Tag: forum

Summer 2025 Hack/Doc Fest at Swarthmore

Metal gates leading to a well-tended garden
The Dean Bond Rose Garden at Swarthmore College

This was CLAMP’s third visit to Swarthmore College, but the first time we’d gone there during the summer (see the 2020 and 2023 reports). After some rain on Tuesday morning, good weather moved in for the rest of the conference. Points of interest on campus included the Scott Amphitheater, the Dean Bond Rose Garden (pictured above), and “Crumhenge“, a Stonehenge-inspired art installation along the Crum Creek trail.

Indoors, we evaluated Moodle 5.0. The consensus among the attendees is that schools planned to upgrade to Moodle 4.5 for the forthcoming school year and give the Moodle 5.0 series (see below) time to develop. Please read on for a discussion of issues at this summer’s Hack/Doc Fest.

Issues specific to Moodle 5.0

Question Bank

We have a separate blog post detailing the various changes to the Question Bank in Moodle 5.0. These are over and above the fixes for the Question Bank import issue that CLAMP flagged in February. The short version is that courses may now have multiple question banks, questions created in quizzes may not be shared, and category-level question banks have been eliminated. Please see the linked post for further details and recommendations.

Version numbering

Moodle has a new version naming convention starting with the Moodle 5.0 release. In terms of the operational calendar, we can expect a new long-term support (LTS) release in the October of even-numbered years, and new major features in the April of odd-numbered years. Read on for a fuller explanation.

Previously, the first two numbers indicated the major version of Moodle, while the third number indicated the minor version. So, Moodle 4.5.0 would be the first release of Moodle 4.5, while Moodle 4.5.3 would be the fourth release of Moodle 4.5.

Going forward, the first number will indicate a series, the second number a version within that series, and the third number the patch version. Therefore, Moodle 5.0.0, released in April 2025, is the first release in Series 5. Moodle 5.0.1, the first patch release, was released in June. In October, Moodle HQ will release Moodle 5.1.0, the second minor release in Series 5. The fourth release in a series, in this case Moodle 5.3.0, will be a LTS release, and will be followed by Moodle 6.0.0, the first Series 6 release.

Plugin removals

The following plugins are no longer included in Moodle, beginning with Moodle 5.0:

As of writing, these plugins are published on various GitHub repositories but not available through the Moodle plugins database. They have not been explicitly tested on Moodle 5.0. If you intend to keep using one of them in Moodle 5.0, it’s important to ensure that you’ve downloaded the code before executing the upgrade, otherwise data from the plugins may be removed as part of the upgrade process.

Activities overview

The Activities overview has been redesigned for Moodle 5.0. This appears to be a partial reimplementation: supported modules include Assignment, Workshop, Feedback, Resources, but not Quiz, which still has the pre-5.0 page. The page is available to teachers and students. The information given for Assignments includes Assignment name, location of assignment within the course (section name), due date, number of submissions received, and quick actions/grading. There is no sort functionality although it’s been proposed. Entries are sorted in the order that they’re on the course page except all subsections fall after all sections. Moodle HQ has additional development planned for future releases.

Table listing an assignment with its due date, number of submissions, and a grading action.
Activities overview showing a teacher’s view of an assignment

TinyMCE drag-and-drop

Media can now be dragged-and-dropped into the TinyMCE editor. Depending on the size of the original image, you may need to resize the dimensions so that the image fits the size you’re looking to obtain. You can resize the image by clicking on the picture icon in the TinyMCE toolbar. The measurement is in pixels. You are not prompted to add alternative text but you can go back and add it later. It appears in some cases to pull alternative text from the image metadata but this behavior wasn’t consistent.

AI subsystem

The AI subsystem was introduced in Moodle 4.5, and we reviewed it at the Winter 2025 Hack/Doc Fest at Lafayette. A new feature is an “explain” button in addition to “summarize” on pages. The prompts that are sent along with text are different between explain and summary. Those are configured inside the Action Settings of a provider instance.

