Category: News

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Is your Moodle in Finnish?

Do you have to change the language in Moodle from Finnish to English every time you have logged in?

Instead, change the language setting in your profile; then you can use Moodle in English as default!

To change your language settings:

  • Log in.
  • Change the language to English from the drop-down menu at the upper right corner.
  • Click on the text link Your Name at the upper right corner.
  • The block Settings at the left side includes the item Edit profile. Click on it.
  • Select English in the drop-down menu for the setting Preferred language.
  • Scroll down and click on Update profile.
  • Return to My home from the text link at the upper left corner.
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Moodle updated – new features for teachers

The UH Moodle has been updated to a new version (2.2.2). Most of the old functionality is intact, the most notable changes include

  • New Navigation and Settings blocks, which make the user interface more consistent. Watch a video demonstration (1 minute) of the new user interface.
  • Setting up enrolment keys is no longer done in course settings. Watch a video (1 minute) describing the process.
  • Enrolling a user manually is no longer done from ‘Administration / Assing roles’ but from ‘Settings / Course administration / Users / Enrolled users’.

There are four new activities:

The most important new features include

Best place for documentation in English is http://docs.moodle.org.

There’s a 3-hour course for Moodle teachers on 21st August.

Questions? Contact us at ok-moodle@helsinki.fi.

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Deleting unused course areas

The number of Moodle course areas has grown with the increased interest and educational use of Moodle. Teachers and departments create new course areas for each course implementation separately, i.e. for example for ICT driving license courses autumn 2010 and 2011, which is often the most meaningful way to do. But the results of this are that there are many unused course areas that were created for and used in already past courses. Additionally and as a consequence, many course areas have similar names, and users may get confused in searching the list for the actual one. It is more difficult to find the accurate course areas among the large number of course areas. Therefore it was considered meaningful to hide and even delete old and unused course areas which also shortens teachers’ mymoodle list of course areas. In addition, the process prepares for Moodle 2 migration in summer 2012.

In autumn 2011, the automatic process of gradually deleting unused course areas was started. The idea is that course areas that a) have not had visits for 12 months b) have a start date older than 12 months are investigated on. They are not hidden or deleted automatically, but instead users with teacher privileges on the course area receive email notification on the situation. If the course area includes many teachers, please agree on the course area future need with the teacher responsible for the course. Teachers will receive in total at least three notifications before the course area is deleted. The stages are as follows:

  • Stage 1: if the course area is still open for students, it will be closed
  • Stage 2: the course area is moved to a hidden category and hidden from the MyMoodle page but is still accessible via the course area address
  • Stage 3: the course area is deleted

Teachers receive an email notification two months before each stage. If the course area is still in educational use, the deleting process can be postponed in Stage 1 by editing the Course start date at Administration/Settings and after Stage 2 by asking for the category change from ok-moodle@helsinki.fi. Note that the start date cannot be in future if students should be able to access the course area.

If you are the teacher responsible for the course and want to speed up the process by getting your course areas deleted at once, please contact ok-moodle@helsinki.fi.