Dear Moodle users,
our Moodle was upgraded to the latest version (3.6) today, and also added some new features of our own to make working in Moodle easier for you. Some of these features, like statistics, have been active for some time already, but have not been announced yet, and are therefore included in this list.
New terms of use
The new terms of use for Moodle include the deletion of courses 8 semesters after a course ends. Teachers will be notified prior to course deletion, and will have the option to keep a backup of the course without its user data.
New login page
The most obvious change is the new login-page, where you can now directly see the Moodle news and links to useful resources. You can access this page at any time after logging in, by clicking on "Site home" in the navigation menu.
Keyboard shortcuts
To make working in Moodle faster and easier, we added keyboard shortcuts for many commands. You can see these shortcuts displayed right on the interface in pink letters. A list of all hotkeys, including instructions how to deactivate or activate this feature can be found here. This link is also included in the new "Help" menu.
In addition to the shortcuts, the cursor is placed inside the first available text field upon loading a page, and pressing <enter> should automatically activate the "save and return" command in most forms, even when the cursor is still inside a text field. Furthermore, your current scroll position will now be restored on the course site when activating or deactivating the edit mode for a course.
New Quick-Menus
The old "Quick Links" menu in the navigation bar at the top was separated into two menus. The "Help" menu gives you access to all Moodle-specific help, while "Links" lists Links to both internal Moodle resources as well as links to external sites of the UAS Technikum Wien. Here you can also find the links to the new toolboxes.
New toolboxes
The Kollaborations-Toolbox (only in German) of our infrastructure department was already announced in their newsletter, and gives you an overview about tools available for all aspects of collaboration at the UAS Technikum Wien, including setup instructions.
The eDidaktik Toolbox and eDidaktik Forum by TLC will also be linked in this menu as soon as they are available.
New course overview
The course overview on the dashboard was improved, and the navigation menu now shows more courses.
To ensure that info-courses like the toolboxes, the Moodle Beispielkurs, setup instructions etc do not clutter the list of courses, those will no longer be displayed in the navigation menu's "My courses" list or in the Dashboard's list of courses in progress. You can access these info courses via their direct links, or can find them in the new "all courses" list in the dashboard.
Additional improvements
- Course statistics: in the course settings menu (gears icon in the top right), teachers can now access the new "statistics" feature, where access statistics for the course are displayed
- More video tutorials (only in German): these can help you with basic problems in Moodle - you can find a link to all video tutorials in the new "Help" menu
- Files in courses no longer open in popup windows by default, but are automatically downloaded or displayed depending on the file type. To ensure a consistent user experience, this has also been changed retroactively for all files inserted in all existing courses.
- Newly inserted URLs will also no longer open in a separate window by default
- When hiding the course via course settings, a notification that this course is not available for students will be displayed on the main course page
- Tables inserted via the default text editor are now preformatted to conform to our corporate design
- The interface on mobile devices was improved
New features for the CIS/Moodle interface
Our systems development team has improved the CIS/Moodle interface, and added some new features
- Moodle courses can now be directly linked with groups / mailing lists to synchronize users. This will also remove users from courses when they are removed from those lists
- In Moodle courses linked to courses in CIS students will now automatically be assigned specific roles, for example if they already have an accredidation for this course, they will no longer show up in the grade list in Moodle
- Teachers will no longer receive an info-mail when students are added to a course automatically via CIS
The Moodle-Handbuch and Moodle Beispielkurs (both only in German) were also updated to include information for the new features.
Please immediately report any problems you encounter, and continue to provide us with feedback to enable us to improve our Moodle for all our users. Direct all questions and feedback to moodle@technikum-wien.at.
Happy holidays,
TLC Moodle Support