New Course Site features 2025

Several new features are coming to Course Site during its monthly scheduled maintenance window on the first Sunday of the month. On Sunday, January 5, 2025, Course Site will be upgraded to Moodle version 4.4, bringing with it several enhancements - many of which are the result of instructor and student feedback following the major user-interface changes brought in Moodle 4.x. Below are key features worth highlighting.

Course page layout, look, and feel improvements

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The screenshot above shows what the course home page will look like post-upgrade. Key enhancements of note include:

• Smaller iconography, using an accessible color palette, making it easier to scan and recognize as well as reducing visual bulk

• Reduced space between activities and simplified display makes it easier to scan and reduces scrolling

• Sections are more clearly defined, and are all collapsible including the top “general” section (where the Announcements forum appears)

• New link providing the ability to collapse/expand all sections

• Topics format (default course format) has been renamed to “Custom sections”

Enhancements to course Edit Mode

• From the secondary (three dots) menu, users with course editing privileges can duplicate a section, highlight a section for students, and view a single section at a time to make editing a single section easier.

• New Bulk Actions feature (requires course Edit Mode be enabled)

  • There is a new link that appears to the right of the course title when edit mode is on labeled bulk actions. This link enables/disables Bulk Actions mode. When enabled, new bulk actions are now available by selecting multiple content items OR topic sections (cannot combine items and sections). With selected items or sections, you can bulk delete, move, duplicate, and/or change visibility from a slide-out menu that opens from the bottom of the page. Learn more about Bulk Actions mode from our documentation

• Quick add new section/activity buttons
  When in Edit Mode, two new buttons are available for more quickly adding a new section or activity/resource. In the screenshot below, note the ”+ Add an activity or resource” button which brings up the familiar activity chooser panel to select an activity/resource to add to the course. Also note the “+” button that appears when hovering the mouse in between course sections. This button quickly adds a section in between the two neighboring sections.

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Additional improvements to course activities

• Quiz

  • Ordering question type - create questions with several response options that a student needs to put in the correct order. These response options can be single words or sentences. If using the HTML format option, images may also be used as response options.

  • Last saved timestamp displayed in quiz navigation - students can now see the time their attempt was last saved within the quiz navigation panel on the right side of the screen during an active attempt.

  • Reopen attempts - Teachers can reopen quiz attempts that never submitted.

  • Question numbers - Teachers can customize question numbers.

Improvements to gradebook

• Sticky footer - common action buttons and navigation now appears at the bottom of the screen regardless of scroll position.

• Collapse columns - in the grader report screen

• Collapse category - in the gradebook setup screen

• View feedback - feedback is now directly viewable from the grader report via a new ‘three-dots' menu that appears to the right of the grade where applicable

Learn about gradebook enhancements in more detail with screenshots.