In many ways the summer 2025 project of upgrading Moodle from 4.3.3 to 4.5.1 is an enjoyable one for the teams involved: it was the final upgrade of the long standing, and one of our favourite virtual learning environments (VLEs); the Apps team had upgraded the data server hardware and software in the past year so this year’s workflow was  smoother than ever; the Digital Learning Application and Media Technology Enhanced Learning (DLAM TEL) service team is tasked with upgrading and testing all the plugins and external tools, we have not seen any showstopper issues during this upgrade; the Education Design and Engagement team’s focus was to keep the existing courses accessible and meanwhile, to help users migrate courses from Moodle to Learn for the new academic year along with some help from our fantastic interns – all worked out smoothly.  

Why change to Learn VLE? 

There are three main platforms used in the University of Edinburgh.

• Blackboard Learn VLE had been adopted in 2011/2012 and is being used by most staff and students for teaching, learning and assessment so it is already a familiar VLE for the users and the support teams.
• The short course platform on Canvas was introduced last year to offer non-credited courses for learners.
• Moodle has been used to deliver online postgraduate distance learning programme in the University since 2012.  

On usage, Learn VLE hosts about 14.5k active courses (including playground courses), and they are accessed by 50k matriculated students and 7k staff on a regular basis. The Short course platform rolled out 200 courses in the past year and they already had over 1800 enrolments since launch.  

In comparison, Moodle has seen a decline in usage. In the past decade, the usage reached pick time in 2016/2017 academic year when over 200 courses were created (including playground courses). However, the number dropped 30% in the following year when one school decided to move their courses to Learn VLE. The number of courses halved in 2019/2020 when another school also moved on to Learn. The number slightly increased in the 2020/2021 academic year but remain steady at about 50 courses to date. In September 2019, the number of unique users logged in per month is about 669 and this is dropped to about 300 in May 2024. This caused constraints in strategic development and resources, as a result, some new functions and tools had not been tested and introduced. The Moodle Summer Upgrade 2024 project highlighted the change in usage to the stakeholders and recommended to move the courses to Learn VLE to streamline support and to enhance online students’ experience, and this has been agreed by the stakeholders.   

Figure. Count of Courses in Moodle by Academic Year from April 2012 to June 2025

The features in Moodle we loved 

Moodle has some well designed activities and features, for example: 

• Flexible course formats – instructor can choose Weekly, Topically, Collapsed Topics and Grid format, etc, for their course layout easily in the course settings. 
• Customisable style template – certain heading style and font size, colour etc can be designed and applied in course or programme level to give courses a unique look and feel.  
• Discussion forums can be displayed in various ways to suite learning objectives.
• Group mode forum discussions and assessment submissions that support group-based learning activities. 
• Extensions can be applied in assessment settings for individuals and groups with ease to accommodate reasonable adjustment. 

Highlight of Moodle 4.5.1 Upgrade 

Upgrading Moodle 4.3.3 to 4.5.1 follows the same project management workflow as previous years (see this blog article), and was a straightforward transient this time. Since the upgrade is not to provide a user facing service, but to keep the existing courses available for a short while, we have not tested the new functions such as AI subsystem and the subsections in course format. For details of those, see this video. Rather, we want to make sure the plugins and tools are kept working for existing courses and resources.

We upgraded Leganto Resource List from LTI1.1 to LTI1.3 on Moodle 4.3.3 last summer and have not seen any issue after upgrading Moodle to 4.5.1. The key to get the LTI1.3 to work is to make sure the course code passed from Moodle is normalized in Leganto’s configurations for it to link to the correct resource list for the course. Alternatively, inserting the resource list directly as a URL in the course area is also working fine. 

Here are some of issues we discovered and how we resolved them: 

Notification emails to site admin about failed tasks.

We searched the Moodle forum but only found limited information. We resolved by disable the related Cron jobs.   

• Task failed: Remove temporary write access from controlled links. Microsoft OneDrive 
• Task failed: predict models. Analytic Models 

Course Format issues

We have seen errors for courses with Grid and Collapsed Topic format after the upgrade. These were resolved by downloading and updating the format packages to the latest version.  

Outdated World Clock block breaking courses

We disabled the block and then removed it during the final upgrade. 

Over all, we are glad to see most of the plugins and external tools worked straight away after the upgrade, including Collaborate, Kaltura Media create, Echo 360 lecture recording, Turnitin assignment, WordPress Course Tool and Word Press Student Tool, etc.  

Reflections 

The project team worked collaboratively and cheerfully together for this final upgrade from March to end of July. The project’s timescale coincidence with some changes in the university to streamline services, which helped us with decision making, resources and direction. We are especially grateful for two senior colleagues’ contribution with their years’ experience of Moodle VLE – Andrew Gleeson from the Production Management and Application Support (Apps) team and Wesley Kerr from the Education Design and Engagement (EDE) team. They both left the university for a new chapter in life around the same time when the project closed. It somehow felt like the end of an era to say goodbye to them as well as to Moodle.  

In Neil Mosley’s UK Higher Education VLE Market: 2024 Review review, Moodle still occupies 51% of VLE market share, followed by Blackboard (20%) and Canvas (19%). With the retirement of Moodle in University of Edinburgh, we will focus resources on the Learn VLE for mainstream teaching, learning and assessment, and on the new Short Course Platform to support flexible learners. 

Saying Goodbye to VLEs We Have Loved – a Moodle Story / Digital Learning Applications and Media by blogadmin is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution CC BY 3.0

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