Latest Moodle News

by Thom Rawson.  

The Japanese version of this announcement is shown below the English version.

この発表の日本語版は英語版の下に掲載されている。

Moodle Academy is excited to announce its first webinar held in Japanese!

Dr. Yasuyuki NAKAMURA from Nagoya University, will give a Webinar in Japanese. The date is Tuesday, May 13, 2025 at 05:00 UTC (14:00 JST).

Title: The Latest Trends in STACK, an Automated Formula Scoring System, Based on the Participation in the STACK Conference 2025

All are welcome to attend this historic event! Please register now!

Moodle Academyは、初の日本語によるウェビナーを開催します！

名古屋大学の中村泰之博士が日本語でウェビナーを行います。日時は来週火曜日、2025年5月13日05:00 UTC (14:00 JST)です。

Title: 数式自動採点システムSTACKの最新動向、ーSTACK Conference 2025の参加をふまえてー

この歴史的なイベントには誰でも参加できる！今すぐお申し込みください！

by Adrian Greeve.  

Hi everyone,

We are looking to improve the performance of Tracker. We have been slowly accruing more user accounts over the years and the large number of users is having a detrimental impact on the system.

As part of ongoing care of our tracker system we will be removing Tracker accounts that have had no interaction with the system. This only applies to accounts that are older than four years old.

If you have used Tracker at all, you will not be impacted. This is only a clean up of accounts for people that have created an account, but not used it.

You can at any stage create a new account with the same details if it has been removed due to this clean up. If you require further assistance with your Tracker account, please contact us.

Thank you for your continued support helping make Moodle better for everyone.

by Sandra Matz.  

We are excited to announce that MoodleMoot Global 2025 is officially open for registrations! This year’s event will take us to Edinburgh, UK on the 16-18 September.

This global event is your space to exchange ideas, explore new approaches, and connect with a global network of people to build a better future for all.

Secure your super-early bird ticket today! Only 100 tickets are available at this special price, so don’t miss the opportunity to lock in your place and confirm your attendance.

This year's theme, learning to shape tomorrow, recognises that education is one of the most powerful tools we have in shaping the future. This event is your space to exchange ideas, explore new approaches, and connect with a global network of people who want to build a better future for all.

We’re inviting educators, learning designers, technologists, researchers, workplace learning leaders, and change agents from around the world to share ideas that challenge the status quo and help shape the future of learning. Whether you’re in higher education, corporate training, or anywhere in between, your insights matter.

Submit your abstract proposal now for the opportunity to be part of the program! The abstract deadline is 19 May.

We look forward to welcoming you to Edinburgh in September!

Best regards,
MoodleMoot Global team

by Matt Porritt.  

Hi Everyone,

We’re excited to announce the release of Moodle LMS 5.0! A big thank you to our amazing community, the Moodle LMS teams, and all those who played a part in bringing this release to life; we truly appreciate your shared effort and dedication.

This latest release brings new features and enhancements that make it easier to manage courses, assess learners, and configure AI tools, all while giving administrators more control and flexibility.

Here’s an overview of what’s new in LMS 5.0:

🧭 A clearer view of course activities

A new Activities page gives educators and learners one place to see all course activities, deadlines, submissions, and grading progress.
→ Saves time, reduces clicks, and helps everyone stay organised and on track.

🧠 AI tools you can configure and track

Admins can now:

• Track how AI tools are used across the site with a new AI usage report
• View who’s accepted the AI policy
• Manage multiple AI providers with custom settings for each model
  → Greater transparency and control - plus better support for cost management and compliance.

New for learners: Explain joins Summarise as an AI-powered tool to help unpack course content and improve understanding, all within the LMS.

✅ Assessment updates that save time

• Shared question banks across courses for easier reuse and collaboration
• New question bank filters to quickly find questions by type, status, date, and more
• Site-wide late submission penalty rules, applied automatically
• Faster performance with pre-created quiz attempts and background regrading
  → Create and manage assessments more efficiently, with less manual work and smoother workflows

📊 Faster, smarter reporting

Admins can now duplicate custom reports, keeping all filters, fields, and schedules intact - making report creation more efficient than ever.
New filtering options also improve the accuracy and clarity of course tracking.

♿ Accessibility improvements across the platform

Moodle 5.0 introduces long image descriptions, richer glossary and navigation filtering, and an updated accessibility checker in TinyMCE. These updates help educators build more inclusive learning environments, with less manual work.

→ We’re committed to continuous accessibility improvements in every release - supporting educators in meeting standards and reaching all learners.

Other enhancements include manual grading for BigBlueButton sessions, new media playback options, transparent drag-and-drop question elements, and more control over enrolment messaging.

Moodle LMS 5.0 includes many more updates across grading, media, enrolment, and reporting - each designed to save time and improve the teaching and learning experience. You can explore an overview of the new features or dive into technical details in the developer documentation. As you begin to plan for site upgrades, be sure to review the important changes introduced in this release first.

Thank you to everyone across the Moodle community who contributed to making LMS 5.0 possible, your collaboration and dedication continue to shape the future of open-source learning.

Warm regards,
Matt Porritt
Product Director, Platform Solutions

by Simey Lameze.  

We want to say a big thank you to all our QA testers for helping us complete 412 tests during this cycle! Your dedication made the 100% pass rate achievement possible. 🧡

All testers will be awarded a badge, so please ensure you have a valid moodle.org account and that your details are correct to receive it. 🏅

During this cycle, we identified some deprecated capability errors that appear during the upgrade process. The underlying issue, tracked in MDL-77237, requires further work and has been deferred to be fixed after the Moodle 5.0 release. These messages, while unexpected, should not prevent the upgrade process from completing successfully.

A big thanks to our core developers for their swift action in fixing the bugs we encountered during testing. Your hard work ensures we're ready for the release of Moodle 5.0!

Lastly, thank you to everyone who contributed in any way—whether through testing, investigating, or fixing bugs. Your efforts have been crucial in maintaining the quality and reliability of Moodle for educators and learners worldwide. 🚀🏆

by Richard Lefroy.  

During this webinar you will learn about the new features in Moodle 5.0 for administrators and teachers.

The webinar will be presented by Mary Cooch and Helen Foster from Moodle HQ. 

Note: this webinar is part of the course 'What's New in Moodle 5.0'. You have to be enrolled in the course to register and join the webinar.

Register at Moodle Academy.

by Marie Achour.  

To all, 

As we are rapidly approaching the release of Moodle LMS 5.0 we wanted to ensure that you, our community, are informed about major changes, outside of new functionality, that may impact the work you need to do prior to upgrading your Moodle implementations.  

As you will be aware with the change to the version numbering that was announced approximately 12 months ago, the start of each new series (the X.0 version) will be when final deprecations will be occurring, and when we will be making other big underlying changes to Moodle.  The rationale and benefits for this change are detailed in the linked announcement, so please take the time to review it.

All of the changes listed here have previously been announced. We are collecting them into one communication summary ahead of the release to help increase awareness and aid you in planning your upgrades.

Plugins 

A number of plugins have been removed in Moodle LMS 5.0.  These plugins will be available either in the Moodle HQ github for those who wish to continue to use them or, if they are adopted by a maintainer, in the plugins directory.  Specific details can be found in the listed tracker issues. Please note that if these plugins are not reinstalled before completing the upgrade process, the data tables will be removed as part of the upgrade process.  These plugins are:

• MDL-82457 - Chat (mod_chat) 

• MDL-82457 - Survey (mod_survey)

• MDL-78778 - CAS Authentication (auth_cas)

• MDL-77005 - Atto editor and its sub-plugins (editor_atto) 

• MDL-84652- MNET plugins (auth_mnet, block_mnet_hosts, enrol_mnet, mnetservice_enrol, portfolio_mahara)

Oracle Database support  (MDL-80166)

Oracle Database support has been removed from Moodle LMS 5.0, and community members who are currently using Oracle will need to migrate their database to a supported system before upgrading.  This decision was made due to the lack of ongoing support for Oracle in PHP and the very low usage of the platform within the Moodle community, Oracle has not been a recommended platform since prior to Moodle LMS 3.0.

Course formats (MDL-83527)

With the work being done to modernise the Moodle course look and feel, support for some legacy course formats libraries will be deprecated in Moodle LMS 5.0.  All course formats that still depend on libraries from Moodle LMS 3.11 and prior will be deprecated. This is primarily to remove the use of YUI from Moodle but also to allow the code to be cleaned up and made more maintainable for the future. From Moodle LMS 6.0, the deprecated libraries will be completely removed.  Details on migrating a course format from the 3.11 libraries can be found in the dev docs.

Bootstrap 5 (MDL-71979)

Moodle LMS 5.0 will be the first version of Moodle to use Bootstrap 5.  This is a big change, but a lot of work has been put into making this as seamless as possible.  The team has invested in creating a compatibility layer between Bootstrap 4 and Bootstrap 5 to ease the transition, however, the complexity of this change will mean for many with custom themes and other customisations that it is recommended that these are checked prior to upgrading.  The dev docs provide guidance on the major changes between Bootstrap 4 and 5 and how to migrate between them.

Quiz and Question Bank (MDL-68806 and MDL-71378) 

There has been considerable work in improving the functionality of Quiz question banks to simplify the management and sharing of questions within Moodle.  This is a major change in functionality, and as a result, if question bank sharing is commonly used at a Category or System level, please ensure that you fully understand the impact to your processes before upgrading.  Documentation is currently in the process of being created and will be available close to the time of release.

Additionally, a new option has been created that allows institutions to pre-create quiz attempts before the student commences the quiz.  This has been designed to help mitigate database loads when Moodle is used for large-scale synchronous exams.  Use of this is optional and needs to be enabled in the administration settings; however, if it is enabled, this will affect events appearing in the logs and potentially other reporting that utilises data from the quiz attempt tables.

MimeTex removal

MimeTex is being removed as an option for TeX filters.  The underlying 3rd party library that is used was added as a fall back option if other TeX filter options were not available, the library has not been maintained for an extremely long time and as a result is becoming a security and stability concern.  If your installation uses TeX filters please ensure that an alternative such as MathJax, LaTeX, or another is installed to ensure the proper functionality is maintained.

Final deprecation policy update

Finally a reminder that there will been a small update to the deprecation policy in the coming weeks clarifying the retention of the method signature.  This will be important to be aware of moving forward.  As always please check the release notes when they are available to see a full list of final deprecations in this release.

Thank you in advance for your continued support and happy Moodling!

The Moodle Products Team

by Richard Lefroy.  

The STACK question type is the most powerful and flexible maths related question available for any platform. With that power comes some complexity and this webinar will address how it can be used by non experts. We will be showing ways of simplifying the question editing process and sharing resources.

Maths expertise will not be required (or demonstrated) for this webinar.

The webinar will be presented by Marcus Green, Senior eLearning Technical Consultant at Catalyst IT Europe, and is suitable for both educators and administrators.

Note: this webinar is part of the course 'Moodle Academy webinars'. You have to be enrolled in the course to register and join the webinar.

Register at Moodle Academy.

by Sandra Matz.  

Have you ever wanted to try something on Moodle with the latest version, but did not know how to set up a Moodle site? Or maybe you have seen an upcoming feature being developed on Tracker, and wished you could test it before it’s released? In this webinar, we will show you a simple way to create a Moodle test site - no technical setup needed. You will learn how to:

• Quickly create a test site to explore new Moodle changes.

• Try new features that are being developed.

• Test Moodle plugins.

• Utilise your site for Moodle Q&A testing.

Whether you’re a teacher, administrator, or just curious about what’s coming next in Moodle, this session will show you how to easily test new features and stay up to date with Moodle’s latest developments.

This webinar will be presented by Sara Arjona, Analyst Developer/Integrator, and Júlia Verdaguer, Content Designer, at Moodle HQ.

This webinar is part of the course 'Moodle Testing for Non-Technical Users'. You have to be enrolled in this free course to register and join the webinar.

Register at Moodle Academy.

by Sandra Matz.  

Teachers face increasing workloads and limited time for professional development. Discover how the Centre de pédagogie universitaire (CPU) at UQAR turned the holiday season into a unique opportunity for teacher development through two creative Moodle-based initiatives: The Festive Calendar and The Holiday Learning Journey. These projects combined gamification, festive themes, and practical resources to inspire teachers while addressing their busy schedules.

The Festive Calendar offered daily pedagogical tips in December, while the Holiday Learning Journey provided tools for integrating generative AI, classroom management, and active learning strategies. Both initiatives followed the RICE model (Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort), ensuring high impact with minimal effort.

Join Emilie Ringuet, Pedagogical and Technoeducational Advisor at the Université du Québec à Rimouski in Canada, on Wednesday 12th March, 15:00-16:00 UTC, as she describes the reflective process behind those projects, the challenges of professional development for teaching resources, and the key outcomes of these projects. You'll also learn about the Moodle configurations and take home pedagogical resources and both projects in .mbz format. Let's unwrap the gift of effective, enjoyable and time-efficient professional development together!

This webinar is part of the course 'Moodle Academy webinars'. You have to be enrolled in this free course to register and join the webinar.

Register at Moodle Academy.

by Sandra Matz.  

At this webinar we will welcome Riana Beachy-Hasenick, Liam Moran and Gosha Nikiforov at the University of Illinois Urban-Champaign.

ATLAS, the IT unit for the College of Liberal Arts & Sciences at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign has spent the last couple years configuring a Moodle environment to work as an LTI tool integrated into the vendor-provided LMS platform adopted by the University’s central IT unit. This initiative has allowed faculty to continue providing high-quality educational materials designed in Moodle, while satisfying students’ and administration’s desire for the campus to use one central LMS.

We invite you to register to join this free webinar on Wednesday 26 February, 15:00-16:00 UTC, to learn about ATLAS's user-centered development of the Moodle LTI tool, including user interface improvements, roster and group handling, grade syncing, notifications, and more.

This webinar is suitable for developers and administrators.

This webinar is part of the course 'Moodle Academy webinars'. You have to be enrolled in this free course to register and join the webinar.

Register at Moodle Academy.

by Sandra Matz.  

We invite you to join us for our next Moodle Academy webinar, which is free to attend. Please note: This webinar will be in French.

Webinaire: La gestion des rôles dans Moodle
5 février, 13:00-14:00 UTC
Inscrivez-vous!

Lors de ce webinaire, nous accueillerons Nicolas Martignoni, Enseignant et formateur à Fribourg, Suisse.

Les rôles de Moodle sont une des clefs de la flexibilité de son utilisation. Cependant, la gestion de ces rôles est complexe et assez difficile d'accès. Ce webinaire, destiné avant tout aux administrateurs et administratrices de Moodle, mais aussi à toute personne curieuse du fonctionnement interne de Moodle, se donne comme objectif d'améliorer la compréhension de l'architecture des rôles de Moodle et, à l'aide d'exemples, de trucs et d'astuces, de rendre plus digeste l'administration de ces rôles. Des bonnes pratiques de gestion des rôles dans Moodle seront également présentées.

Ce webinaire fait partie du cours 'Moodle Academy webinars'. Il faut vous inscrire au cours pour participer au webinaire.

Inscrivez-vous à Moodle Academy!

by Helen Foster.  

In addition to our Site policy, we have a Code of conduct that applies to all forums and other activities on moodle.org and the Moodle Plugins directory.

We will shortly be updating the Site policy to include a link to the Code of conduct.

You will be required to accept the updated Site policy the next time you log in.