News and Events, Technologies

King’s Summer KEATS Upgrade to Moodle 3.11 – what to expect

KEATS is scheduled to be upgraded to Moodle version 3.11 on 12th July 2022. This upgrade will represent a minor incremental change to the usual major upgrade that takes place over the summer. 

This blog post will provide a brief overview of some of the changes that can be expected if certain settings are enabled. The most notable new feature of 3.11 is the changes to activity completion allowing students to easily see at glance their progress and what they need to do in order to complete an activity or resources.  

Activity completion enhancements 

Student Course view – For courses that have completion enabled, students will now be presented with clearer criteria conditions required to complete a set activity or resource. The criteria can be viewed directly from the course page: 

Screenshot of criteria on the right side of activities and resources

Students will also be presented with the completion requirements within each activity or resource, for example: 

Screenshot of assignment with criteria

Activity Dates are a new option that help signpost when certain activities need to be completed by:

Screenshot of activity date option for activity completion

This new option will be an important building block for when KEATS is upgraded to Moodle 4.X in summer 2023, this is primarily due to the dashboard in Moodle 4.X displaying timely content to users therefore attaching dates to activities will be highly beneficial.

Enhanced activity report options – Course tutors now have access to additional Activity Completion filtering options, which include ability to filter groups, activities & groups as well as setting the order of the activities in either order within the course or alphabetically:

Screenshot of enhance activity report options

 

Improvements to Quiz activity

There are number of improvements to the Moodle Quiz activity you can utilise in Moodle 3.11.

Automatic setting saves – If you create several quizzes throughout the academic year you might be interested to learn that 3.11 offers an ability to save settings for quizzes so those are automatically saved and can be applied to the next quiz question.

Word count limits – For the Quiz Essay question, you now have a new word count feature that allows you to set minimum and maximum word counts for answers. Teacher can see how many words over or under the student’s attempt is:

Screenshot of word count limit

Plagiarism detection (coming soon) – The Turnitin plagiarism detector plugin will now be available for the Essay question type for evidence of plagiarism for responses, including access to Feedback studio to view the similarity score.

Screenshot of the plagiarism detection tool

Quiz Timer (floating)​ – A floating timer appear in the top right and moves with the page scrolling will now appear when a student attempts a quiz:

Screenshot of floating timer example

Read more about King’s KEATS 3.11 User Interface Refresh


Written by Sultan WadudSultan Wadud

Sultan Wadud works as a Learning Technologist, Faculty Liaison at CTEL, working closely with Academic Faculties and Departments to support and drive the implementation of the King’s Technology Enhanced Learning ‘Transformation in Digital Learning’ strategy.

Wadud supports the management and delivery of multiple projects aimed at both the development of academics’ pedagogic understanding and the practice of technology enhanced learning.

Wadud has a keen interest in exploring new ways to utilise existing or new technology to enhance teaching and learning.

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