{"id":403,"date":"2018-11-08T17:14:35","date_gmt":"2018-11-08T17:14:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/?p=403"},"modified":"2018-11-08T17:14:35","modified_gmt":"2018-11-08T17:14:35","slug":"new-moodle-features-three-highlights","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/2018\/11\/08\/new-moodle-features-three-highlights\/","title":{"rendered":"New Moodle features - three highlights!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Moodle was upgraded in the summer and there are a few new features.\u00a0 Here are three highlights!<\/p>\n<h2><strong>1. Are you teaching large groups and want students to join a group for themselves?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>Now you can! A new tool is available that lets you set up groups and make them available to students to join for themselves. This can save a lot of set-up time in Moodle as you no longer need to move individuals into groups yourself. Although this is not always a suitable strategy for some group work, it can be helpful for some purposes when, for example:<\/p>\n<p>\u2022 induction or starter activities are used to get students to mix with their peers, and start to build working relationships<br \/>\n\u2022 when you want students to group together based on shared project themes or topics<br \/>\n\u2022 you want students to sign up to a variety of events\/workshops<\/p>\n<p><strong>The tool is called Group Choice<\/strong> and below is one example of how it could be used.<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>Create a grouping. This is a group of groups, and is useful to create if you are going to include more than one group activity in your Moodle course.<\/li>\n<li>Create auto groups and add these to the grouping. This feature lets you create multiple groups that are automatically named (e.g. Group 1, 2 or Group A, B etc.). Saves you having to do it manually.<\/li>\n<li>Create a group choice activity \u2013 describing to students how they should approach making their choice (e.g. with friends or with people you don\u2019t yet know or depending on a topic preference) and include your newly created groups.\n<ul>\n<li>You can choose the number allowed in each group<\/li>\n<li>You can give the students the chance to be in one or more groups<\/li>\n<li>You can show all the information to students (so they can choose to be in groups with friends) or keep the details anonymous<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>Let students join a group. They can read the descriptions and click to join.<\/li>\n<li>Provide an activity such as an assignment and apply the grouping so that students can work in their chosen groups. You can also give them a discussion forum space to gather ideas.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-407\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/11\/Yvonne_image1_group_choice-237x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"237\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><strong>Resources:<\/strong><\/h3>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/vimeo.com\/298965115\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">View our screencast guide<\/a><br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.moodle.org\/34\/en\/Groups\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/docs.moodle.org\/34\/en\/Groups<\/a> - read about groups<br \/>\n<a href=\"https:\/\/docs.moodle.org\/34\/en\/Group_choice_quick_guide\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/docs.moodle.org\/34\/en\/Group_choice_quick_guide<\/a> - create a Group Choice activity<\/p>\n<h2><strong>2. Do you want your students to give you feedback during the teaching period?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>There are numerous ways of gathering student views online (Padlet, Linoit to name a couple), but now you can do it directly in Moodle. The tool is called Feedback and it lets you build a form to collect views anonymously (or not, depending on the purpose of your survey).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-409\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/11\/Yvonne_image_2_feedback_activity-238x300.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"238\" height=\"300\" \/><\/p>\n<h2><strong>3. Do you like to check your course from the student view using the \u2018switch role\u2019 option?<\/strong><\/h2>\n<p>This isn\u2019t really new, but its position on the page is! You can now find this option from the pull-down link next to your profile image (top-right).<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-medium wp-image-410\" src=\"http:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/11\/Yvonne_image3_switch_role-300x241.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"241\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/11\/Yvonne_image3_switch_role-300x241.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/11\/Yvonne_image3_switch_role-268x215.png 268w, https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/11\/Yvonne_image3_switch_role.png 434w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n<p>There are other new things in Moodle (we\u2019re now on version 3.4), which you can read about here: <a href=\"https:\/\/telbath.com\/new-in-moodle-3-4\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">https:\/\/telbath.com\/new-in-moodle-3-4\/<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Moodle was upgraded in the summer and there are a few new features.\u00a0 Here are three highlights! 1. Are you teaching large groups and want students to join a group for themselves? Now you can! A new tool is available...<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":496,"featured_media":410,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21,24],"tags":[30],"class_list":["post-403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology-enhanced-learning","category-tel","tag-moodle"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/135\/2018\/11\/Yvonne_image3_switch_role.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pd4Piw-6v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/496"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bath.ac.uk\/clt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}