When we have an exact date for the upgrade we will publish it here on the blog and on the Moodle home page. We will also send out an email to all Moodle teachers, so that you can make any necessary arrangements to cope with the outage.

It is important for me to mention that this upgrade will change Moodle significantly, and that will require Moodle users to learn how to use the updated site. But don’t worry, we will be running several training sessions to help you do this during the Summer term.

So, why are we upgrading to Moodle 2? Well, there are four main reasons:

• Security – By upgrading to Moodle 2, we are insuring that the site is using the latest code, including the most up-to-date security fixes.
• Stability – Moodle 2 includes literally hundreds of bug fixes. This will result in a site that is less likely to run into technical difficulties when you’re using it.
• New features – Moodle 2 is jam packed with new features, such as the ability to add completion criteria to a course and conditional activities (the ability to control access to a resource dependent on another activity being completed by the user).
• Improvements – There are also several improvements to existing features; there are some new and exciting questions types for the Quiz activity for example.

If you have any questions or concerns about the upgrade, please contact us (email: ltt).

Confusion over the current time

There have been a handful of cases where students are submitting coursework from overseas, and there is confusion between their local time and OCS’ time. OCS uses a UK clock, which is +0 GMT over the winter months, and +1 BST over the summer months.

To lessen the confusion, OCS now has a live clock on the assignment pages. This reflects the time according to OCS (click on the image below to see a larger version).

Confusion over whether a watermark is required

Some departments have electronic marking, some departments print the assignments out themselves, and some assignments are unsuitable for printing; in all of these cases the student does not need to watermark their submissions, and subsequently watermarking is disabled. In some cases, students have become confused by the lack of a watermark option for an assignment.

OCS now makes it much more obvious when a watermark isn’t required (click on the image below to see a larger version).

Confusion over whether the student has submitted a file to the assignment

We’ve now added a summary on the initial screens of OCS, which tell students how many file(s) they have submitted to an assignment. Click on the image below to see an example.

Confusion over draft submissions

“I heard that you have to mark all your files as draft, otherwise your department won’t see anything!” – Unknown, 2011

We introduced the draft flag last year in an attempt to reduce the number of files that a department sees when opening an OCS zip file. We assumed that the flag was fairly self-explanatory and students would use it to mark earlier drafts of their work, and that later on these could be ignored in certain reports. Unfortunately, our assumption was wrong, and it some cases led to the rather unfortunate rumour quoted above.

We’ve now added a new warning to OCS that will appear when a student has marked all their files as draft. This should hopefully improve things (click on the image below to see a larger version).

OCS111

We’ve had a worrying number of emails and phone calls in the last week, where students have submitted real coursework to the OCS111 test assignment, instead of submitting it to a real assignment. Unfortunately, we can’t correct things once a file has been submitted to the wrong assignment, so it’s a bit frustrating for all involved.

We’ve now made the warning in OCS a bit more obvious, so when submitting a file to the test assignment students will be warned appropriately (click on the image above to see a larger version).

All of these improvements are now live on OCS. There’s no change in how students submit coursework, we’re just making certain bits of information more obvious (mostly warnings that something isn’t right). If there are any more minor frustrations, or things that are unclear, please let us know.

My students say they can’t see my course…

First thing to check is that your course is showing to students. You will be able to tell this by looking at your course listing: the course title will appear in a blue-green if the course is viewable, and light grey if it isn’t. If this is the case, make it show to students by following these steps:

1. Click on the “Settings” link in the Administration block in your course
2. Scroll down to Availability
3. Change the drop down box to show “This course is available to students”
4. Save changes. Your course will now show to students.

If the course is showing to students and someone is still having trouble seeing it, check that the student is properly enrolled on the module (your department administrators or the Registry should be able to tell you this). If they are registered properly and they are still having problems, send us an email (ltt@essex.ac.uk).

Where are all my students?!

If you have just had a new course set up by us, you may notice that there don’t appear to be any students listed as having access to your course. When we first create a course we will almost always have it hidden from student view to allow you a chance to populate it with something useful before you release it. When a course has always been hidden from view, students will not be added to the course, so once you make it show to students their names will start appearing (see above for how to make it viewable).

However, there is another stage in the process. Students won’t appear in the list until they next login to Moodle (this is so our system isn’t inundated with adding new registrations all in one go). But as they start logging in, they will be able to see the course and their name will appear in the user list.

Can I give someone permission to see my course?

Yes! All properly registered students will be automatically enrolled on a Moodle course if it is a module, however you might want to add a colleague or GTA onto your Moodle course, or possibly add students who are not registered on your module. To do this:

What if I can’t find them in the search results?

This could be due to them being a returning student. We had a bit of a tidy up of our database over last summer, and removed all students that had left the University. Unfortunately, a number of them have returned and their Moodle account has been deactivated! If you have this problem, just drop a quick email to ltt@essex.ac.uk and we will sort it out.

We are running an “Introduction to Moodle” course on Wednesday 11^th January 2012 from 2.30 – 4.30pm if you would like to top up your Moodle knowledge for the start of the year.

