Top and Reliable Moodle 3.1 Hosting
What is Moodle?
Moodle (Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) is a free open-source learning management system or e-Learning platform, that serves educators and learners across the globe. It is the most widely used LMS in the world and currently has over 68 million users world-wide (and growing!). Moodle is a learning platform designed to provide educators, administrators and learners with a single robust, secure and integrated system to create personalised learning environments.
Moodle was developed in 2002 by Martin Dougiamas to help educators create online courses with a focus on interaction and collaborative construction of content. Since then, the main development of Moodle is led by Martin and the core team at Moodle Headquarters, as well as hundreds of other developers around the world who have helped fuel the growth of Moodle through contributing and testing code, and being active participants in community forums.
What is New in Moodle 3.1?
Highlights
MDL-53451 – Competencies support in Moodle
MDL-52954 – Improvements to the Assignment grading user interface
MDL-31989 – Global Search API allows to search forums, wikis and other content throughout the whole site. Installation and setup of SOLR server is required,
MDL-52002 – Significant performance improvements in gradebook calculations
MDL-48012 – Recycle bin plugin is now part of standard Moodle distribution: allow instructors to “undo” deletions of course modules and courses. Moodle Users Association project
MDL-49279 – Add support in moodle plugins for exporting “Mobile app addons”
Forum
MDL-372 – Allow to “pin” discussions to keep them always on the top of the list
MDL-34160 – Allow forum email subject to be customised
MDL-47365 – Add permalink option to forum posts
MDL-51214 – Rename the News forum to “Announcements”
MDL-44087 – Forum does not observe message notification settings for digest emails
MDL-53050 – Highlight the selected forum post when deep linking with a #anchor
Assignment
MDL-52397 – Feedback for Assignments is not sent if the assignment grade timemodified setting was set to two days ago
MDL-52596 – Add a ‘maxperpage’ site wide setting for grading table size (to mitigate broken grading pages in large courses)
MDL-52269 – Not obvious to tell if an assignment is in blind marking if user holds the “mod/assign:viewblinddetails” capabilty
MDL-52270 – Difficult to cross reference users with their blind identities
MDL-44598 – List student names on ‘grant extension’ screen
MDL-52490 – Download selected assign submissions as a zip file
MDL-52290 – EditPDF – Also show the total page number in the pagination
MDL-52489 – “Download all submissions as a zip” should maintain the folder structure in students submissions
External tool (LTI)
MDL-52154 – Rework LTI admin screens
MDL-45064 – Option to add preconfigured external tool to the activity chooser
MDL-52035 – Integrate LTI Provider support in Moodle as the Publish as LTI tool
MDL-52821 – Compliance: Send tool_consumer_instance_description in LTI launch request
Feedback
MDL-53738 – Feedback activity module will be enabled by default in new 3.1 installations. If you are upgrading to 3.1 we recommend you to enable it manually.
MDL-52094 – Various improvements to UI and bug fixes, including:
Performance improvement to download responses as raw data in multiple formats (CSV, Excel, etc.) – now available on “Show responses” page instead of “Analysis”
Allow any characters in labels, do not display empty labels
Do not display empty pages
Map frontpage feedback to multiple courses without leaving the form
Improved display of automatic question numbers
Disable “Response time” for anonymous feedbacks
Use moodleforms to display feedback
SCORM
MDL-45712 – Add Result field to the SCORM Interactions Report
MDL-48680 – Add score and status submission events to SCORM activity
MDL-42473 – Add group support to SCORM activity
Quiz
MDL-52738 – Quiz attempt/review page should have a previous button to match next
MDL-46092 – Add the OU styling of the Quiz navigation into Moodle core as the default
MDL-46091 – Rationalise confirmations when you start a quiz
MDL-52806 – Show right answers when manually grading automatically marked questions
MDL-53304 – Immediate feedback behaviours should not show a disabled check button when you can’t use it
Other activity modules
MDL-42190 – Workshop: Possibility to delete a submission
MDL-51306 – Folder: Bulk download all files within a folder activity as ZIP file
MDL-52414 – Lesson: Allow Default Settings for Lesson Module Settings
MDL-51267 – URL/File: Make setting up a URL/File resource more obvious
MDL-50794 – Workshop: Restricting file types as attachments to a workshop
Gradebook
MDL-48634 – Option to rescale existing grades when changing max points
MDL-52522 – grade_minmaxtouse should be respected for overridden categories
MDL-51900 – Tab Down Grade Column in Single View of Gradebook
MDL-52309 – Make Grade History report require user to submit parameters before the report starts running
Performance
MDL-51374 – Do not purge entire databasemeta cache when there are structure changes (esp temp tables).
