Category: Instructions

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Moodle is updated to version 3.5 on January 8, 2019

The University of Helsinki’s Moodle is updated twice a year to a new version. On January 8, 2019, from 8 AM to 5 PM, Moodle is updated to the version 3.5 and during this time you can not log in or access Moodle. With the new version, features have improved and we also bring a new plugin: Group choice.

New in version 3.5

Course images

Images or coloured patterns brighten up the course descriptions on the dashboard Course overview. The image can be set in the course settings under “Course summary files”.

More efficient user management

Search, filter and bulk edit or delete self-enrolled students from the Participants and Enrolments screen.

However, if you want to delete all participants in the course, use the familiar Reset function. Remember that it is advisable to set up a new Moodle area for each course – and not to empty the area from the previous students.

A new link “View all submissions”

An easy return path from the PDF grading view to back to the list of all submissions.

Quiz and choice activity improvements

 

Other novelties

New plugin – Group choice

With the activity Group choice, students can join the group they want in the course. The teacher can choose which groups the students can enroll and the maximum number of participants. This activity can be used, for example, to divide students into training groups.

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Change the course start and end dates in the course settings

Teacher! Trouble finding your course on the Dashboard? Have you noticed that the end date of your course area is a year after creating the course?

Please check that the course start and end dates are correct. Afterwards, your Moodle course will be correctly displayed on the Dashboard default view, on tabs “In progress”, “Future”, and “Past” – for students as well!

Instructions:

1) Go to your Moodle course area.

2) Go to Edit settings (gear menu in the upper right corner).

 

 

3) Set the correct dates:

 

Tip:

  • The start date can be e.g. the date of the first lecture or the day the preliminary assignments are published.
  • The end date should be a date after even the last assignment/exam on the course has been completed. If you use Moodle to grade submissions, the end date should not be before the date the grades are published.

4) Save and display.

Now the courses are displayed correctly in the list of courses on Dashboard:

Start date and end date do not close the course area from course participants. If you want to close the course completely, change the setting Course visibility in Edit course settings. Hidden courses are shown last on the lists on tabs “In progress”, “Future”, and “Past”, and the course links become grey.

When you use a few minutes of your time to edit the start and end dates

  • you make finding the course areas much easier.
  • the course area does not move to the “Past” tab on a wrong date (= one year after creating the course).
  • students do not unenrol themselves from courses because of their chaotic Dashboard. If the students unenrol from the course, all their submitted assignments and grades are no longer visible.

Tip: If the “In progress” tab on your Dashboard shows courses that have already ended, you can move them to the right tab with only a few clicks (see the previous instructions). In this situation, you do not have to find the correct course start and end dates; it is enough to set the current date as the end date and then save the changes.

 

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Moodle 3.3 and the new Course overview

On 3rd January 2018 University of Helsinki’s Moodle was updated to the version 3.3. The course overview block in the previous versions of Moodle has been removed and replaced with a new course overview, which provides details of course progress and upcoming deadlines.

Unfortunately in the new course overview it is no longer possible to arrange courses as desired. This is a disadvantage for many teachers and students, especially if they are on multiple Moodle courses. We are currently investigating whether it would be possible to introduce a different “Course overview” block with previous features. We apologize for the situation and we will announce about the progress here.

What can I do?

1) Add Courses block on your Dashboard. (See video)

  • Go to your Dashboard
  • Click Customise this page (right corner)
  • Add block “Courses” (left column)
  • Move the “My courses” block to the middle.

2) Use My Teaching / My Studies pages. After the teacher has added the link to the Moodle course to the page, the Moodle area can be accessed also from there.

3) Search your Moodle course using Search tool on the frontpage and on Dashboard.

4) Add your Moodle courses as bookmarks to your browser. See Student’s digital skills: Bookmarks

What can I do as a teacher?

4) Teacher should define the start and end dates of the course, so that the courses will appear in the right tabs “In progress/Future/Past”.

If you have any questions, please contact moodle (at) helsinki.fi

Educational Technology Services
University of Helsinki IT services

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What’s new in Moodle after the latest version update

Moodle learning environment was updated to version 3.2 on 29th June, 2017. The update included some new features, as well as the following changes described below.

Grades

Grader report has been moved to Navigation block: My courses > choose your course > Grades.

Change user role

The Switch role to -function is now located within the user menu.

Completion progress

The Progress bar block has been changed to Completion progress block. To create a new Completion progress block, you need to first enable Completion tracking in course settings in order to use the Completion progress tool.

H5P

H5P is an easy-to-use and versatile tool to add information and questions to videos, create presentations and quizzes, and more. Become acquainted with the new H5P Interactive content activity.  If you would like to see a certain property in use within H5P (see the list) please just let us know, and we can adapt the tool. At the moment, H5P is in test use and we would like to hear your comments.

Give feedback!

Send feedback to the address moodle@helsinki.fi

Thank you very much!

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Changes in self-enrolment

There have been some changes in the self-enrolment settings regarding new Moodle courses. With the self-enrolment function, students can enrol themselves to a course so that teachers don’t have to add them one by one.

These changes concern your new Moodle courses, if you would like to:

  • Get students to enrol themselves into a Moodle course site
  • Set an enrolment key for the course

What’s changed: The self-enrolment function is no longer automatically open by default, but it is hidden. To enable self-enrolment:  Go to “Administration” > “Course administration” > “Users” > “Enrolment methods” and open the “eye” icon on the line “Self enrolment”. You can also set an enrolment key. For more information, please see instructions.

If you have any further questions, feel free to contact us at moodle @ helsinki.fi Thank you!