We invite you to join us for the Moodle Academy free webinar “Transfer Moodle data easily and safely” on Thursday 22nd June at 11:00-12:00 UTC.

Transferring data between Moodle and other applications such as CRMs and ecommerce software can be costly and challenging -  and time-consuming too if you're constantly uploading spreadsheets. Join our Moodle Certified Integration Partner Myddleware as they take us through their open-source data integration tool that simplifies and streamlines these operations for you. No more spreadsheets and no need to write a single line of code!

Note: 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.

Hello everyone,

The Moodle HQ Products team has recently completed our quarterly planning process which sees us review our progress and priorities for the future.

This process is key to ensuring we continue to focus on what matters most to our community members and deliver the most valuable changes to Moodle based on your feedback.

You can see the outcomes of our planning review by visiting our 

Thank you,
The Moodle Products Team

This is a friendly reminder that the deadline for abstract submissions for MoodleMoot Global 2023 is fast approaching!

Don't miss your chance to present your groundbreaking ideas, exemplary case studies, and innovative showcases at this global event.

With the focus on this year’s theme: “Lifelong learning”, we invite educators, workplace trainers, administrators and developers to share your expertise and contribute to the advancement of education by submitting your abstract before the June 2nd deadline, only two weeks away!

Our event will feature captivating talks, engaging workshops, and inspiring poster presentations, providing a unique platform for knowledge exchange and collaboration. This is a great opportunity to share your knowledge and expertise with fellow Moodle enthusiasts from around the world to shape the future of lifelong learning.

Visit the event website now to submit your abstract for the opportunity to be part of the program, and to register to attend the conference.

Join us in shaping the future of teaching and training with Moodle LMS and Moodle Workplace at the biggest Moodle event in the world!

We invite all our Moodle community members worldwide to come and join us for this special presentation as we get ready for MoodleMoot Global 2023! This session, which will be held on Tuesday 16th May at 9:00 UTC, will cover everything you need to know about attending and presenting at the event. Moodle HQ team members will be on hand to run you through a general overview of the event, the program, submitting abstracts, presenting at the Moot, information and tips about Barcelona and the conference venue, details on the Moodle Party, and some highlights from last year's event.

So register now for this free webinar and come and join us as we get ready for MoodleMoot Global 2023!

Note: this webinar is part of the MoodleMoot Global 2023 free course in Moodle Academy. You have to be enrolled in the course to join the webinar.

Register for the webinar at Moodle Academy. 

We are excited to announce that abstracts submissions are now open for MoodleMoot Global 2023, on 19-21 September in Barcelona, Spain.

This year’s event program will include keynote presentations covering the different conference streams; sessions featuring presentations from the Moodle community, Moodle Partners, and sponsors; workshops and hands-on sessions; social and networking events including the Moodle Party, a Jam Day, and so much more!

Whether you are an educator, workplace trainer, administrator or a developer, we would love to hear from you!

With the focus on this year’s conference theme “Lifelong learning“, we invite Moodlers from any educational, training or learning field to come together to learn from each other, share findings, brainstorm solutions to problems and explore best practices.

Submit your abstract by the deadline of 2 June for the opportunity to present your ideas, examples, case studies and showcases. Contribute to improving the quality of teaching and training with Moodle LMS and Moodle Workplace.

Visit the event website for more information and to register for the conference.

Our global MoodleMoot conference provides a unique opportunity for Moodle enthusiasts or newcomers from all over the world to meet and learn from each other.

We look forward to seeing you there!

Best regards,

Sandra Matz
MoodleMoot Global team
moodlemoot.org

Hi all,

Most of you by now have tried some of the recent crop of AIs from the past year or so.  The acceleration of the field has been nothing short of incredible, surprising even the people who are inventing the field, and affecting every single field of human endeavour. 

There are many ways we can use these technologies in education, and Moodle LMS. 

As one of the world's larger open source projects, our amazing community is critical to how our core team decides where our software goes, and so we would really like to hear your opinions and thoughts about AI and what you would like to see Moodle doing.

So please take our survey on AI in Moodle and let us know!   This survey will be left open so that you can come back and add your thoughts anytime.

    AI in Moodle - a community survey
Thank you!

Hi Everyone,

We are delighted to announce the arrival of Moodle LMS 4.2, a product of our collective dedication and hard work!