Both summarize and explain contain the instructions by default:

“Important Instructions:

    1. Return the summary in plain text only.
    2. Do not include any markdown formatting, greetings, or platitudes.
    3. Focus on clarity, conciseness, and accessibility.”

Explain has instructions along the lines of Elaborate, Simplify, Provide Context and Organize logically. Summarize is more concise; it includes “Condense and Simplify”.

You can also configure multiple providers, setting up the future possibility of using different providers for different tasks. Configurable options include rate limits and the model to use (gpt-4o is the current default). You can also use an OpenAI compatible API such as a locally-hosted Ollama instance.

SMS notifications

Moodle now supports SMS notifications as part of the Messaging system. This is a pluggable interface; core ships support for AWS SNS and Modica, while Twilio is available as a plugin. CLAMP doesn’t possess a suitable phone number so we only evaluated the configuration side. In General > Messaging > Notification settings, you can enable SMS. You can then scroll down to unlock SMS for assignment notifications only; that’s all that’s supported in this release. If you leave them off by default, users can choose to enable them.

We did find an interesting bug. If you have enabled SMS in Messaging but disabled all available gateways, various parts of the Moodle Messaging system don’t work properly.

Other issues

TinyMCE keyboard conflicts

When using TinyMCE as the editor and also typing in Hebrew on a Mac, a specific keystroke triggers the TinyMCE Help menu and does NOT type the intended character. The specific keystroke is alt-0 and in Hebrew it should appear as a small diacritic below the typed character. An aleph character without the diacritic looks like this: ש but with the diacritic, it looks like this: שְ. This is actually a bug in the upstream TinyMCE project and not specific to Moodle, but we’ve reported it in both places.

Forum attachment accessibility

Moodle allows you to upload images to the forum activity as attachments, instead of inserting them inline in the TinyMCE editor. When images are added in this way, they are displayed at the bottom of the post. However, there is no option for adding alternative text to images added in this way. We’ve reported this to the tracker, and we recommend for now that users not upload images (as opposed to other types of documents) to the forum as attachments.

Upload interface for forum attachments; there is no option to describe the image
Uploading a file as an attachment to a forum post

Disable Safe Exam Browser

There was interest in hiding the safe exam browser functionality from teachers. This can be accomplished by modifying the teacher role and setting the following capabilities to Prevent:

  • quizaccess/seb:bypassseb: Bypass the requirement to view quiz in Safe Exam Browser
  • quizaccess/seb:manage_seb:allowedbrowserexamkeys: Change SEB quiz setting: Allowed browser exam keys
  • quizaccess/seb:manage_seb:allowreloadinexam: Change SEB quiz setting: Allow reload
  • quizaccess/seb:manage_seb:requiresafeexambrowser: Change SEB quiz setting: Require Safe Exam Browser

Overrides don’t appear properly at times

At times users don’t see the correct overridden dates on the timeline and/or calendar (in various places). This appears to be the case primarily if a user is a student in one course and a teacher in another. See links below for related tracker issues.

All tracker items

Please see below for a list of all tracker items that we collected during the Hack/Doc Fest. Please be aware that Moodle migrated to JIRA cloud hosting the weekend after the conference and some users have reported challenges logging in since then.

Hack/Doc at Swarthmore: Day 3

People sitting around tables
Hack/Docers hard at work in the CLAMP Executive Lounge. Photo credit: Charles Fulton

The last day of Hack/Doc, as usual, was a bit shorter due to attendee travel plans. We wrapped up around lunchtime after some discussions about Moodle 3.8 and accessibility.

Forum grading accessibility

We logged a third and final issue with the new forum grading tool and accessibility: MDL-67663. Again, some of these issues are specific to the tool, which some are broader problems with Moodle itself. We’ll continue to monitor the situation. A major related issue is MDL-64494, where Moodle core is tracking project-wide color contrast issues.

