Smarter and more customised: Discover what’s new in Moodle Workplace 4.5

November 5, 2024 By Lauren Goodman

Get ready to explore a more personalised, efficient, and intelligent Moodle Workplace with our latest release! From new course discovery and curation features in the Learning Catalogue to AI-powered tools for enhanced content creation, our newest version is all about making learning more accessible, engaging, and aligned with your organisation’s needs. Dive into what’s new and see how the flexibility of Moodle Workplace 4.5 can help you meet your organisation’s learning goals.

Curate your learning experience with a more personalised Learning Catalogue

Have you ever found yourself peering aimlessly down an aisle of the grocery store, unsure of what to choose and overwhelmed by options? Decision fatigue is real, and we know this is NOT the experience you want for your learners. 

The latest version of the Moodle Workplace Learning Catalogue makes it easier than ever to help members of your organisation choose the learning that’s right for them. A new option to highlight courses allows you to visually draw attention to the high-priority courses you most want learners to see. You could highlight new courses, free or paid offerings, time-sensitive training, or anything else that you want to draw attention to, reducing that decision fatigue and making it easier to start learning right away.

Highlighting courses and using a new Featured Courses section allows you to direct learners to the courses you most want them to find. Image source: Moodle Image
Highlighting courses and using a new Featured Courses section allows you to direct learners to the courses you most want them to find. Image source: Moodle

Along with course highlighting, you’ll also be able to use the new Featured Courses section of the Catalogue landing page. You and your learners will see this section right at the top of the page, with lots of options for you to customise this space (if “Featured Courses” doesn’t fit with your organisation’s needs, change this to “Our Latest Offerings” or maybe “Recommended Trainings”). By updating your Featured Courses section regularly, you’ll give learners good reason to stay engaged by returning again and again to seek out fresh, curated content. 

Save time, stay accurate with automatic pricing updates

In addition to internal staff training, we know that many of you use your Moodle Workplace sites to promote and sell high-quality learning experiences. We also know that having to manually update the price of each course in the Catalogue was time consuming, and sometimes led to errors and inconsistencies. 

We heard you, and in our latest release we’ve implemented an automatic price synchronisation feature. You can now directly connect the Catalogue to course payment enrollment plugins, which means that whatever price you’ve set for that course will automatically populate in the Catalogue. This automation ensures that course prices are updated immediately and are always accurate, saving you time and making sure that your learners always see up-to-date pricing information.

A new Number custom field allows you to automatically populate numerical information in the Catalogue, including price from enrolment plugins. Image source: Moodle Image
A new Number custom field allows you to automatically populate numerical information in the Catalogue, including price from enrolment plugins. Image source: Moodle

Along with up-to-date pricing information, your learners will also be able to make use of a new Range filter in the Catalogue, which allows them to search by price range. And, because we know that not all of you are selling courses, these same features can also be used for any other numerical value you assign to your courses. 

By offering your learners the option to filter by a numerical range – whether it be price, time commitment, level, or any other information that’s important to your organisation – you’ll help them find the learning they need, when they need it.

Make the Catalogue your own with new customisation options

It’s important to us that your Moodle Workplace site looks like you, using your unique brand colours, images, and other details that help you build trust and consistency with your learners. To that end, in the Catalogue you always have the option to change the appearance of fields, filters, providing a branded, visually consistent experience for all users of your site. 

Because we know you’ve worked hard to customise and curate your site’s Catalogue, we want you to have the option to place your learning offerings front and centre from the moment learners log in. With Moodle Workplace 4.5, you can now set the Catalogue as the start page for your site, giving you even more flexibility to guide learners directly to the courses and resources they need. 

You can now choose the Catalogue as the start page for your Moodle Workplace site. Image source: Moodle Image
You can now choose the Catalogue as the start page for your Moodle Workplace site. Image source: Moodle

First impressions matter, and by setting the Catalogue as your site’s entry point, you can create a welcoming, personalised experience for your learners that reinforces your brand and supports your organisational goals.

New horizons with AI: Smarter learning, personalised experiences

Alongside the Catalogue enhancements, our latest version of Moodle Workplace brings powerful AI capabilities throughout your site. A new AI subsystem, originally launched with Moodle LMS 4.5, unlocks the door to securely, consistently, and efficiently incorporating AI functionality throughout Moodle Workplace. You choose the AI providers you want to work with, the tools you want to utilise, the users who should have access to these tools, and where these users should have access to them. This is AI, your way.

Unlocking the power of AI with the AI subsystem

With a design guided by Moodle’s AI principles, the new AI subsystem in Moodle Workplace offers you complete control over if, how, and where AI is incorporated into your organisation’s learning experiences. The subsystem is a secure, scalable framework that allows you to easily integrate with the providers that then power AI tools and features throughout your site. 

As we launch the new AI subsystem, Moodle Workplace will initially support the OpenAI API, which works with open-source models such as Ollama, LiteLLM, and LocalAI. It will also support services like Groq, OpenAI itself, and Azure. Additional AI model support will be added in future releases. 

Because we know scalability and long-term flexibility are crucial for your organisation, with the AI subsystem, you will never be tied to a single provider. The subsystem unlocks endless potential to integrate the power of AI into your Moodle Workplace site, making it even easier for you to create learning experiences that transform careers, and lives.

The new AI subsystem allows you to integrate with the AI providers you choose. Image source: Moodle Image
The new AI subsystem allows you to integrate with the AI providers you choose. Image source: Moodle

Explore new AI tools in Moodle Workplace

The Moodle Workplace 4.5 release includes powerful AI tools to enable content generation and summarisation directly within the platform. Once you have configured an AI provider using the subsystem, you – and whatever other users you want to have access to them – can then use these AI tools throughout your site. 

With AI-powered text and image generation available directly in the Moodle Workplace content editor, you and your instructors can easily create more thorough, personalised materials to support your organisation’s learning outcomes. Because these capabilities are all based on system permissions, you can decide when and where you want learners to also be able to use AI content generation tools.

New AI content generation tools allow you to create AI-generated text and images directly within the Moodle Workplace content editor. Image source: Moodle Image
New AI content generation tools allow you to create AI-generated text and images directly within the Moodle Workplace content editor. Image source: Moodle

The new AI content summarisation tool provides an AI-generated summary of text content throughout your Moodle Workplace site. Learners can use this to gain an initial understanding of complex instructions or explanations, and instructors can use this to quickly analyse the sentiment or major points of a forum discussion, or any other text. As with other AI tools in Moodle Workplace, who, how, and when you choose to utilise these functions is entirely up to you.

Finally, because a human-centred approach to AI is at the core of our design, in order to ensure transparency, users will always know when they are interacting with AI on your Moodle Workplace site. All AI-generated content is tagged and interactions are logged, so you can gain a better understanding of how your users are utilising these powerful new features. 

Get out there and create!

With our latest version of Moodle Workplace, you’re equipped to create a more impactful, personalised, and future-ready learning environment. These new features, from enhanced course selection to powerful AI-driven tools, are all about supporting your vision and making learning more accessible, engaging, and tailored to your organisation’s needs. We’re excited to see how you’ll transform learning with these new tools at your fingertips!

Learn more about Moodle Workplace 4.5

Eager to explore Moodle Workplace 4.5?

Find out more and get a demo of our latest release