This latest release builds upon the refined user experience of Moodle LMS 4.1 with new and improved features that create efficiencies for educators, trainers and systems administrators. This update brings enhancements to course creation, reporting,  and activities, making it quicker and easier to create engaging learning experiences, measure learner progress and improve learner outcomes.

Thank you to our community

We thank our community for your contributions to Moodle LMS 4.2.  With over 328 commits from 76 developers in over 15  countries, you're integral to this release!

In addition to code contributions, you have helped us by running QA tests, providing translations and writing documentation. Many of you continue to take part in research for Moodle LMS 4 releases, through user testing and providing feedback on our designs.

As an open source project we thrive on your involvement, which benefits not only the Moodle community, but Moodle users across the world!

Key improvements in Moodle LMS 4.2 follow:

Bulk editing in courses

Moodle LMS 4.2, in partnership with Moodle Users Association, brings a new bulk actions feature that allows you to bulk duplicate, delete, move, or change the availability of activities or course sections. This feature will enable you to streamline course creation and editing, saving you valuable time in administrative tasks.

Gradebook improvements

Moodle LMS 4.2 provides streamlined visibility of learner progress and performance through Gradebook improvements.  A search option in the Grader report allows you to search learners using their identifiers, such as names or emails. Additional improvements include introducing a Grader report records per page selector, collapsible columns in Grader report, and collapsible grade categories in the Gradebook setup.

Additionally, ‌learner feedback is now displayed directly in the Gradebook, allowing easy access without changing interfaces.

Enhanced Course page design and features

‌Course page improvements in Moodle LMS 4.2 make creating and editing courses more efficient and deliver an intuitive navigation experience for learners. You can now duplicate sections and add an activity anywhere in a section. Activity types are only shown to teachers (not learners) when editing mode is on, saving valuable space in the learning interface.  Permalink URLs allow educators and trainers to share specific locations in courses and indentation has been restored, displaying both in the course index and the main page. These enhancements have made it easier for both educators and learners to navigate and comprehend page content, without feeling overwhelmed.

Improvements in Report builder give educators and trainers better insights into learner behaviour and progress.  This includes new sources, such as comments and user badges, to generate detailed reports. For custom reports on course completion, new options like time enrolled, time started, and reaggregated are available. Before, last, current and next hour filters can be viewed directly from within custom reports.  These improvements provide actionable insights to improve learner outcomes.

Group visibility changes to support data privacy

Moodle LMS 4.2 gives site administrators or educators the ability to control the visibility of members in certain groups when creating new ones. Moodle is committed to protecting the privacy of its users and making sure that their data remains secure. This is an important improvement in Moodle’s ability to support GDPR data privacy and security.

Export Moodle content to MoodleNet

For the first time, educators and trainers can export content from their Moodle course to MoodleNet. MoodleNet is Moodle’s platform to find, share and curate open educational resources and this new feature provides an easy way to share activities in courses with others.  It also provides a way to access, import and re-use those activities in other courses or contexts.

Other improvements include:

• BigBlueButton, the open source virtual classroom integrated with Moodle as a standard feature, now provides the option to restrict specific recording formats viewable for everyone. An admin setting also allows displaying of participants’ profile pictures during live sessions.
• Benefit from the popular, accessible and supported TinyMCE text editor, which is now the default in Moodle LMS 4.2. making it easier to develop rich text content.
• By popular demand, educators will now be able to customise question numbers and reopen quiz attempts that were never submitted. 
• A new Assignment messaging option feature has been added to allow you to message learners from the assignment submissions page easily.

Find out more about Moodle LMS 4.2 and watch our short videos on Course page improvements,  Bulk editing, Gradebook and Report builder enhancements. Read our Moodle LMS 4.2 new features documentation for an overview of the key features and improvements.

Enjoy!

Matt Porritt
Platform Manager, Moodle LMS

Hello Moodle community!

Thanks to all of our Quality Assurance (QA) testers, who helped us with testing 540 tests and fully completing our QA cycle! 👏 👏

That was an amazing team effort so a big thank you to everyone that has helped in any way with the success of another QA cycle! 💪

Those who completed 3 or more tests will receive a Moodle tester badge 🏅 in recognition of their efforts.

