Service break in Moodle on 4th of January, 2023 – New Word count plugin

Moodle will be closed on 4th of January, 2023 from 8 AM to 12 AM. During this time you will not be able to log in to Moodle. Please also remember that there is a Unitube service break from 22 December 2022 to 3 January 2023.

New Word Count plugin

After the service break, you will have access to a new real-time word counter in the Atto editor. The word count will be displayed at the bottom of the editor window. The older hashtag icon will be removed from the selection.

More information

Support requests, questions and feedback: moodle @ helsinki.fi

The Moodle summer update on June 29, 2022, includes new question types to the Quiz

Moodle will be updated on June 29th, 2022, from 8 AM to 5 PM. During this time, Moodle is closed and cannot be logged into. The update may not take the whole day, but the time is reserved as a precaution to prepare for potential update issues and fixes.

New question types to the quiz

In the summer update, two new question types will be added to the quiz activity: All or nothing and Gapfill. Moodle users have requested both question types.

All or nothing

All or nothing question type is a multiple choice question in which the respondent must select all the correct options to get a full score. If the respondent chooses one of the wrong options or don’t choose all correct answers, the score is 0. It is not possible to give minus points in all or nothing questions.

Read more about all or nothing question type

Gapfill

The Gapfill question type allows creating embedded questions (both writing, drop-down, and drag-and-drop) where you can put one or more correct words per gap. For example, in the sentence “Cats and dogs are typical pets.” you also get full points by writing “ Dogs and cats are typical pets.” In the other embedded question types, this is not possible. In addition to the Gapfill, Moodle still has other types of embedded question types (cloze).

Read more about Gapfill question type.

Setting changes

Quiz: Review options

With the “Review options” in the quiz activity, the teacher decides what students see after the quiz, e.g. if the student sees the correct answers to the multiple-choice questions immediately after the quiz is returned or only after the quiz is completed.

The default settings for “Review Options” will change during the summer update. After the update, nothing will be displayed for students who have taken the quiz. The new settings only affect the new quiz activities, the settings made before the update remain unchanged.

For example, the teacher can show the score after checking the entire quiz. If the quiz is a self-study quiz where the student should receive immediate feedback on their learning, the teacher can add the necessary alternatives to “Immediately after the attempt” and “Later, while the quiz is still open” before the quiz begins.

Notifications: Notification for teachers of students’ quiz submissions

The teacher can choose in the notification settings to receive a message when students have returned their quiz submission. This can be good, for example, for essay questions, when students can take the quiz at any time throughout the year. By default, notification preference is such that teachers do not receive these notifications.

The default maximum grade for activities

After the upgrade, the default maximum grade for some activities will be five. This applies to the following activities: Assignment, Lesson, Attendance, and External tool. Other activities or existing implementations of the above are not affected by this setting.

Per-group grade export to Sisu now possible

After the update, it is possible to export grades from Moodle to Sisu one group at a time. The group selection dropdown menu is only visible, if a group mode has been selected from the course settings. After exporting the grades of a single group, in Sisu one can adjust the assessment properties for the whole group using the bulk edit functionality.

Read more about exporting grades from Moodle to Sisu.

Preliminary information: Moodle 4.0 in the summer 2023

Moodle gets a new look! Moodle 4.0 brings a modern interface, an intuitive tabbed navigation, and it will be easier for teachers to edit courses. At the University of Helsinki, we will be launching the new Moodle in the summer 2023. You can already get a taste of the new user interface in the video.

Read more about Moodle 4.0

Training and support

Moodle upgrades on June 30th 2021

Moodle will be upgraded to version 3.10 on June 30th, 2021, from 8 AM to 5 PM. During this time, Moodle is closed and cannot be logged into. The update may not take the whole day, but the time is reserved as a precaution to prepare for potential update issues and fixes.

The update does not bring major changes to Moodle, just some minor usability improvements. For example, in new Moodle areas, activity completion will be on by default. This makes it easier to enable the feature in activities. A major layout update is coming with Moodle 4.0 version (follow the development of moodle.org). The University of Helsinki is launching it in the summer 2022.

Moodle is now better accessible with WCAG 2.1. version. To increase accessibility, we have added a small arrow ➚ to links made in the editor that open in a new window / tab. This can be seen, for example, in texts made with Page, Book and Label resources.

Contact us

Moodle is updated to version 3.6 on June 26th, 2019

Moodle will be upgraded to version 3.6 on June 26th, 2019, from 8 AM to 5 PM. During this time, Moodle is closed and cannot be logged into. The update may not take the whole day, but the time is reserved as a precaution to prepare for potential update issues and fixes.

Improved Course overview function

This improvement has been waited for: the courses on the Course overview on the Dashboard can now be sorted, starred, and hidden. The view can be just a listing, a pictorial “card” format, or a listing with a course description. You can also add new blocks to your page: Recently accessed courses, Starred courses and Recently accessed items (activities and resources). By default, everyone will see their own Recently accessed courses block. The Timeline can now be found in its own block within the right column. Click the “Customise this page” button at the top right of the page to edit your Dashboard’s Course overview. You can add blocks from the “Add a block” button at the end of the left column.

Read more

New messaging interface

There are new options in the inbox message view: Starred, Group and Private. You can mark your contacts as starred, and their posts will appear on your list. New group communications allow group members to send messages to the entire group. This requires that the function is enabled in group settings. The teacher must also be a member of the group if she wants to send group messages.

For teachers

Easily find duplicated items

Duplicated resources are appended with ‘copy’ so you can easily distinguish between the original and copy.

Download the list of course participants

In the Participants page, you can download the list of course participants for example to Excel. The participant list has been changed so that the last name comes first.

Contact us

What is new in Moodle 3.1?

Moodle was updated to a new version 3.1.4 on 10th January 2017.

Changes in the new version:

  • Grading Assignment submissions has got smoother by showing all elements on one screen. The teacher can annotate uploaded PDFs within the browser, and on saving, the annotated file is made available to the student. It is recommended to advice students to upload their submissions in PDF format.
  • The teacher can easily restore deleted items by the new Recycle bin. The content will be permanently deleted after two weeks.
  • When a Folder resource contains many files, students and teachers can download them all in a zipped file.
  • Teachers can now pin important forum posts to the top of the discussion, making them more visible to all.
  • Everybody can now easily link to forum posts by the new permalink feature.

Read more about the new features.

Please note that there are also some functionalities generally available within Moodle 3.1. version that the University of Helsinki will not be taking into use. These include:

  • CBE – Competence based education
  • Global search
  • Tags
  • Annotating other than PDF files
  • LTI tools
  • Metalinked courses

If you have any questions about the new version of Moodle, please contact moodle @ helsinki.fi

Watch a video about Moodle 3.1. highlights: