Last month, Moodle 3.5 was released.
The release is an awesome upgrade on the previous version of the worlds most popular elearning tool. Building on the success of Moodle 3.4, the major improvements of Moodle 3.5 are GDPR compliance and a focus on improving usability.
What new features does Moodle 3.5 have?
Moodle 3.5 has improved functionalities. For example, core Moodle now has the features that make it easier to comply with the new regulations. It adheres to the data privacy regulations put in place in Europe under GDPR. The new changes include report of which plugin on your Moodle site are not GDPR compliant. Under the GDPR guidelines, plugins will have no option than to implement these features and report what user information they are storing.
Does your elearning site use a question bank? If yes, then you understand the importance of tagging questions. The new Moodle 3.5 release expands this functionality allowing you to tag questions and filter by these tags when adding questions to quizzes. Thanks to the Moodle User Association (MUA) for this particular set of changes.
Thirdly, the new Moodle 3.5 release also features usability improvements. The key take-aways are;
- Course images are displayed on the dashboard in the core Moodle theme
- There is a privacy and policies area on the user profile page
- Teachers and students can directly record sound and video in the atto editor using their webcams – great for resources, assignments and discussion forums
- Teachers can filter, search and bulk edit or delete self enrolled students from both the Participants and Enrolments pages
- Having one badge can be used as a condition for receiving other badges. This is really interesting as you could award badges for collecting a number of other badges, or create some sort of hierarchy. If you have any ideas, pop them in the comments below!
- And lastly admins can apply different themes for different cohorts
Watch the overview video of these changes below.
Or you can see the full playlist of new features here.
Moodle 3.5’s UX team has played a crucial role in these developments.
The team has implemented Bootstrap v4 (previous versions used an alpha release of Bootstrap v4) in this new version of Moodle. This way, they will have laid the groundwork and foundation needed to make further UI / UX improvements moving forward. Initially, the user experience improvements will put more focus on Moodle 3.5’s dashboard.
And finally, it’s worth noting that there are improvements coming in the Moodle Mobile App. These include usability improvements and more crucially, the Moodle Mobile App will adhere to the rules and regulations regarding GDPR compliance.
Ask us for a demo if you’re a new client who wants to learn more about Moodle 3.5.
Existing clients can contact us to ask for an upgrade of their previous installation.