Also a special thanks to all our core developers, who helped with fixing bugs identified through testing, so that tests could be reset and run again. We are now ready for Moodle 4.2 to be released on Monday 24th of April of 2023.

Simey

Te invitamos a que nos acompañes en el próximo webinar de Moodle Academy “Reflexiones sobre el MEC”, con nuestro partner BuenData, el miércoles 3 de mayo a las 13:00 UTC.

Durante el webinar aprenderás qué es el MEC (Certificación de Moodle para Educadores) y conocerás de primera mano la experiencia de candidatos y facilitadores de esta certificación, así como el impacto que ha tenido en su enseñanza.

También contaremos con la presencia de BuenData como partner de Moodle invitado para esta sesión.

El webinar tiene una duración de 1 hora y se impartirá en español.

Nota: este webinar forma parte del curso ‘¿Estás listo para el MEC?’. Debes estar inscrito en este curso gratuito para poder inscribirte en el webinar.

Inscríbete en Moodle Academy.

We invite you to join us for the Moodle Academy free webinar “What’s New in Moodle 4.2” on Wednesday 26th April at 12:00 UTC.

In this webinar, Mary Cooch, Education Manager at Moodle HQ, will present the new features and improvements in Moodle LMS version 4.2, that is due to be released on the 24th of April.

The webinar is suitable for administrators, educators and anyone interested in learning about what's new in the latest version of Moodle.

Note: This webinar is part of the free Moodle Academy course “What’s New in Moodle 4.2”. You have to be enrolled in the course to join the webinar.

Hello Community Members,

Welcome to this edition of ‘Showcase Shorts’.

We have now reached code freeze and are progressing at pace through our QA process for the 4.2 release of Moodle LMS. If you’d like to help with testing, we always appreciate the support, so please don’t hesitate to get involved if you can.

During our last sprint, our LMS teams completed the set of new features and improvements that will be included in the 4.2 release, due on the 24th of April. You can see some of the highlights by watching the following videos:

• MoodleNet Integration: In this first phase of integration, you’ll be able to connect to an instance of MoodleNet and access settings to export activities for the first time! [video] 
• Matrix Integration: With this experimental feature, you can start to harness the power of modern messaging by automatically linking your courses to Matrix rooms, allowing learners to support each other and easily contact their instructors. [video]
• Gradebook Improvements: We’ve improved the experience when setting up the gradebook and made it easier to navigate with collapsible columns and categories. We’ve also made feedback for students available to be seen directly in the gradebook, allowing its full power to be accessed without changing interfaces. [video]
• Course Editing & other UX improvements: We’ve streamlined and enhanced course editing, with indentation improvements and bulk editing functions. We’ve also made several improvements to the usability of our solution, prioritised based on your feedback and votes in the tracker and we’ve completed a valuable upgrade to Font Awesome. [video]

Work is also progressing on Moodle Workplace 4.2, which will be released shortly after Moodle LMS. You can watch demonstrations on improvements to the reporting available on the My Teams page, branding and colour defaults, block chooser enhancements and many other good things coming soon in this video. [video]

And, finally, more improvements to our Moodle Community Sites are on their way, including an important upgrade to our ‘Download Moodle’ site. See what’s coming by watching this video. [video]

Until next sprint!

The Moodle Products Team

We invite you to join us for the next Moodle Academy free webinar “Environmental awareness as a core digital competence” that we have rescheduled to Thursday 13 April, 8:00-9:00 UTC.

The development of digital literacy and digital competencies are widely recognised as essential in our increasingly digitised world. However, as we begin to come to terms with the extent of the climate crisis facing the world, this webinar asks the question: is it time for digital literacy to focus its attention on the impact our digital activity has on the environment? 

At this webinar, which is free to attend, we will hear from Dr Peter Tiernan, Lecturer at the School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies at Dublin City University in Ireland. The presenter will begin by examining popular digital tools and services used for entertainment and work purposes and highlight their environmental impact and potential mitigating factors. Following this, he will examine definitions of digital literacy to reveal a complex set of competencies which, as yet do not engage with the environmental impact of our activity. The speaker will then examine widely used digital literacy frameworks and exposes their relative lack of engagement with the environmental impact of our digital lives. 

Finally, he will urge further discussion on environmental impact as a component of digital literacy and propose ways to achieve this with his students, using the language of existing digital literacy definitions. And he will present the audience with a suggested framework addition which addresses these concerns.

