Defanging scariest two words at UPEI
I was at a Faculty Development Office brown bag lunch with a distinguished faculty member. They’re an award winning pedagogue and is an exemplary teacher. Before the session started they said that there are no two words that put more fear in their heart than these: Moodle upgrade.
Before diving in, just a quick lesson about Moodle versions. Moodle versions have three numbers like this: Moodle X.Y.Z, for example we’re currently on Moodle 3.1.11. This number will represent how up-to-date Moodle is and what features are included.
A change to the X number is usually a very large update, lots of changes, new features. A change to Y is usually an improvement to something (like being able to pick and choose which student assignments you want to download instead of having to download assignments individually or all the assignments for the entire class), or it might be something new like the course recycling bin. The last number is a small upgrade, usually a fix for something that isn’t working properly, or an update to Moodle’s security.
As a bit of a backstory I started out as a student here in 2007 just about the time that UPEI began using Moodle. These were the days where classes had passwords for students to use to access their Moodle sections.
In August 2013 UPEI went through its first major Moodle upgrade moving from Moodle 1.9 to 2.2, a switch to a new major version. This involved backing up course materials on the old Moodle, downloading them, and uploading the courses to the new version of Moodle. Moving materials from one Moodle section to another was a major undertaking for faculty and the E-Learning team, but result was a consistent experience for 4 years with a little upgrade from version 2.2 to 2.5. This little upgrade added some new features and gave us the theme we still use today.
The next major upgrade came with the end of UIS (the UPEI Campus Login), and the switch to myUPEI as UPEI’s software for managing course enrolments. UPEI’s Moodle needed to be upgraded to work with the new software and in May 2017 we rolled out Moodle 3.1. Like the 2013 upgrade courses needed to be migrated from one version to another. The coupling of the Moodle upgrade with the rollout of myUPEI added to the disruptiveness of a major upgrade. To try and limit some of that disruption the old Moodle theme was kept so not too much was new at once; though this came with its own problems.
This spring will mark 2 years since the rollout of myUPEI and the major Moodle upgrade that came along with it. It will also come with another minor Moodle upgrade moving from our Moodle 3.1 to the most recent version that myUPEI is compatible with Moodle 3.4.
Like when we did our little upgrade from 2.2 to 2.5 this will be a small upgrade in terms of new features and other improvements. The biggest part is that UPEI will be changing to Moodle’s new theme. This theme will fix a number of things that our current theme breaks (did you know there’s a neat user bar that has quick links for your grades, messages, and preferences at the top of Moodle??). This theme change will also work great for students and faculty who use Moodle on mobile devices.
We have a demo Moodle with the theme already running on https://upeimoodledev.researchspaces.ca/. If you’d like to try out a course on this Moodle from now until our upgrade in May please send an email to moodle@upei.ca for an account.
So how does this defang the Moodle upgrades going forward? The E-Learning Office and ITSS have worked out an upgrade schedule to keep UPEI’s version of Moodle up-to-date to avoid having to do huge upgrades every few years. This should look like an update to the Z in Moodle X.Y.Z each semester to make sure that there are security vulnerabilities. Each spring will be a small upgrade to the Y number, which should result in some small new features and improvements, but no drastic changes.
Routinely updating Moodle should upgrade in smaller, easier to manage steps while also letting us tackle larger updates on our own schedule with plenty of notice, rather than getting forced into a big update because of incompatibility or security concerns.
While this is probably more Moodle upgrade talk than you want to hear, we hope that these changes will make a better experience for faculty and students.
If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out!
