The University will be upgrading Moodle/DLE on Wednesday, 26 July 2023.
What’s new?
The Moodle upgrade will bring a new simplified user interface, which is now more modern, mobile-friendly and easy to use. Although Moodle is getting a new design, all functionality remains the same with some enhancements, namely:
- Modern layout for both the Dashboard (landing page) and Courses
- Enhanced top-level site navigation to include links to student information within the student portal
- New ‘Find a course’ search – now available on your Dashboard
- New ‘Course index’ feature within Courses
- Sliding (right-hand) block drawer
Digital Education will be spending the next few months updating all of our help and documentation so it’s ready for you on 26 July. We have a wealth of information, so this will take a significant amount of time, so please bear with us as we get through the catalogue of resources.
Why are we upgrading?
We usually upgrade Moodle annually to ensure the university remains current with the latest standards, features and security support. However, due to the pandemic, pivoting to online learning and user interface (UI) changes, the university has not upgraded Moodle since July 2019. This upgrade will align us once again with our usual annual upgrade cycle and with best practices within the sector.
When is the upgrade taking place?
The Moodle upgrade will be taking place on Wednesday, 26 July 2023. Downtime is yet to be confirmed with our supplier, but this will be communicated closer to the time. All upgrade timings for our Moodle upgrades have to be scheduled with our third-party supplier. This date has been carefully selected to minimise the impact across our various Faculties and Schools.
Will all my course content still be available?
Yes, of course! We aim to make the upgrade process as easy as possible for everyone at the university. If your course content is present and working on the day before the upgrade, it will still be there after the upgrade has taken place.
All resources, activities, course structures and enrolments will remain the same. In this regard, only the look and feel of the learning environment is changing. Therefore you may notice different colours, icons and generally more spacing between items.
We’ll also release more content closer to the upgrade, which will provide greater detail on some of the above changes and any new notable features.