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

Register at Moodle Academy.

Hi everyone, we're running another Quality Assurance (QA) testing cycle to test the next version of Moodle - 4.2.

Our QA cycle starts today 20th of March and we'll be running it for 5 weeks until the scheduled release of Moodle 4.2 on the 24th of April.

If you'd like to try out Moodle 4.2 on our QA testing site and at the same time help with QA testing, see the QA testing guide for details of how you can get involved.

If you're unsure of anything, or have any questions, please post in this forum or join our new Moodle QA Telegram chat room or Moodle QA chat room on Matrix.

As always, we're aiming for a 100% pass rate of QA tests, so all help is much appreciated.

We invite you to join us for the Moodle Academy free webinar “Make the most of the Moodle Mobile App” on Thursday 23 March, 11:00-12:00 UTC.

There is a lot you can do to improve the Moodle Mobile App experience in your institution. In this free webinar, you will learn how to improve the overall user experience of your Mobile App users.

You will understand how to reduce the login process friction, make the app most appealing to end-users and how to create content that really works in a mobile environment.

At this session we will hear from Juan Leyva, Head of Mobile Solutions at Moodle HQ.

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

Register at Moodle Academy.

Hi Community Members!

As you may already know, this year’s MoodleMoot Global will be held in Barcelona (Spain) on the 18-21 September 2023, starting with the pre-conference on the 18th, followed by the conference from the 19th September. We hope that you will be able to join us! Further details will be announced soon but, in the meantime, you can register your interest in attending.

While we hope to see you in Barcelona for the biggest Moodle community event of this year, we are already starting to make plans for MoodleMoot Global 2024. Following up on feedback received at previous events, we have decided to move the Global MoodleMoot to a new location and we have shortlisted a few options and would love to hear which one of them our community members would prefer as the location for our Global MoodleMoot and where you would like to travel to join us in 2024!

If you would like to choose your preferred location, please complete this survey form by Friday 10th March at 23:59 UTC.

• Indonesia
• Mexico
• India
• Other

Please note that, whilst we value the Moodle community preference for a MoodleMoot Global location, there are a lot of factors to consider, so the most popular option may not necessarily be the selected one for next year;  however, we will refer to  your feedback as we select locations for our future MoodleMoot Global events.

Thank you for your contribution!

Best wishes,

MoodleMoot Global team

We are barrelling towards Moodle LMS Version 4.2 with only a few short weeks left before code freeze and the start of our QA review cycle in preparation for our release on the 24th of April. 

Talking about QA, we continue to optimise our approach to testing. Simey Lameze, our Test Automation Specialist, shares the progress we are making in this video.

BU-gvRAPyug

Our LMS teams have been working on improving our user experience and evolving our technology, in line with our strategic objectives for the platform. This sprint saw them make great progress on a number of initiatives:

1. TinyMCE Integration: work on this initiative has prompted a broader review of how plugin settings are managed more broadly across the platform. Watch a demo from Andrew Lyons, our Principal Architect for Moodle LMS, to see what we’ve been up to.

Q89O7qd-3Ho

2. Matrix Integration: we made it happen, you can now launch a new Matrix chat room directly from within a Moodle course! See it for yourself, as presented by Safat Shahin and Robert van Garderen, two of our newest team members.

GvYdOCTFgg0

3. Gradebook: more enhancements to the look and feel of the Grader Report and easier Gradebook set ups are coming. Join Mihail Geshoski and Barbara Ramiro to see what we are working on.

txmdVPKVRiM

4. Bulk Editing: our MUA sponsored initiative is almost ready for a demo. Hear from Ferran Recio Caldero, our teacher in residence, to see where we are up to with delivery.

sGwYbh0y9IQ

5. Course Hierarchy & other UX improvements: Changes highly requested by our community are now ready for integration. Amaia Anabitarte and Sara Arjona Tellez share what you can expect to see in Moodle LMS 4.2 in this video.

ZMendqpowWY

6. Activity Cards & Icons Redesign: We’ve received a ton of feedback from you all about further changes you’d like to see made to our activity cards and icons. Watch Sabina Abellan, our busiest UX designer, share the outcomes of our co-design efforts with community members so far. These changes will come to fruition in Moodle LMS 4.3.

nlL7l8S8Pu0

As always, our Mobile Applications, MoodleCloud instances and Moodle Workplace solution will also launch their 4.2 versions in the weeks that follow the Moodle LMS release — so there is lots of action happening across all areas of Moodle Products at the moment!