To book yourself onto this course go to: http://www2.essex.ac.uk/iss/Training/fulldetails.asp?crs=mo1 and click on “Book this course”.

Cheers,
Alex

They will not be used for spam, but will be a great way of getting to know what is going on with all the e-learning tools.

To sign up, visit: https://www.essex.ac.uk/contact/mailinglists/browse.aspx.

Search for any of the following:

• ocs-user-group
• cmr-user-group
• prs-user-group
• moodle-user-group
• online-assessment-user-group

Then check the relevant checkbox.

If you are simply interested in using these tools but don’t use them yet, sign up to find out more! Our regular generic news and goings on will continue to appear on this blog.

We hope these will be useful, please feel free to make comments below!

Alex

This morning we released a fix to OCS which sorted out a weird problem that both staff and students have reported – seemingly random files not being able to be downloaded (when you clicked on the title the page just refreshed). This is now fixed, all documents should now be available to download when you click on the title.

If you’re still having problems though do let us know!

Alex

When a submitted file is watermarked, OCS puts a unique serial number down the side of each page. Historically, this watermark has included:

• Date/time that the file was watermarked
• Module code
• OCS assignment code
• Student registration number
• Watermark serial number

For example:
16/07/10-15:44:45 <BE957-7-AU_09a2_0815918_83c3096c07fb284e39005cdd6e29f>

After speaking to a department, it became clear that this informaiton is difficult to read, and gives little indication about the original submission. To aid this, we have changed the watermark to the following:

• Date/time that the file was uploaded to OCS – if this is after the electronic deadline date/time, the text will be surrounded with stars (***)
• Date/time that the file was watermarked – if this is after the hardcopy deadline date/time, the text will be surrounded with stars (***)
• Module code
• OCS assignment code
• Student registration number
• Watermark serial number

For example (for an assignment with an electronic deadline of 16/07/2010, and a hardcopy deadline of 18/07/2010):
UP:***17/07/2010-15:44:45*** WM:17/07/2010-12:03:23 M:BE957-7-AU A:09a2 R:0815918 C:83c3096c07fb284e39005cdd6e29f

We made this change about 30 minutes ago, at 4:15pm. It won’t affect previously watermarked files, only those watermarked after this time. We hope that it makes things easier.

Unfortunately, the WaLT office can only seat 11 people. We’ve been creative with hot-desking over the summer break, but with the imminent arrival of a new team member, we’ve had to rethink our office layout. Part of this rethink is that the LTT will temporarily move to a different office.

From early-November (exact date to be decided), the three Learning Technologists will move to 4SB.5.19. This is less than a minute’s walk from the WaLT office, and in the same square and building.
To find us, you’ll need to walk past the WaLT office (from the square), turn left at the end of the corridor, and we’re about 8 offices down – just next to the fire door. Our email addresses and phone numbers will remain the same.

We anticipate that we’ll be in the new office until Christmas, but changes in workload may increase our stay until Easter.

Update: We’ll now moved. Pop by and say “Hi”.

The majority of our work has a visual, tangible, outcome;  you’ll have seen this in the revamp of OCS last summer, and in the recently released Listen Again service. But we also do work behind the scenes, stuff that the majority of staff and students will never see. One of these hidden-but-awesome projects is the BATT Computer.

The best explanation of the BATT Computer is from one of my colleagues, Marty Jacobs. To paraphrase:

Whenever the Commissioner Gordon phoned Batman, in the original 1960′s series, Batman always knew what the Commissioner was about to ask. He did this, in part, through use of the batcomputer; a massive omniscient and omnipotent supercomputer, located in the batcave beneath Wayne Manor. It’s specification included a 10,000 carat diamond, numerous sensors, and a tool that could locate an archcriminal anywhere in the world.

We should work on a similar system for e-learning. Something that can identify potential issues, and alert us accordingly, before they become a problem for our users. This would both increase the quality and speed of our services, and reduce administrative load for the LTT, so that we can work on bigger and better e-learning projects in the future.

After coming up with this idea, we tackled the big problems first. Unfortunately, we discovered that the e-learning budget wouldn’t cover the cost of constructing a lair under the University lakes, nor could we afford to turn the Hex into a giant e-learning command centre. So, instead, we’ve had to focus on the secondary objectives of identifying problems early, improving the quality and speed of our service, and reducing administrative load for the LTT (and hopefully, in the future, everyone).

The BATT Computer, which is a backronym for Backend Administration of Teaching Technologies, is something we’ve been discussing for the past few months. Work started on the BATT Computer a few weeks ago, but unfortunately due to other commitments over the summer, it has had to take a lower priority. We’ll keep you updated on how the project progresses, and you’ll hopefully experience the benefits via a more responsive and helpful Learning Technology Team over the next year or so.

So, stay tuned. Same BATT time, same BATT blog.

To help reduce the problem, we have removed all expired accounts from Moodle (ie. those who are no longer a member of the University). This has reduced Moodle’s user count to a much more sensible 15,000.

This shouldn’t affect current students and staff, but if you do encounter problems when logging in to Moodle, please contact us.