deletion and move actions in the course easily.


Last modified: Monday, 28 August 2017, 2:33 PM