Moodle @ University of Bath

As many of you will be aware, there were some unexpected issues with Moodle enrolments last weekend.

We are still looking into the exact cause of this problem, however the team have made the decision to turn off the nightly synchronisation with Moodle over the Christmas period (24th December – 2nd January), in order to ensure that the enrolment status of users within Moodle will be maintained over the Christmas period.

Whilst automated enrolments will be turned off during this time, it will still be possible to manually synchronise individual courses with Moodle (via the SAMIS Integration block) should you need to do so.

Should you have any questions about this or any other aspect of Moodle, the team will be available (via e-learning@bath.ac.uk) until the closure of the University on 23rd December, returning on 3rd January.

In the meantime, we would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Please find following some guidance on your enrolment to units on Moodle. Your enrolment on units in Moodle are automatically linked to your current enrolments in SAMIS.

If you are not able to see a Moodle unit you think you should have access to this semester:

• Please check with your Faculty/School administrator that your SAMIS enrolments are correct for this semester.
• Ask a unit tutor/convenor whether that unit on Moodle has been made available to students.

If you are still enrolled on Moodle units from last semester:

• Please check that your SAMIS enrolments are correct for this semester
• If your SAMIS record is up-to-date and the unit still shows in Moodle, this may be because you were manually added to the unit instead. Please contact the unit tutor/convenor for that unit, who should be able to arrange for you to be unenrolled.

If you have previously self-enrolled on a Moodle unit which you no longer wish to have access to, you might be able to unenrol yourself. You can do this by following these steps:

• Go to the unit on Moodle
• Click on your name (top right) to open your Moodle profile or go to the Administration block
• Click on Unenrol me from ‘coursename’
• If you find that you do not have the option to unenrol yourself at this point, you will need to contact a unit tutor/convenor for that unit, who will be able to unenrol you.

Staff may be aware that all SAMIS courses have an associated ‘period slot code’, and that this defines the start and end date of courses in Moodle.  This information is then used by Moodle to identify when students should be added to / removed from the relevant Moodle courses.

The SAMIS team have very helpfully made the list of period slot codes (and their associated dates) available online, and it is hoped that this will help to provide users with some clarity regarding their Moodle enrolments – that is, when they can expect students to be added to (or removed from) a specific Moodle course.

Please note that the e-Learning Team has extended each of the start/end dates (with the exception of Semester 2) by 3 weeks, in order to provide an additional ‘buffer’ to enrolments and unenrolments.  Moodle teachers should also be aware that users who have been added manually to a Moodle courses will not be removed automatically and that these dates do not apply in these cases.

Should you have any questions about the enrolment or removal of students on Moodle courses, please contact the e-learning team via e-learning@bath.ac.uk

We are pleased to announce that following this weeks scheduled downtime, the Moodle service at the University of Bath now features Turnitin integration.  This will enable Moodle Teachers to automate submission of student files directly to Turnitin in order to check the originality of the content within the files .

As a result, Teachers will find several new options available to them from within the ‘Assignment’ activity.

Turnitin settings

The Moodle FAQs have been updated to support you in your use of Turnitin, however if you have any questions or comments please contact the e-Learning Team.

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.

Given that semester 1 officially ended on 28th January, users may be expecting their S1 Moodle enrolments to have been un-enrolled by now.  Whilst this would normally be the case, we have responded to the feedback that we received in previous years by extending this date somewhat.

Colleagues should be aware therefore, that (as far as Moodle is concerned), semester 1 enrolments will not not expire until 18th February – at which point the majority of students will be removed from their S1 courses.

There will of course be exceptions to this, and students who were added to their courses in the following ways will not be automatically removed:

• Manually added via the ‘Assign Roles’ link in Moodle
• Added to Moodle through the SAMIS block (where a specified un-enrolment date has been selected)
• Added to Moodle through the SAMIS block (where the  ‘manual’ un-enrolment condition has been chosen)

Staff wishing to retain semester 1 enrolments beyond the 18th February can do so by setting up a bespoke course mapping using the SAMIS block (either specifying a preferred un-enrolment date or selecting the manual un-enrolment condition).  For those who may be new to this function, there are a number of FAQs that may be of some use.

Any semester 2 or M07 enrolments should already be in place.  Although these would normally take place on 7th February (the start date for these period slot codes in SAMIS), we have brought the Moodle dates forward by a week in order to enable users to access their courses in advance of the official start date.

Should staff have any questions about this or any other aspect of Moodle, we (the e-Learning Team) will be happy to assist.  Please send any queries through to us at: e-learning@bath.ac.uk.

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.