Filescan block

We discussed the future of Swarthmore’s “filescan block“, which evaluates the accessibility of PDFs uploaded to Moodle. Several schools, including Hampshire and Lafayette, have been using the block on their Moodle instances. CLAMP is going to organize a workshop this winter for interested schools to come together to develop a roadmap and implement changes, which an eye toward publishing the plugin on the Moodle plugins repository and incorporating it into the Liberal Arts Edition.

Roster

We have released a new version of the Roster report; you may now configure which fields are displayed for each student, including custom profile fields. This release is available on the Moodle plugins repository and will be incorporated into the next release of the LAE.

And that’s a wrap for this winter’s Hack/Doc at Swarthmore College. Warm thanks to Andrew Reuther and Swarthmore for their outstanding hospitality this week. If your institution is interested in hosting a future CLAMP event, please consider filling out our host interest form.

Hack/Doc Fest Winter 2020 at Swarthmore College: Event page | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Hack/Doc at Swarthmore: Day 2

Buildings beneath a blue skyline
View from the top of Singer Hall. Photo credit: Charles Fulton

Work on the task list continued during Day 2 of the Moodle Hack/Doc Fest at Swarthmore College, interrupted only by an expedition to the Solar Lab on the roof of Singer Hall, which provided a commanding view of Swarthmore’s campus and Greater Philadelphia.

From the task list

We continued to work on yesterday’s tasks and added a few new ones:

LTI integrations: Perusall

Perusall is a social annotation platform. Launching from the LTI module in Moodle will place one into a workflow to create their Perusall account on the fly. It’s important to set the launch container to Existing Window or New Window or it won’t work. The default launch container can be edited for the LTI module in the site admin. Student Perusall accounts are created as students use the tool. The tool also automatically creates an entry for the student in the gradebook with a grade of 100. The service is free for those using their own texts (e.g., PDFs or OERs), but texts available through Perusall require payment as does the ability to brand it for one’s institution.

LTI integrations: Google Assignment

Google Assignments allows you to create and share coursework within the LMS using Google Drive. It wasn’t clear if enrollments/permissions are managed dynamically. When creating from LTI, the grades appear in the Moodle gradebook automatically. The question bank is pretty good; other nice features include a plagiarism tool, the ability to grade all and then submit all at once, rubrics, and the ability to convert Word documents and PDFs to Google Docs while preserving the original. One caveat is that Google Assignments created through the LTI will not show up when going to https://assignments.google.com, and vice-versa.

Moodle Mobile app

Following on from yesterday’s equivocal evaluation of the Moodle Mobile app; it’s best to think of the app as a consumption tool and not a creation/editing tool. It’s certainly student-centric while allowing instructors the ability to grade some items. There is no wholesale gradebook access for instructors, but there is for students in the menu item that looks like an analytics logo. It’s important to manage expectations if your institution decides to roll it out.

Moodle 3.8 review

Michael Harris from Bryn Mawr College encountered a problem that, as far as anyone can remember, is unique in the 10+ years of Moodle Hack/Doc Fest: Moodle’s JIRA tracker has a built-in limit which prevents you from reporting more than one new issue per hour! Michael had been meticulously documenting accessibility problems with the new forum grading feature. Two have been reported so far (MDL-67652 and MDL-67655), with more on the way.

The Course Overview block now supports filtering based on, among other fields, custom course fields. For example, you could create a custom course field named “department”, and then allow teachers to filter based on the department in their dashboard.

Course Merger Helper

Courses created with the Course Merge Helper were not receiving all the default course settings unless the school was using the local course template plugin. Examples of incorrect behavior included no sections in the new course, or the gradebook enabled when it should be suppressed. We’ve squashed this bug and released a new version of the plugin.