MDL-51603 – Refactor downloading of csv, ods, excel etc files in reports and exports across moodle to stream progressively
MDL-34925 – Improve bulk user export performance
MDL-50385 – Performance improvement to the grade history report
Tagging
MDL-50851 – Introduce tag collections – ability to separate independent tag areas
MDL-52252 – Add tags to modules (Resources and Activities)
MDL-25742 – Allow to search wiki pages by tags
MDL-51283 – Rename “official” tags to “standard”, allow admin to set for each tag area how to use standard tags
MDL-16855 – Add tag filtering to “Manage tags” page
MDL-52707 – Allow tags to be combined
Usability
MDL-27628 – Enrol meta: Possible to add multiple courses without leaving the form
MDL-51818 – Move the profile ‘Message’ button to be next to the user picture
MDL-52258 – Calendar now shows duration in calendar block
MDL-53043 – Move user search box above the students list in the manual enrolments popup
MDL-35590 – Navigation block redesign to meet ARIA specification
MDL-49963 – Allow to message all participants when there are more than one page in participants list
MDL-51354 – Help popup and improved name for events dropdown menu on the course and site logs pages
MDL-53026 – Use inplace editable for editing cohort names
MDL-51706 – Move plagiarism links to the top of the summary and full text outputs
MDL-53382 – “Show all” link on participants page should be moved beneath the page switcher
Other improvements
MDL-53057 – Add search feature to the File system repository
MDL-48506 – Improve memcached cache store so that it is multi-site safe
MDL-50661 – Restyle “Clean” theme to use Logo and Header in Frontpage with smaller logo option in other pages.
MDL-36652 – When downloading an Excel spreadsheet of student logs, have the course short name included in the file name.
MDL-53207 – Display stock avatar instead of own user picture from messages from fake users
MDL-51698 – Markup the crumb trail so search engines understand it and leverage it
MDL-53072 – Option to choose whether we include suspended users when auto-creating groups
MDL-52869 – Convert inline activity name edit to use the inplace editable element
For administrators
MDL-26935 – New capability to control role renaming
MDL-28030 – Add config.php settings to allow plugins to rewrite output moodle_urls (eg clean / semantic urls)
MDL-52752 – Administrators can specify an alternate URL to use for MathJax
MDL-52219 – Completion tracking & availability should default to on for new installs
MDL-52990 – Enable all emails to be themed, ie add 4 wrapper mustache templates
MDL-53260 – Option to display CLI upgrade messages in English
MDL-52386 – Allow to control field for flagging enabled/disabled users in LDAP authentication (useful for Active Directory)
MDL-52383 – Calendar “Days to look ahead” should allow intervals up to 1 year
MDL-49934 – Admins or managers should be able to retrieve assignments info via get_assignments web service
Security issues
There are no security issues included in this release, please refer to Moodle 3.0.4 release notes
For developers
Significant new areas
MDL-31989 – Global Search API allows to index and search forums, wikis and other content throughout the whole site.
MDL-49279, MDL-50032 – Add support in moodle plugins for exporting “Mobile app addons”
MDL-53451 – Competencies support in Moodle (documentation)
MDL-50887 – Implement plugins infrastructure for antivirus and create ClamAV plugin (documentation).
MDL-51603 – New Dataformat plugin type for downloading data as csv, ods, excel etc (eg from table_sql export)
MDL-50851 – Significant changes to Tags API, tag areas can now implement callbacks to display tagged items (documentation)
MDL-46891 – Upgrade to behat 3.x (documentation)
Smaller new things
MDL-51802 – Reusable element for inplace editing (documentation)
MDL-30811 – Introduce notification stack to moodle sessions (documentation)
MDL-52237 – Add a callback to inject nodes in the user profile navigation (documentation)
MDL-51324 – New course chooser element for moodleforms (documentation)
MDL-53311 – Reusable element for displaying tree similar to navigation tree (documentation)
Smaller changes in core APIs
MDL-52954 – file_storage class can now convert between office documents (documentation)
MDL-53274 – Throw exception (in developer mode) if page context is not set, otherwise it is easily missed in AJAX calls
MDL-52826, MDL-52715 – Allow to use moodleforms in AJAX requests (documentation)
MDL-51718 – Allow to specify scheme in moodle_url
MDL-51700 – Ajax service should clean the return values of the external functions
MDL-53962 – Changes to webservices XML-RPC API – it is now critical to specify parameters for XML-RPC calls in the correct order. Previously Zend may have been able to work out the order, our new implementation, at this stage, cannot.
