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Moodle Minor Versions released – Check out the details!

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle Minor Versions released - Check out the details!
Moodle Minor Versions released - Check out the details!

Moodle LMS Minor versions for December 2023 are released now. The new versions include the General fixes, improvements and security fixes with no new feature addition as usual. The new Minor version releases allows the schools/universities to plan their Moodle upgrade during the Winter Holidays.

The new minor Moodle LMS versions are released for all supported versions including:

Here is a brief table showing the support period for different Moodle versions:

Version Release status Initial release date General support ends Security support ends
4.1 (LTS) Current security 28 November 2022 11 December 2023 8 December 2025
4.2 Current stable 24 April 2023 22 April 2024 7 October 2024
4.3 Current stable 9 October 2023 7 October 2024 21 April 2025
4.4 Future release 22 April 2024 21 April 2025 9 December 2025

 

Which Moodle Version you are using for your elearning portal? In case you need any help to Upgrade, please feel free to let us know in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

VR-Based Health EdTech Startup Virtuleap Raises $2.7M

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
VR-Based Health EdTech Startup Virtuleap Raises $2.7M
VR-Based Health EdTech Startup Virtuleap Raises $2.7M

Virtuleap, a health tech and educational technology startup that developed a library of virtual reality games to assess and train a variety of cognitive skills, including memory, has raised $2.7 million (€2.5 million) in a funding round led by GED Ventures Portugal, a global financial group with offices in Europe, the United States, and South America.

With the help of emerging technologies such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence, Virtuleap aims to elevate the cognitive assessment and training industry. The platform prioritizes scientific design in its games and technology to unlock the potential mental impact made possible by the most recent research in neuroscience and behavioural science. Its multidisciplinary team includes developers and designers who collaborate with auditory scientists, cognitive scientists, and neuroscientists to develop high-quality brain training applications in the form of enjoyable gaming experiences.

Speaking on the fundraising, Baby Star. Marquez, Partner and Board Member of GED Ventures Portugal said in the statement:

This investment in VituLeap reflects the strategy adopted to invest in technology directly impacting people’s mental health, providing a better quality of life. At this meeting between technology and well-being, we are building a new future in mental health that is accessible to everyone.

This investment, according to Amir Bozourzadeh, CEO and co-founder of Virtuleap, “will allow Virtuleap to accelerate the R&D and commercialization of its cognitive VR solutions that will help, in schools, businesses and homes, among others, to combat this ‘cognitive crisis’.

The startup is working on a second product, Cogniclear VR, which it hopes to release in 2024. It is a virtual reality-based cognitive screening tool jointly designed with partners such as Lusíadas Saúde and Roche Portugal in early 2020. Detect a potential cognitive disorder (e.g. Alzheimer’s disease) to allow early intervention and promote better health outcomes.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Kota-Based Allen Career Institute Acquires Problem-Solving Platform Doubtnut

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Kota-Based Allen Career Institute Acquires Problem-Solving Platform Doubtnut
Kota-Based Allen Career Institute Acquires Problem-Solving Platform Doubtnut

Allen Career Institute, a Kota-based test prep startup, has announced the acquisition of Doubtnut, an AI-powered doubt-solving platform, to develop technology-led learning solutions to improve students’ learning outcomes. According to the official statement, after the acquisition, Doubtnut’s team will continue focusing on building doubt resolution experience for students of Allen and Doubtnut.

Doubtnut, founded in 2017 by IIT-Delhi alumni Tanushree Nagori and Aditya Shankar, is a multilingual online learning platform that uses technologies such as image recognition, natural language processing, and proprietary AI/ML algorithms. It provides video-based solutions to students’ queries and has a monthly reach of 32 million students across digital apps, websites and YouTube channels.

Speaking on the deal, CEO of Allen Career Institute, Nitin Kukreja, said:

Timely and effective resolution of doubts is a core consumer need in education. Doubtnut’s platform will allow us to enhance the learning experience for our students greatly. We are also excited by the prospect of offering Allen’s high-quality academic products to a broader audience.