Hack/Doc Fest Winter 2020 at Swarthmore College: Event page | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Hack/Doc at Swarthmore: Day 1

Wayfinding signage on a glass door
Wayfinding for Hack/Doc and the CLAC HPC Mindshare. Photo credit: Charles Fulton

The biannual Hack/Doc Fest is being held at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. The event kicked off on Wednesday, January 8, 2020, and runs through Friday, January 8. The following tasks are queued up for Hack/Doc (very much subject to change):

  • Evaluating Moodle 3.8, which was released last November
  • Improving the Roster report to support pronouns
  • Taking a fresh look at the Moodle Mobile app
  • Improvements to the file accessibility block

This year the Hack/Doc Fest overlaps, physically and otherwise, with CLAC’s high-performance computing (HPC) mindshare, taking place on the lower level of Singer Hall. Rumors of superior lemonade at the CLAC craft table may–or may not–have led to direct action around lunchtime.

From the task list

Moodle 3.8 Liberal Arts Edition release

The first Moodle 3.8 LAE release is ready for testing. Moodle core continued its revamp of the forum module, which began with Moodle 3.7. Fortunately, this required far fewer changes to Anonymous Forums this time around!

Moodle 3.8 review

One new feature in Moodle 3.8 is the ability to grade forum posts. Evaluating this feature produced Hack/Doc’s first bug, a browser conflict in Safari. That issue aside, and presumably it’ll be fixed soon, the feature is a significant improvement over the old workflow. It presents a user-by-user view of forum posts and presents the teacher the ability to give that user a grade for the forum, based on their contributions. It’s very similar to the assignment grading view. The forum also supports a nested view of the discussions now. This appears to work as expected showing primary forum posts with the nested post, open and visible below. The threaded view shows the reply post below the original but it is closed and only viewable by clicking to open it. This worked in the Mobile app as well.

Moodle has also taken the first steps toward core support of H5P. H5P is an interactive, web-based content authoring tool, and a perennial subject at Hack/Doc Fest (Brandeis, Hampshire, Lafayette). At this point, the core support complements the existing H5P activity plugin, rather than replacing it outright. The new core functionality allows you to add H5P content to Moodle as you would a page or a label, but you can’t yet use it to author content within Moodle. It also adds an Atto button for easier embedding. For now, if you’re already using the H5P plugin, you’ll want to keep doing so.

Moodle Mobile app

No one’s quite sure when CLAMP first kicked the tires on Moodle’s Mobile app (there have been several), but it may have been at the Winter 2012 Hack/Doc at Tulane, where we described it as “lackluster.” We’ve looked at it off and on since, and a number of CLAMP schools now have it enabled and report few support issues. This time around we noted a few positives and challenges:

  • There are some accessibility challenges related to color contrast. It may be possible to mitigate these with a custom CSS file.
  • The default behavior is still to sync changes on Wi-Fi only, but it’s possible for the user to change this behavior.
  • Assignment submissions worked well.
  • Login with institutional single sign-on is smooth and the login persists.
  • Push notifications have to be configured server-side and there’s a lot to review there.

The consensus in the room was that there was no downside to turning on support for the app, though no one planned to make a big push to encourage adoption.

Roster report

We discussed ways to make the Roster report more flexible, and Sharon Strauss from Haverford raised the possibility of giving it a capability similar to Name Coach, which allows students to record the pronunciation of their names. One option would be to have a custom field with the attached audio, which could then be exposed via the report.

Hack/Doc Fest Winter 2020 at Swarthmore College: Event page | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3

Pre-exam question forum

Professor Jennifer Talarico, Lafayette College
Course: Cognitive Psychology

An ongoing pre-exam question forum was maintained where students were encouraged to post questions they had while preparing for an exam. I would answer questions posted prior to 10 p.m. the night before an exam. Anything posted after 10 p.m. would be answered after the exam.

They would ask questions and I could respond as the instructor such that maybe another student didn’t even realize they had that question or were confused about a particular topic. They got in a habit of checking this, and they would post here rather than emailing me. I found this easy, and it kept everything contained and saved me from answering the same or similar questions multiple times.

Another thing that’s really nice is that when I teach this course again next year, and I know the types of things that are easily confused and maybe I can rephrase or reframe them in lecture. I can maintain these forums over time and create a shorthand FAQ that students in future classes can benefit from.

Pre-exam question forum
Pre-exam question forum