You can watch the latest developments on Moodle Workplace, presented by Emilio Lozano, our Head of Workplace Solutions, in this video including the progress being made on the development of Learning Catalogues.

LLzKEoY_RYo

On the mobile front, the team have been focusing on improving Audio & Video playback in IOS and introducing Report Builder into the app. Watch Juan Leyva, our Head of Mobile Solutions, takes us through these recent developments.

xCj50UrPw5Y

And, as has now become a tradition to make sure you keep reading to the end, we focus on all thing Community last in our note! Check out the latest improvements coming soon to our moodle.org and Academy sites in this presentation by Aurelie Soulier, Federico Astorga and Aya Saad.

pYe1Hxdh5Mw

Until next sprint!

The Moodle Products Team

We invite you to join us for the Moodle Academy free webinar “Could Moodle reduce gender inequities?” on Wednesday 15 March, 9:00-10:00 UTC.

Recent research on gender minorities showed that more males than females dropped out  during their first year of studying Engineering. One possible reason could be the difference in their use or take-up of Moodle.

It is well known that day to day studying is more difficult for minorities. If the face to face element is tougher, might the remote element help females to stay engaged with the curriculum? In order to answer this question, the use rate of Moodle by male and female  Engineering students at various levels was observed before and during exam periods.

In this session, which is free to attend, Agnès Peeters from Haute École Bruxelles-Brabant (HE2B) in Belgium will present the statistical results and suggest some ways Moodle could help (gender) minorities at university level.

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

Register at Moodle Academy.

Unfortunately the free webinar “Environmental awareness as a core digital competence” on Tuesday 21 February, 9:00-10:00 UTC has been cancelled.

We are sorry for the inconvience and plan to reschedule it soon. The information about the webinar is below.

The development of digital literacy and digital competencies are widely recognised as essential in our increasingly digitised world. However, as we begin to come to terms with the extent of the climate crisis facing the world, this webinar asks the question: is it time for digital literacy to focus its attention on the impact our digital activity has on the environment? 

At this webinar, which is free to attend, we will hear from Peter Tiernan, Lecturer at the School of STEM Education, Innovation and Global Studies at Dublin City University in Ireland. The presenter will begin by examining popular digital tools and services used for entertainment and work purposes and highlight their environmental impact and potential mitigating factors. Following this, he will examine definitions of digital literacy to reveal a complex set of competencies which, as yet do not engage with the environmental impact of our activity. The speaker will then examine widely used digital literacy frameworks and exposes their relative lack of engagement with the environmental impact of our digital lives. 

Finally, he will urge further discussion on environmental impact as a component of digital literacy and propose ways to achieve this with his students, using the language of existing digital literacy definitions. And he will present the audience with a suggested framework addition which addresses these concerns.

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

Register at Moodle Academy.

(Edited by Mary Cooch - original submission Wednesday, 15 February 2023, 10:33 AM)

Hello Moodlers!

The Moodle Community team is delighted to announce the winners of the Share your Moodle love 🧡🎓 competition!
We would like to thank everyone who entered the competition and all that have voted.
Sharing good practice and helping inspire each other is key to our Moodle open-source community.
All the entries were brilliant and, after your votes on the competition entries, and thanks to the judges, we can now announce the winner and runner-up for the competition!

These courses showed how they used learning design with Moodle tools, pushing the boundaries, and experimenting with Moodle to improve participants’ engagement and the learning experience.

1. In first place, a fab course from Dunja Speckner:  “Come, lets explore the world of AI and Chatbots” - well worth a look if you haven’t seen it already!

2. In second place, Stefan Scholz offered us a peek at an inspiring and gamified “Teacher’s Paradise”.

The winner and runner-up have been contacted so they can claim their prizes and they will be allocated a badge each too.

Keep your eyes peeled for the next competition and challenge! 

In the meantime, make sure you enrol on the Competition centre to keep updated, and go check out the fabulous 14 great examples of Moodle courses that have been submitted.

Much Moodle Love to you all.
Aurélie and the Community Team