Themeability improvements
MDL-50464 – New renderer for RSS Client Block allows themes to customise its look
Changes related to particular plugins
MDL-52013 – Allow mod_assign plugins to add calendar events
MDL-48362 – Improve the enrol API to prevent logic in the UI (documentation)
MDL-52996 – Allow Atto customisation for special-purpose plugins
MDL-52781 – Improved validation on user fields when creating users from external datasources
MDL-53304 – Changes to interactive question behaviour may cause the unit tests for your question type to break if you have followed the common patter. You will need to make changes likethis.
Deprecations
For full list of deprecations refer to lib/upgrade.txt and upgrade.txt files in the folder where the particular plugin is located. Here are the most major deprecations:
MDL-49414 – Remove deprecated web services
MDL-48621 – Deprecate the old events system
MDL-52207 – Delete Zend framework
Moodle Features
General Features
Modern, easy to use interface
Designed to be responsive and accessible, the Moodle interface is easy to navigate on both desktop and mobile devices.
Personalised Dashboard
Organise and display courses the way you want, and view at a glance current tasks and messages.
Collaborative tools and activities
Work and learn together in forums, wikis, glossaries, database activities, and much more.
All-in-one calendar
Moodle’s calendar tool helps you keep track of your academic or company calendar, course deadlines, group meetings, and other personal events.
Convenient file management
Drag and drop files from cloud storage services including MS Skydrive, Dropbox and Google Drive.
Simple and intuitive text editor
Format text and conveniently add media and images with an editor that works across all web browsers and devices.
Notifications
When enabled, users can receive automatic alerts on new assignments and deadlines, forum posts and also send private messages to one another.
Track progress
Educators and learners can track progress and completion with an array of options for tracking individual activities or resources and at course level.
Administrative Features
Customisable site design and layout
Easily customise a Moodle theme with your logo, colour schemes and much more – or simply design your own theme.
Secure authentication and mass enrolment
Over 50 authentication and enrolment options to add and enrol users to your Moodle site and courses.
Multilingual capability
Allow users to view course content and learn in their own language, or set it up for multilingual users and organisations.
Bulk course creation and easy backup
Add courses in bulk, back up and restore large courses with ease.
Manage user roles and permissions
Address security concerns by defining roles to specify and manage user access.
Supports open standards
Readily import and export IMS-LTI, SCORM courses and more into Moodle.
High interoperability
Freely integrate external applications and content or create your own plugin for custom integrations.
Simple plugin management
Install and disable plugins within a single admin interface.
Regular security updates
Moodle is regularly updated with the latest security patches to help ensure your Moodle site is secure.
Detailed reporting and logs
View and generate reports on activity and participation at course and site level.
Course Development and Management Features
Direct learning paths
Design and manage courses to meet various requirements. Classes can be instructor-led, self-paced, blended or entirely online.
Encourage collaboration
Built-in collaborative publishing features foster engagement and encourage content-driven collaboration.
Embed external resources
Teach materials and include assignments from other sites and connect to the gradebook in Moodle.
Multimedia Integration
Moodle’s built-in media support enables you to easily search for and insert video and audio files in your courses.
Group management
Group learners to share courses, differentiate activities and facilitate team work.
Marking workflow
Conveniently assign different markers to assignments, manage grade moderation and control when marks are released to individual learners.
In-line marking
Easily review and provide in-line feedback by annotating on PDF files directly within browser.
Peer and self assessment
Built-in activities such as workshops and surveys encourages learners to view, grade and assess their own and other course members’ work as a group.
Integrated Badges
Fully compatible with Mozilla Open Badges, motivate learners and reward participation and achievement with customised Badges.
Outcomes and rubrics
Select from advanced grading methods to tailor the gradebook to your course and examination criteria.
Security and privacy
Teach and share in a private space only you and your class can access.
How to Choose Top and Reliable Moodle 3.1 Hosting
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Top and Reliable Moodle 3.1 Hosting Provider
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