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Moodle 1.8 Introduction Over the Summer of 2007, Moodle was upgraded from Moodle 1.6 to Moodle 1.8 and some new hardware installed. With this upgrade were a number of changes and improvements.
Below is a list of the some of the changes to Moodle which will be discussed in more detail on successive pages.
1. Roles Improvements - Roles are the different categories of users: administrator, teacher, non-editing teacher, students, guest, etc. In the newest version of Moodle, there is more flexibility in defining what each of the different categories of users can do. This has allowed for increased security for our Moodle sites, especially in regard to guest access.
2. Module Improvements - A number of modules have been updated since Moodle 1.6.
- Improvements to the Database module
- Template/Field settings can now be saved as Presets and shared across a site.
- Presets are just zip files, and can also be shared between sites.
- Moodle 1.7 comes with one sample preset (an Image Gallery) with more to come.
- New latitude/longitude data type
- Improvements to the Lesson module
- Now has a more unified view of lesson screens.
- Teacher editing:
- Collapsed view has a nicer format, displays more information regarding each page and allows the creation of new pages.
- Editing is now speedier by replacing 3 second redirect delays with a notification system.
- New feature: display default feedback.
- Default is On so previous lessons behave as before.
- Description: if no response is entered for a question answer and this setting is turned Off, then the user skips the feedback page.
- Graceful degrade of JavaScript.
- Several bug fixes.
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- The teacher can configure comments that are displayed to the student at the end of their attempt, with the comment displayed depending on the student's score.
- Improvements to some core question types
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- All question types can now have some general feedback. This is displayed to all students after they have finished the question (depending on the quiz settings) and does not depend on what response the student gave. Use this to tell the student what the question was about, or link them to more information about the topic it covers.
- Matching questions can have extra wrong answers, and work when two questions have the same answer.
- Multiple Choice questions can have feedback for the whole question, as well as specific answers. This is particularly useful for multiple-response questions.
- Numerical questions can have different answers with different precisions and scores. (Previously this was only supported via GIFT import. Now you can edit questions like this.)
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- While editing a wiki page it is now locked so that others cannot try to change it at the same time. Teachers can override the lock.
- Minor bugfixes (mostly to fix problems that occurred when using Postgres database).
- 3. District Modifications - In addition to the changes to the Moodle version, there have been some district modifications to Moodle in order to make it run smoother and faster with more utility.
- Teacher Login - Moodle is now connected to DWA for teacher login. Teachers will now log on to Moodle with their district ID number and their DWA password (i.e the same login and password you use for email, Zangle, and PeopleSoft). The following is an example:
- Username = 123456
- Password = DWA Password
- Digital Storage - Students and teachers now have 100 megabytes of digital storage with Moodle. To enable the digital locker in your Moodle course, please follow the tutorial at this link: http://moodle.sandi.net/mod/book/view.php?id=23069
- Added additional servers to accommodate a growing number of users.
 
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