Moodlers, a couple of months back we talked about what is happening with Moodle 3.5 that is scheduled for release on the second Monday of May (14 May).
You can read about our current major work for Moodle 3.5 in our latest post.
Just to reiterate, here are the features and projects we are focussing on with Moodle 3.5:
- Implementing functionality in Moodle to assist sites with compliance to the new European data privacy regulations: GDPR. This is our top priority at the moment, more on this below! Some of these changes involve a new API for plugins to request what personal data they store. We are still fine-tuning this, but we will make the details available as soon as possible. Plugins will have to implement this API as part of the GDPR compliance changes.
- Expanding the functionality for tagging questions in the question bank. This is a project selected by the Moodle User Association (MUA). Further information can be found on the MUA page and in the tracker. This work isn’t anticipated to impact quiz or question related plugins for those who are using the provided APIs, but there will be some minor modifications to the database tables.
- Usability improvements. We’re continuing our work on improving the Moodle user experience based on the in-depth background research, stakeholder analysis and design work from our UX team. The focus is on introducing Bootstrap v4 stable in Moodle 3.5 to lay the groundwork for exciting improvements going forward. Some of the initial UX improvements will likely focus on the dashboard. We will try to make the transition from Bootstrap v4 alpha to v4 stable as smooth as possible, but if you have code that depends on particular v4 alpha classes you may need to make some changes.
- Improvements to the messaging back-end implementation to allow for future expansion of the messaging functionality in Moodle. This involves some changes to the message database tables and message events, so if you have a messaging related plugin you may have to update your code. We’re also working on including the new LTI Advantage extensions.
- Upgrading the Moodle Mobile App to the Ionic 3 framework, some usability improvements and introducing features for GDPR compliance.
General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The new EU data protection regulation comes into effect on 25 May 2018 and effectively all organisations in the EU, as well as those outside the EU that store data of EU citizens, will have to comply.
Moodle is implementing changes that will assist these organisations to become GDPR compliant. These changes focus on functionality to:
- Provide additional privacy information during user sign up, as well as more extensive recording and logging of user consents
- Provide additional means for users to obtain a copy or their data, invoke their right to data erasure and keeping track of all types of data within Moodle in a data registry
Want to know what else is on our focus for continued Moodle development?
Check out our development roadmap.
