Moodle News November 2015

The last day of classes for Fall 2015 is Friday, Dec. 11, and final exams are on the horizon. We have some important Moodle grading and end-of-semester information for you, including:

Get help with Grading in Moodle

You must approve your course grades in SPIRE before midnight on Monday, Dec. 28.

The instructional Media Lab will be closed from noon on Thursday, Dec. 24 and will reopen Monday, Dec. 28 at 10 a.m.

Due to the limited time between the end of finals and the due date for grades, we recommend you make appointments now if you would like help checking your Moodle gradebook.

For online help, useful articles include:

All Gradebook articles are listed on the Overview of the Moodle Gradebook.

Important Final Grade Display Settings

To ensure your students don’t see rounded scores for their final grades in your courses, we recommend setting Course Totals to display five decimal places. (Note: The default in the Final Grade column will be set to 5 places in courses created for Spring 2016 and beyond.)

For step-by-step instructions, please see Preparing your Final Course Grades in Moodle.

Moodle Course Requests for Winter/Spring 2016

Winter term and Spring 2016 Moodle course request is open in SPIRE.

Removal of Old Moodle Courses

Access to Moodle Courses ends 18 months after the end of the semester taught to make room in Moodle for new courses. In February 2016, access to courses taught up to and including Spring 2014 will be removed from Moodle.

In preparation, please backup any course content you do not wish to lose, including course materials, grades and student submissions. See Back Up a Moodle Course.

Upcoming Academic Computing Workshops

For a full list of our December 2015 – January 2016 workshops and events, including a Moodle Community of Practice, please see https://websites.umass.edu/instruct/2015/11/30/december-2015-january-2016-workshops/

Moodle Updates

Minor bug fixes & improvements:

  • Fixed problem using “View/Grade All Submissions” to download assignment files in very large courses.
  • When editing hidden Sections, all items in the Edit menu are now available.
  • Fixed problem in large courses with bulk insert when Grading a single activity in the Moodle Gradebook.
  • Turnitin update returned ability to assign a gradebook category from the Turnitin activity settings page.
  • Improved the interface for setting up single-student groups.
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