By: Kirk Davies, EDC Educational Technology Consultant
As you may have noticed, Carleton has recently upgraded cuLearn from Moodle 2.4 to 2.6. It managed to pass relatively smoothly through the tireless efforts of the team at CCS. This upgrade was undertaken as a part of the annual updates that we have committed to doing in order to maintain an effective Learning Management System.
A number of new features have been added, such as marking workflow and allocation that allows the instructor to indicate to students what stage their marking is at, as well as to assign marking to specific TAs or another instructor on the course. In addition, a lot of the changes are in the look and feel of the page. Now, the text editor is collapsed, showing only the most relevant tools; as well, on the “Settings” page of each resource or activity, the different sections are now collapsed in order avoid a long list of options that aren’t as frequently used. And now, when editing is turned on on the main page, you no longer see a long list of icons cluttering up the page. Instead, an “edit” drop-down menu appears to the right and allows you select the action you wish to perform.
We understand that some of the features you would have liked to see didn’t get adopted, but we are actively looking for suggestions and ideas to make the system better. If, after testing, we feel it will improve the performance of the system for teaching and learning, then we will move forward on getting them into the fold, so to speak. In the meantime, please explore the system and try to find new and exciting ways to use the tools. If you find something that works, feel free to share.