As per the statement, Allen will bring its curriculum and academic offerings to Doubtnut’s student base and cater to their needs. Co-founder of Doubtnut, Aditya Shankar, stated:

Doubtnut’s mission is to bring education to every student across India using technology and high-quality content. We resonate with Allen’s vision of creating technology products to improve learning outcomes.

Established in 1988, ALLEN has consolidated its position as a significant coaching institute in the country—particularly for entrance exams in medicine and engineering—with over 200 classroom centres in 53 cities in India, coaching over 2.8 million students. ALLEN Digital, the company’s digital arm, has launched interactive learning websites and mobile apps for undergraduate and postgraduate courses. It has also made several key C-suite hires in the last year to ensure it has the requisite leadership to spearhead its digital business.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle Users Association – Check out the Top Voted project for July-Dec Project Cycle

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle Users Association - Check out the Top Voted project for July-Dec Project Cycle
Moodle Users Association - Check out the Top Voted project for July-Dec Project Cycle

Moodle Users Association – the community arm of the Moodle LMS has finalized the top voted project for July-December 2023 Project Development Cycle. The Moodle Users Association (MUA) will soon announce about the same and its inclusion in Moodle LMS.

The MUA is the community arm of Moodle LMS which allows the members to participate in Project Development Cycles where they can propose new projects and vote for their favorite projects. However, it will be soon replaced with new Moodle LMS PAG group, see last announcement here.

In the July-December 2023 Project Development Cycle, the MUA members voted for their favorite projects. Here are the projects and the number of votes which they have received:

  1. Allow session stores to fully manage the session ==> never touch mdl_sessions table! – 60670
  2. Allow Activity Completion Settings for Topics/Weeks – 19350
  3. Improve availability of activities and resources overview pages in Boost theme – 18080

So, accordingly the Project Allow Session stores to fully manage the session will be implemented and included in Moodle core.

The project proposes to Move any functionality that touches the session table into new methods in the handler.php abstract class & improve the performance of the session/database.php

Check out the full project details here.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle Administrators – How to Allow Students to Annotate Directly on PDF documents?

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle Administrators - How to Allow Students to Annotate Directly on PDF documents?
Moodle Administrators - How to Allow Students to Annotate Directly on PDF documents?

Moodle is the world’s most popular open source Learning Management System with more than 400 million users in the world. The collection of more than 2100 official free Moodle plugins help the administrators extend Moodle’s functionality to meet their learning requirements.

In the modern online learning environments, there is a requirement of online annotation on the documents which can be later submitted as assignments, homework etc. Luckily the Moodle Plugin PDF Annotation plugins allows you to add PDF files in your course for students to annotate.

The PDF Annotation plugin allows students to insert questions, comments and remarks on learning materials in PDF format directly into the document. All students & teachers can read and answer the questions and comments asked which made it easier to clarify students questions.

The Teacher Overview provides an overview of various elements of the PDF annotator. You will receive a presentation of the reported comments, new questions will be made directly accessible here and can be accessed via the link on the right-hand side, you can continue to view your contributions to comments of the students in this presentation and additionally administer entries.

You can download the PDF Annotation Moodle plugin from the official plugins repository here. However, kindly note that the plugin works with Atto text editor which is planned to be deprecated from Moodle soon and will be replaced with TinyMCE Editor.

Also note that the PDF Annotation plugin works only till Moodle 4.1 version during our testing and it was not working with Moodle 4.3 – the latest Moodle version.

What are the other useful Moodle Plugins you are using on your Moodle site? Please share with us in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle Administrators – Set Automatic Quiz Archives for Compliance

By
Jaswinder Singh
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Moodle Administrators - Set Automatic Quiz Archives for Compliance
Moodle Administrators - Set Automatic Quiz Archives for Compliance

Moodle is world’s most popular open source learning management system in the world with more than 400 million users around the globe. The vast collection of official Moodle Plugins allows the Moodle Site Administrators to extend the functionality to meet their learning goals. In this post we will see Quiz Archiver Moodle Plugin and how you can use it.

The Quiz Archiver Moodle Plugin provides option to archive quiz attempts as PDF and HTML files. It can include all elements of the test like GeoGebra applets, MathJAX formulas, STACK plots etc.

