MoodleCloud sites to be upgraded to the latest major version – Moodle 3.4

November 27, 2017

MoodleCloud users! We are pleased to let you know that your site will be upgraded to the latest major version – Moodle 3.4.

There are a number of improvements to your upgraded site, all focussed on usability and making your learning platform more powerful and user-friendly.

Let’s go through the top updates to your MoodleCloud site which we think will make learning in Moodle even more efficient and collaborative:

Improvements to the Moodle calendar

One of the biggest improvements in Moodle 3.4 can be seen in the Calendar, where you can now, amongst other things:

  • enjoy the ability to easily input event details in a pop up window.
  • simply drag and drop events to different dates and months for faster editing.
  • choose the new “Category” event type feature so you can easily separate them from site or course events.

Thank you to the Moodle Users Association for making this Calendar project possible.

Better course management with combined Participants and Enrolments screens

In Moodle 3.4, educators can enrol and manage their learners from a single screen. Moodlers can now enjoy functions such as:

  • searching and filtering course participants for example, by role, status or group
  • the ability to edit or delete selected users
  • a clearer view of participant’s status.

Faster and more intuitive navigation of activities

In Moodle 3.4 you can now find new links below course items in Moodle 3.4. These links have been added to make navigation from one activity or resource to another easier and faster.

Links on the left to move back to previous activity/resource and to the right for next activity are also available, along with a ‘jump to’ menu offering users all the course items they can choose from.

Better assignment submissions with a file type list

With Moodle 3.4, our educators are now presented with a list of file type suggestions when they click on the “Choose” button.

We have added this improvement to our new major release so that educators can easily specify which format they would like their learners to upload their assignment or workshop submissions in.

Easily accessible information about your private files!

All of our Moodle users – educators and learners – can now easily see how much space is left in their own Private files in Moodle 3.4.

When users upload or drop and drag files, a message indicating how much storage has been used, will be displayed.

This feature will assist Moodle users in managing their Private files more easily.

“override activity completion status” capability allows educators to mark activities as complete

In Moodle 3.4, we are introducing a new capability: ‘Override activity completion status’ which will allow educators to mark learners’ activities as complete or incomplete.

This capability gives educators marking flexibility, for example, to check the quality of forum posts rather than just the total number of them.

Our educators are also able to mark activities complete on behalf of learners, for example, when the activity to complete is an offline one such as giving a classroom presentation, attending a workshop/seminar or participating in a field trip.

Easier access to the Moodle Mobile app

In Moodle 3.4, visible links to download the Moodle Mobile app empower users to access their site anytime, anyplace through their mobile devices.

When our learners and participants access their Moodle 3.4 sites, they will now see an option to download and use the Moodle Mobile app (when enabled) with a useful link to be found on the footer of the site.

Users can also download the app through a link that appears on their profiles.

Many more improvements are available in your upgraded MoodleCloud site, and we would like to just quickly list them below:

  • The ability to manage all tokens
  • New filters, including by category, course and format, for user tours
  • Clearer site registration form on Moodle.net
  • HTTPS replacement now available in Moodle core
  • Ability to choose whether or not users must verify their email with O Auth 2 services
  • Removal of messages block to become a plugin

You can find all the finer details on these improvements in our Moodle 3.4 release notes.

You may have also read about the new Analytics feature in this release. This is currently not possible to enable on MoodleCloud. If you are looking to try this out or add it as a features, download the latest version yourself or talk to a Moodle Partner for assistance.

MoodleCloud users, we hope you enjoy all the new improvements and features that will be available with your upgraded sites.

And thank you all for continually supporting our open source project and mission to empower educators to improve our world.

We look forward to continuing to make MoodleCloud sites even powerful, collaborative and user friendly with every release!