A Moodle Upgrade, a Learning Opportunity, and a Hint for Hiding Activities from Students

A planned service outage for Moodle maintenance will take place beginning at 10:00 p.m. on Wednesday, July 9th and extending until 10:00 a.m. on Thursday, July 10th. During this time frame, Moodle will be unavailable for use. Please check your courses and adjust due dates for assignments, quizzes, and other features accordingly.

Following the upgrade, a few new features will be available for faculty use.

• Students will be able to upload Assignments as .pdf files, and instructors will be able to use the Joule Grader feature to add comments on the .pdf submissions.
• Instructors will be able to turn on notifications within the Joule Grader feature indicating that grading of an assignment is in progress, and can release grades for an assignment all at one time. 
• Moodle will issue a warning if a student loses his/her internet connection while taking a quiz.
• The Activity Chooser moves to the top right of each topic area.
• Editing icons visible to faculty will be changed from the current line up to a tidy drop down menu.

The i3 Workshop online course will begin on July 7th! Faculty may register for the course on our Instructional Technology web site.

Finally, this week's Moodle highlights include a new tutorial explaining how to use the Restrict access feature for Moodle Resources and Activities. There are occasions when it might be useful to hide an activity from students. The Hide icon that is visible to instructors when the editing is turned on in a course works well for hiding Resources (items such as videos, podcasts, readings, or urls to websites that students will view without receiving a grade), but not for Activities (Assignments, Quizzes, Forums, or other tasks that students must complete to receive a grade.) Use of the Hide icon (shaped like an eye) to hide an Activity, causes course totals in the gradebook User report to miscalculate. When an Activity must be hidden from student view, choose the Edit option from the editing tools for the activity, and utilize the Restrict access feature instead.

The Restrict access feature should not be confused with the Availability dates in the Assignment activity or Timing dates in Quiz. In fact, the simplest way to use Restrict access is to insert a Release code, which acts as a password. If you do not share the Release code with students, the students cannot gain access to the activity. The gradebook totals are unaffected when Restrict access is utilized, making it the preferred way to hide any Moodle item with the potential for earning a grade.

An illustrated tutorial explaining the use of Restrict access is available at our Instructional Technology website.