Moodle Summer Upgrade 2024
Summer is normally a quiet time in the university when students are away for vacation, but it is the best time for IT departments to do the system upgrade and new feature testing and release. In the summer of 2024, DLAM TEL Team took part in the Moodle Annual Upgrade project and led on the implementing and testing of the new version 4.3.3 and configuration of all the plugins and external tools. This is a hectic and rewarding process.
Project Management
The project is made up with four main teams:
- Project manager (PM)
- Application and Production (APPS)
- Technology Enhanced Learning, Digital Learning Application and Media (DLAM TEL)
- Education Engagement (EDE), and,
- Volunteers who participated in the User Acceptance Testing
The PM manages the project progress and identify risk and obstacles. APPS carry out the database backup, update, PHP upgrade and the final changes on the Gitlab. DLAM TEL service managers carry out the feature update, configuration and testing, and organize User Acceptance Testing. EDE supports DLAM with testing, and updates training materials and user guidance.
The Project took six months, started in February and completed in end of July. The project team meets regularly on Teams to discuss progress, obstacles and resolve issues.
Moodle Upgrade Project Timeline (Created by PM)
What is new?
- TinyMCE Editor is back. It is available in the user’s Preference Setting in their profile.
- Activities can be added anywhere in a section.
- Resource List is upgraded to LTI1.3
- User guides in Moodle Staff Help Course have been updated.
Plugin Update
There are many plugin and tools that can be accessed on Moodle VLE, for example, Turnitin Feedback Studio, Collaborate virtual classroom, Kaltura Media Create, Echo360 Lecture Recording, Leganto Resource List, etc. The Moodle 4.3.3 included some of the plugin updates to their latest version.
Issues Resolved
We used Jira discussion board to record issue and to share with the various team for resolution. There are 34 issues being reported and resolved. Here are some of them:
External Tools
One big change is the External Tool settings. External Tool icon is no longer available from the Activity List. The default privacy settings of External Tools have been changed, which prevented tools passing information from Moodle to third party. We resolved the issue by changing the privacy settings manually. We took the opportunity to upgrade some tools to LTI1.3, for example the Leganto Resource List.
Activities
Filter Conflict
The Moodle 4.3 introduced back TinyMCE editor. The TinyMCE editor has an equation editor. Clicking on the appropriate icon on the toolbar opens the editor. However, the buttons did not render to symbols and equations as they should, and the LaTeX codes do not render to mathematical formula either.
Equation editor issue
After trial and errors we discovered that this is caused by the Filter settings in Moodle Plugin. The MathJax filter and TeX Notation filter for Plugins might be interfering with each other:
- MathJax controls the visibility of symbols in the Equation editor.
- TeX Notation controls the rendering of the equation in Content.
- Moved the position of MathJax to be above Tex Notation in the list of Filters resolved the problem.
Plugins filter setting
Display Issue
When in edit mode, clicking on the vertical ellipsis for an activity displays a set of options. There are two issues:
Display issue of the dropdown menu
- two of the options (Availability and Group mode) have secondary menus that appear when hovered over. The secondary menus do not disappear when you are no longer hovering over the primary option which is confusing. This is a core Moodle behaviour and can not be resolved.
- for the Delete option the hover over colours are white on light grey which means that the option is no longer visible when highlighted.
These have been fixed by DLAM programmer in the Theme settings.
Reflections
The project went well with the collaboration of four teams. However, the same team members also work on other projects and carry on with daily work which often compete on the time and energy. Compare to the Learn VLE’s 50 thousands student users and over 7000 staff users, Moodle VLE is only used by three online distance learning courses and about 500 users. But Moodle does have some useful and unique features such as discussion forums in group mode, and flexible assessment deadline settings for reasonable adjustment. We heard from the Scottish Moodle User Group (SMUG) that some universities and colleges upgrade their Moodle version every two years, or use an outsource service.
Share
