Moodle 2.0 Features
Listed below is a highlight of some of the new features available in Moodle 2.0. a more detailed list of features can be found on the Moodle 2.0 Release Notes.
A meeting for all faculty will be held on March 30th at 9:00 am (Pocatello B32, Idaho Falls CHE 303, Meridian 697, Twin Falls C91) to announce the transition to Moodle 2.0.
Conditional activities
- Access to activities can be restricted based on certain criteria, such as dates, grade obtained, or the completion of another activity.
- These can be chained together to enable progressive discloure of the course content, if that is desired.
- Teachers can now specify conditions that define when any activity is seen as completed by a student. e.g., When a certain number of posts have been made, or a grade has bee reache, or a choice has been made.
Cohorts
- Also known as "Site-wide groups", these are site-wide wolections of users that can be enrolled into course in one action, either manually or synchronized automatically.
Repository support
- File management has undergone a major change in both the interface and function.
- The File picker presents a standard way to access the new File bank repository system.
- This allows Moodle to integrate with external repositories of content, making it really simple to bring documents and media into Moodle via an AJAX interface that looks like a standard Open dialogue in desktop applications.
- Initial plugins in 2.0 include: Alfresco, Amazon S3, Box.net, File system on Server, Flickr, Google Docs, MERLOT, Picasa, Recent Files, WebDAV servers, Wikimedia, Youtube. These are simple to develop, so many more are expected.
- You can also import files from your desktop or by specifying a URL.
- There are more attributes that can be added to a file, such as license and author.
Portfolio support
- Modules can now export their data to external systems, particularly useful for portfolios where snapshots of forums, assignments and
other things in Moodle are useful to record in a journal or a portfolio of evidence - Different formats are supported (currently LEAP2A, HTML, Images and Text, but others like PDF can be added)
- Initial plugins in 2.0 include: Box.net, Flickr, Google Docs, Mahara and Picasa
Course completion
- Teachers can now specify a Course completion condition standard for all students. Conditions include activity completion, but could
also be by grade, date or a number of other criteria. - Teachers and students can see reports that show the progress within a course.
New Blocks
- Comments block - like a shoutbox, allows comments to be added to any page. Great for student feedback.
- My private files block - allows access to a user's private files, which can then be accessed by them anywhere with the File picker.
There is quota management available. - Community block - keeps track of external courses one is interested in
- Course completion status block - reports on the completion status of your courses.
Blocks
- Blocks are now consistently implemented on every page in Moodle
- No longer any limit to placing blocks in only the left and right column regions. Themes can be designed to specify alternate block regions at the top, center or bottom areas of pages.
- Any block can be forced to appear in all the page contexts below it (for example, in every course or throughout a course).
- Blocks can placed in the Dock area on the side of the screen (if the theme supports it).
Blogs
- Support for comments on each blog entry
- Support for external blog feeds (synchronised to Moodle blog)
Comments
- User comments (Glossaries, Databases, Blogs, etc) are now all consistently handled and displayed throughout Moodle, using AJAX if available
File handling
- There is a new File picker interface that manages files for resources and when they are used in an activity, such as including an image in a content page.
- Full support for Unicode file names on all operating systems.
- Metadata about each file (author, date, license, etc) and what the file is used for are stored in the database.
- Duplicate files (for example, a large video file use in two different courses) are only stored once, saving disk space.
- Security has been improved because files have the same contexual permissions as the activity that uses them. (For example, a file may belong to a file resource, a forum post or a wiki page ).
- Files are no longer just "uploaded to the course".
My Moodle page
- More customisable My Moodle page with new blocks for showing relevant information
- Admin can design (and optionally force) site-wide layouts for My Moodle
- My Moodle page given more prominence as the main "home page" for users
Filters 2.0
- In the past, you had to use the same filters everywhere in your Moodle site, and this could only be changed by admins.
- Now, you can have different filters in different courses, activities or categories.
- For example, you could turn on the LaTeX filter just for courses in the Maths and Physics categories.
- Or you could turn off glossary linking in the end of course exam.
HTML editor
- New editor based on TinyMCE
- Works on more browsers(including Safari, Chrome, etc.)
- Resizable editing area
- Cleaner XHTML output
- Full integration with configured external repositories to import and embed media into text
Messaging
- All email sent by Moodle is now treated as a message
- A message overview panel allows users to control how messages are sent to them
- Initial message output plugins in Moodle 2.0 include: Email, Jabber and Popups
Navigation
- Standard "Navigation" block on every page showing contextual links, while allowing you to jump elsewhere quickly
- Standard "Settings" blocks on every page shows contextual settings as well as settings for anything else you have permissions for
RSS feeds
- All RSS feeds are now secured using a random per-user token in the URL
- Tokens can be updated by the user at any time (if they suspect a feed URL has been compromised)
- RSS feeds are now more accurate (eg they support forums with separate groups), and are generated efficiently whenever required
User profile pages
- Site-wide user profile page can be customised by users with blocks, news, feeds and so on
- Course-specific user profile pages show course blocks and standard profile information, plus information for teachers of that course
Quiz module and question bank
- Quiz navigation improvements for students
- Flagging questions during a quiz attempt Student can mark a question that stays with their quiz.
- Quiz report enhancements - Major improvements to the quiz reports, especially regrading and item analysis
- Quiz report statistics - A brief guide
- Quiz editing interface improvements
- Different settings (open/close date, number of attempts, password, time limit) for each group or student (MDL-16478)
- Administration page for question types
- Question tagging and improved searching in the question bank
- MDL-8648 Essay questions can now be randomised by random questions
Resource
- All the resource types have been refactored into real modules, and cleaned up
- File - for displaying a file, possibly with supporting files (like a HTML mini-site)
- Folder - for displaying a collection of documents
- URL - for displaying a page with a given URL
- Page - for a single page, edited online using the HTML editor
- IMS - for showing a regular IMS content package
- Better XHTML-compliant support for frames, iframes and embedding in all these modules
Wiki
- Completely re-written from scratch, based on NWIki from UPC
- Support for Mediawiki-style syntax, as well as Creole
- Interface improvements
Workshop
- Completely rewritten from scratch
- Vastly improved interface for managing stages and users
This list was compiled using a chart from Delhi State Univserity of New York.