Elon Technology Blog

Moodle improvements for Fall 2015

Moodlerooms, Elon’s Moodle hosting provider, upgraded our Moodle installation to version 2.8 on July 9th, 2015. This upgrade included several changes and new features for the gradebook, forums, and quizzes, which are highlighted below.

Gradebook improvements

Improved grader report

Many improvements have been made to the grade book, with the grader report now functional across all devices, including tablets and smartphones. Grade cells can be quickly edited without reloading the page and the grader report now allows for smooth scrolling, locking the activity and student header columns in place as you scroll.

Improved grade import

Grades can now be imported into Moodle by pasting from a spreadsheet. This makes the grade import process easier and much faster.

New single view

A new single view allows instructors to grade all activities for a specific student, or all students, for a specific activity. Instructors can now quickly view grade overrides and exclusions and make bulk changes to grades within the single view.

New grade history report

Instructors can now track and audit the grade history of a specific student. The report gives instructors details of all grade changes that have occurred.

Natural weighting

The new aggregation method combines grades simply with a clearer interface for using weights. The  natural weighting aggregation supports extra credit, excluded grades, and hidden grades. Sum of grades has been replaced by natural weighting as an aggregation method. All grade books using sum of grades are automatically upgraded to use the natural aggregation method.

Forum enhancements

Subscribe to individual discussions

Users can now subscribe to individual forum discussions and receive email copies of just the replies that are wanted, instead of the whole forum.

Email replies to forum posts

For added convenience, users can now reply to forum posts by email, and even include attachments.

Improved quiz edit screen

The edit quiz page has been completely reworked for improved accessibility, making it easier to add and manage quiz questions.

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On-Demand Moodle 2.8 training with Lynda

Elon has partnered with Lynda.com to provide on-demand software training to all faculty, staff, and students. Lynda Training offers nearly 1,000 video tutorials on leading software topics. These high-quality tutorials are taught by industry experts and are available 24/7 for convenient, self-paced learning. Lynda has recently released a training video on Moodle 2.8. This video covers all of the new features of Moodle 2.8 that you can expect to see in July.

After you click the link above, you will be prompted to login with your Elon username and password. After you have logged in, you are able to explore the video in any order you please.

If you have any questions, please contact the Technology Service Desk at 278-5200.

 

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