Moodle 3 Upgrade Complete

Members of the Instructional Support team within the Office of Distance Learning worked through the weekend to support the IT upgrade of moodle.louisiana.edu to version 3.1. “The upgrade represents several months of work by our instructional designers, instructional technologist, and faculty participating in the pilot to fully test the new features of Moodle,” explained Dr. Claire Arabie, Manager of Instructional Support for Distance Learning. “Faculty will notice minimal changes in the layout and navigation to reduce any user friction with a drastically modified interface.”

The Moodle upgrade offers a number of new and updated features designed to improve the educational experiences of both instructors and students. These features include:

• Ability to restore deleted content using the Recycle Bin
• Improved assignment grading capabilities
• Enhanced functionality in discussion forums
• Responsive design for better viewing on mobile devices

“Dr. Arabie’s team excels at providing user interface and user experience testing in partnership with IT,” shared Dr. Luke Dowden, Director of Distance Learning. “Moodle is the only classroom for our 100% online students, thus, the need for our attention to issues of accessibility and mobile friendliness of the learning management system. The entire venture of upgrading Moodle is time consuming, but rewarding in increased functionality for faculty and students.”

Moodle 3 Functionality

Faculty will likely find the layout and functionality of Moodle 3 very similar to the most recent version of Moodle. Links below include an overview of new and updated features.

• Overview of New Features (doc) - https://docs.moodle.org/31/en/New_features
• Overview of New Features (video, 3:29) - https://youtu.be/AOqFpLHi4S4

Videos of New Features

• Assignment Grading (video, 2:08) - https://youtu.be/dSxxdglCaeE
• Forum Enhancements (video, 1:28) - https://youtu.be/uXUEO0VkjM0
• Gradebook Updates (video, 3:54) - https://youtu.be/CMXvtFPmd0o
• Natural Grade Aggregation Method (video, 7:33) - https://youtu.be/sxozBKaiSfc
• New Quiz Question Types (video, 2:18) - https://youtu.be/-pqMDwXICRY
• Quiz Updates (video, 2:46) - https://youtu.be/8evRvfl_qLo
• Quiz Improvements (video, 2:08) - https://youtu.be/BnQnr_R61-o
• Recycle Bin (video, 1:33) - https://youtu.be/Wzieh7BYwfE

For more information about Moodle 3.1, visit the Moodle 3.1 Help Course and log in with your ULID.

If you have any Moodle issues, please contact IT Help at http://helpdesk.louisiana.edu/get-help.