Preparing for a Moodle 4.1 Update This Summer

Preparing for a Moodle 4.1 Update This Summer

by Josh Moon -
Number of replies: 0

Hello Everyone,

I wanted to give all notify all users (staff, faculty, and students!) that we intend to upgrade to Moodle 4.1 this month. Being a major release, Moodle 4.1 looks substantially different in terms of how courses are displayed. For Instructors, gone is the familiar settings gear wheel. It has been replaced by a ribbon-style menu of Settings, Participants, Grades, and more.


For all users, including students, your Site Home, Dashboard, and other key links are part of a menu at the top of the page instead of located in the menu on the left. Hopefully, everyone will notice some more contemporary, mobile-first, and intuitive design. 


If you'd like to see a visual comparison of the design changes, Prof. Kathryn Sederberg has volunteered to show how her German 101 looks between the current Moodle 3.11 and 4.1.

GERM 101 Moodle 3.11



GERM 101 Moodle 4.1



A few other course design notes:

  • Moodle 4.1 brings back more effective support for blocks in the right margin. If instructors find those blocks useful (Activities, Latest news, Recent Activity, etc.), they can now exist as part of a collapsible menu.
  • Because of the design of Activities and Resources, I might suggest using Description fields displayed on the Course Page to add more information and context to weekly tasks.
  •  Moodle also has a two-minute video on the 4.x update available .
As always, anyone is welcome to contact me with questions. I'm sure a few will arise as users acclimate to this version of Moodle.

Best,
Josh
Educational Technology Specialist