Moodle 3.5 is available for download from today, so as usual we’ve taken a look at the most exciting features and improvements in the new release. If you’d like a more in depth look at the latest version of Moodle, feel free to contact us for a quick online demonstration.
GDPR compliance
With the deadline looming for organisations to be fully compliant with the EU’s new legislation, it’s good to see a number of related improvements in Moodle 3.5 (also available as plugins for Moodle 3.3.6 and 3.4.3)
Moodle administrators can visit the new “Privacy and Policies” area under the Users tab to find these new options:
- Privacy settings – allowing administrators to request an age check for new users, and offer them a direct link to contact the Data Protection Officer for queries.
- Policy settings – allowing administrators to specify and manage their site and privacy policies and configure how users give their agreement to these.
- Additional functionality – handling of data requests, defining and maintaining a data registry and managing data to be deleted.
Aesthetic improvements
Moodle 3.5 now has Bootstrap 4 stable as standard, allowing for much more attractive and accessible course overviews.
Key features include:
- New icons for course links
- Adding images to enrolled courses.
- Auto-replacing missing images with patterns.
- New fonts available.
Also, in this version each cohort can be assigned its own specific theme. This is activated in the Theme settings page and defined in the Cohort area of Site Administration.
Direct multimedia recording
Audio and video content can now be recorded and embedded into learning materials quickly and easily using the Atto editor.
Global search
Moodle 3.5 no longer requires administrators to install an external search engine – the built in global search can now provide search results from the entire Moodle site. Administrators can activate simple search and index the Moodle site in the Advanced Features section.
New badge criteria
New badge options in Moodle 3.5:
- Allows uploading of profile pictures.
- Badges can be used as criteria for other badges.
- Membership of a cohort can be used as criteria for badges.
Of course, these highlights are just the tip of the iceberg – there’s a long list of further tweaks, patches and updates also included in Moodle 3.5.
The full list can be found in the release notes over at the Moodle site.
We’ll be testing the new version over the coming weeks and will be in touch with each of our clients to discuss individual upgrade schedules. If you have any questions about Moodle in the meantime, please feel free to get in touch with us or book an online demo:
