Moodle @ University of Bath

We have become aware in recent days, that a number of people have been prompted for their user name and password upon attempting to access MS Office documents from within Moodle.

Initial research suggests that this is not a Moodle specific issue, but that it may be related to the way that Windows 7 and IE 8 handle certain Office files.  We are liaising with colleagues in BUCS in order to ascertain the full extent of the problem, but in the meantime, Moodle users may click ‘cancel’ if prompted for their credentials at the point of clicking onto a resource (entering your credentials will currently have no effect).  Alternatively, users may prefer to use either Firefox or Chrome to access their files as this issue is not known to occur outside of IE 8.

Colleagues may have noticed some minor changes to the layout of this support site in the last few days.  These changes were necessary due to the large amount of data being represented as static pages on the site, and it is hoped they will make the site more usable as a consequence.

Key changes include:

• The addition of a ‘Moodle Service Catalogue’
• Relocation of ‘Contact Information’ to the side panel on the right
• Amalgamation of ‘Training’ and ‘Support’ pages
• Amalgamation of ‘Policies’ and ‘Development Plans’ pages

As this site continues to grow, we expect that further layout changes will be necessary.  It is hoped however, that these will not be too disruptive to those users who are familiar with the old layout, and we will endeavour to highlight these changes as they occur in order to minimise any confusion.

The following survey is being carried out by a number of educational institutions across the UK to act as a snap shot to identify student awareness of QR Codes, what experience people have of using them and the type of technology they have in their pockets.

This piece of research is very important as it will give us a much better appreciation of how we might use QR Codes and similar technologies in teaching and learning. People are becoming increasingly interested in the potential of using QR Codes to connect physical and electronic learning spaces. This is being investigated in a JISC LTIG Project run by the University of Bath (http://blogs.bath.ac.uk)

The survey is available from http://www.survey.bath.ac.uk/qrcode1109

The survey should take you only a few minutes, and you will be able to enter for a prize draw to win an iPod Touch or a Nintendo DS Lite. There is an iPod Touch and a Nintendo DS Lite available for each of the seven institutions involved in the JISC LTIG Project (Gloucestershire College, Manchester Met University, University of Bath, University of East Anglia, University of Gloucestershire, University of Leicester and University of Sheffield)

The survey is available from http://www.survey.bath.ac.uk/qrcode1109

The closing date is 6th December, 2009