CEU Moodle Development

Executive summary of the CEU-specific Moodle development work: institutional workflows, core modifications, integrations, interface redesigns, plugin adaptations, and long-tail quality improvements.

13major development areas

100+small workflow, form, interface, and wording improvements

15+plugins, blocks, and local tools adapted or extended

20+security, accessibility, reliability, and upgrade fixes

Executive summary

Built CEU-specific enrolment, invitation, and external-user workflows.
Developed SITS-based course creation and synchronization support.
Created Microsoft login routing for CEU, external, alumni, unknown, and invited users.
Added invitation-aware login and forgotten-password handling.
Designed protected-exam access restrictions for special exam windows.
Redesigned course import, copying, course search, and dashboard behaviour.
Reworked assignments, grading, extensions, notifications, and Turnitin processing.
Rebuilt important course navigation, section, activity, gradebook, participant, group, and category interfaces.
Extended Tiny editor control, plugins and autosave behavior.
Led platform-wide accessibility improvements across templates, forms, menus, messaging, and mobile navigation.
Adapted and maintained additional teaching plugins, blocks, and local tools.
Implemented security controls and applied important Moodle fixes outside the ordinary upgrade path.
Built parallel full and cleaned personal-data exports and improved background processing, SITS reliability, PDF handling, email images, filenames, and scheduled tasks.

Most important and critical developments

Enrolment, invitations, and accounts: bulk enrolment from email lists, support for valid CEU users without completed Moodle accounts, authorized external-account creation, pending-invitation messaging, welcome messages for every enrolment method, and clearer dropped-student handling.
SITS integration and course creation: a deliberate workflow for reviewing external course data, creating courses without uncontrolled automatic creation, spotting course changes during the academic year, and confirming current unpublished registrations to students.
Identity and Microsoft sign-in: CEU-specific routing that distinguishes institutional, external, alumni, unknown, and invited users; prevents unintended OAuth account creation; and gives users more meaningful next steps.
Protected examinations: time-window and course-based access restrictions with role-aware exceptions, management controls, and clear messages that direct affected students back to the exam course.
Course reuse: course-code-aware import search, source-check links, current-course exclusion, course-image transfer, safer copy defaults, duplicate main-forum prevention and precise course search
Assignments, grades, and Turnitin: faster setup, prominent plagiarism controls, visible Turnitin status, retroactive Turnitin submission, resend support, clearer grading actions, one-week extension defaults, CEU grade display, and better student-state messages.
Blind marking and bulk feedback: student-visible submission codes, coordinator downloads, improved anonymous ordering, and feedback ZIP matching by either username or blind-marking code.
Course experience and navigation: hidden empty sections, collapsed course index logic, single-section navigation, clearer availability controls, restored familiar icons, Almondb-based CEU theme logic, and redesigned gradebook, participant, group, and category screens.
Accessibility and usability: keyboard, focus, screen-reader, contrast, semantic, heading, label, and template repairs across shared templates, course pages, messaging, books, feedback, menus, drawers, and forms.
Security and reliability: safer HTML handling, restricted unsafe HTML embedding, time-bounded Standard and Enhanced Guest roles, guest search limits, XSS fixes, login protection, account-creation controls, CEU IP whitelisting, improved recaptcha handling, and safer file/url display behaviour.
User-centred data exports: parallel full and cleaned downloads, simplified full-export navigation, course-based file organization, and readable HTML conversion of selected forum, assignment, wiki, and grade data.
Maintenance and data quality: local and upstream fixes for quiz duplication, forum post data, rubric grading, cache purging, email images, accented usernames, filenames with spaces, background tasks, and PDF conversion.

Breadth of the smaller work

Defaults, labels, messages, icons, ordering, and top save buttons across many forms.
Direct actions for assignments, forums, sections, grading, categories, groups, and participants.
Course index, section view, activity summaries, hidden-state display, and previous/next navigation refinements.
Forum wording, pronoun display, anonymous discussion support, group messaging, and notification refinements.
Backup, restore, import, duplicate prevention, image transfer, copy-form, and export-navigation improvements.
Accessibility repairs across shared templates, messaging, feedback, books, menus, drawers, and mobile views.
Compatibility and usability work for Turnitin, Board, Publication, Active Quiz, Checklist, Unilabel, Mass Actions, campus course overview, bookmarks, catalogue, course-category upload, show-faces, simple clock, and other local tools.
Upgrade and compatibility fixes for grading, quizzes, forums, cache maintenance, filenames, scheduled tasks, external services, and data processing.

Overall impact: the work combines a handful of large institutional systems with a very large number of practical refinements. The major developments solve CEU-specific requirements; the smaller changes remove repeated friction for teachers, students, coordinators, and support staff.