Moodle 4.0 Resources for Faculty

Tools and resources have not been removed; they have been rearranged.

Hello and welcome to Moodle 4.0! I know that transitioning to a new LMS can be challenging but rest assured not a lot has changed. Keep in Mind that LATTE and Moodle 4.0 were cut from the same cloth and that the tools and resources that you are used to have not been removed, but simply rearranged. With Moodle 4.0, several changes to the overall design have been implemented and will hopefully make your lives easier as you navigate through your courses.

Prior to Moodle 4.0, most course management related options (Grades, Course Settings, Reports, etc.)  were located under various blocks on the left hand side of LATTE and could be challenging at times finding what you needed. Moodle 4.0 has rearanged all the options and replaced it with a tabbed navigation system located at the top of your course page. The new system contains all the contextual management options related to the current course page, making it easier for users.

Additionally, the More dropdown button will give you access to other features that can further help enhance your course:

Moodle 4.0 added two sliding side panels on the left and right hand side of the course page.

Left Panel

The left panel contains the course index items. It not only provides a quick way for learners to jump to a specific course section or activity/resource, it also enables course teacher/admin to rearrange the course activities/resources by dragging and dropping them directly in the panel.

Right Panel

The right panel contains the course side blocks. Prior to Moodle 4.0 all of the side blocks were displayed on the left hand side of the course page which took up a significant amount of screen space. Now users can toggle the panel to hide the blocks and focus on the course content.

To start adding blocks, simply turn editing on and you will see a button to add blocks.

When you go to add a block on the right hand side, you will see a lot of familiar things. Feel free to customize your page as you see fit:

In Moodle 4.0 course sections are collapsible. You are able to collapse all sections at once or collapse individual sections.

With the switch to Moodle 4.0 you are able to make bulk changes to multiple topics at once such as marking visibility, moving or even deleting.

Moodle 4.0+ places an “Edit mode” switch in the page header area across the site. Users can click the switch to toggle the Moodle site between editing and non-editing mode. Moodle 3.x displays a “Turn Editing On” button on the course page for users to toggle course editing mode.

LATTE

Moodle 4.0

To upload your syllabus:
 

1. Navigate to your Course and click on Edit Mode up in the right hand corner of your course.
   
   
    
2. Scroll down to the area you want your syllabus to be located and click Add an activity or a recourse.
   
   
    
3. From the list of activities, click on File.
   
   
    
4. Start by naming the file at the top of the screen and then scroll down to the select files section. From here you can either drag and drop your syllabus from your desktop or you can upload it directly from your computer, Google Drive or Box Drive.
   
   
   
   
    
5. When you are finished uploading, scroll down and click Save and Return to Course.
   
   
   
   

Why am I missing a specific past course from LATTE in the BOX folder? I can see it in LATTE still.  

There are a number of reasons why a particular course may not have been able to be moved in an automated manner into BOX, during the initial LATTE migration.

1. The course backup was too big
   The average LATTE course backup is about 45MBs in size (course content, not student data) - but during the migration process courses were discovered that exceeded several Gigabytes in size. Extremely large courses (higher than several GBs) would tax the system for so long it would time out, and the process would then move on to the next course backup in line. 

2. Use of Reserved Characters in a course title
   File system utilities and naming conventions on various systems prohibit particular characters from appearing in filenames or make them problematic. These are often referred to as “Reserved Characters,” and can be prohibited from being used as part of the name of a website url or a desktop file name. There are different types for different uses, but a common number of them are:

   !    #    $    &    '    (    )    *    +    ,    /    :    ;    =    ?    @    [    ]

   Since Moodle backup files confer the course title as part of the name of the backup file, those backup files resist attempts to automatically move, duplicate, or log them. Unfortunately with over 20,000 backup files to process, pre-emptive human troubleshooting of such errors is unavailable.

3. The individual expecting the backup file did not have a Primary Instructor, Secondary Instructor, or Instructor course role in the particular LATTE course.
   If an individual was added to a course as a Grading TA, Academic Administrator, Guest, etc, they will not receive a backup file of the course as part of the automated migration, regardless of their actual participation in the class. This individual should reach out to the other participants in the course with Instructor-level access permissions to access a course backup file.

If a particular course was not moved over in an automated fashion, how can I access it in the New Moodle? I can still see it in LATTE. 

If a past LATTE course is exceedingly large, it is recommended that an instructor remove the large files (often these are direct video embeds into the course). Then it is a matter of the instructor downloading the course locally onto their computer and then uploading the backup file into BOX. Please contact help@brandeis.edu with any questions or challenges with this process.