As an Admin you might be worried about the additional load which this backup process might be adding on the server resources. However, Quiz archives are created by an external quiz archive worker service to remove load from Moodle and to eliminate the need to install a large number of software dependencies on the webserver.

According to the plugin author, the major key features of the Quiz Archiver plugin are:

  • Archiving of quiz attempts as PDF and HTML files
  • Support for file submissions / attachments (e.g., essay files)
  • Quiz attempt reports are accessible completely independent of Moodle, hereby ensuring long-term readability
  • Customization of generated PDF and HTML reports
    • Allows creation of reduced reports, e.g., without example solutions, for handing out to students during inspection
  • Support for complex content and question types, including Drag and Drop, MathJax formulas, STACK plots, and other question / content types that require JavaScript processing
  • Quiz attempt reports are fully text-searchable, including mathematical formulas
  • Moodle backups (.mbz) of both the quiz and the whole course are supported
  • Generation of checksums for every file within the archive and the archive itself
  • Cryptographic signing of archives and their creation date using the Time-Stamp Protocol (TSP)
  • Integration as Moodle quiz report
  • Support for custom quiz archive permissions / capabilities
  • Fully asynchronous archive creation to reduce load on Moodle Server
  • Data compression and vector based MathJax formulas to preserve disk space
  • Technical separation of Moodle and archive worker service
  • Data-minimising and security driven design

You can download the Quiz Archiver plugin from the official Moodle plugins repository here. Once installed, you can use the plugin from Quiz Administration > Results > Quiz Archiver. Select the desired options and start the archive job by clicking the Archive Quiz button.

What are the other useful Moodle Plugins you are using on your elearning portal? Please share with us in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Add content from templates directly in Moodle HTML Editor using Snippet for TinyMCE plugin

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Add content from templates directly in Moodle HTML Editor using Snippet for TinyMCE plugin
Add content from templates directly in Moodle HTML Editor using Snippet for TinyMCE plugin

Moodle – as the name suggests is a Modular Learning Management System (LMS) which allows you to extend the functionality using Plugins. With a good collection of more than 2150+ plugins, you can find out a plugin for all general use case requirements. In this post we will discuss about the Snippet for TinyMCE plugin and how you can use it to ease out the content creation.

The Snippet for TinyMCE is essentially a template tool which can be used to add text, layouts, buttons and other content from templates directly into Moodle HTML areas. For Example, you might have a piece of text which needs to be added to all learning content created in Moodle. This can be something like Contact Details, Upcoming Event Details etc.

With this Snippet for TinyMCE plugin you can create the content as a Template which can be later used by the content creators/teachers in their courses. The variables can be configured by the teachers when using in the HTML Editor.

The best part of this plugin is that it doesnt have any filter plugin companion as it returns html directly to the text area. This is useful when the content doesn’t need javascript, and has the benefit that the content is instantly visible and editable in the text area.

You can download the Snippet for TinyMCE plugin from the official Moodle Plugins repository here.

What are the other useful Moodle plugins you are using on your learning portal? Please share with us in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle users Association – Don’t forget to cast your votes before December 5

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle users Association - Don't forget to cast your votes before December 5
Moodle users Association - Don't forget to cast your votes before December 5

Moodle Users Association is the community arm of the Moodle LMS. It allows the participating members, institutes to propose & vote for their favorite projects. However, the MUA will be soon replaced by the Moodle LMS PAG (Public Advisory Group). But till then the MUA will continue its functioning.

The current project development cycle of Moodle Users Association : July – December 2023 is currently in Final Voting stage. The final voting round will be open till December 5 2023.

After the preliminary round of voting, the MUA committee members finalize the project requirements and discussed the financial implications. Based on the feedback, the team has opened up the final voting cycle.

The projects which made it to the final voting round include:

  • Improve availability of activities and resources overview pages in Boost theme
  • Allow session stores to fully manage the session (eg never touch mdl_sessions)
  • Allow Activity Completion Settings for Topics/Weeks

If you are a MUA member then you need to vote for your favorite projects as the Preliminary round votes have been reset. You can also change your votes till deadline of December 5.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Sales Training Bootcamp EarlyWork Raises $1.5M in Seed Round Funding

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Sales Training Bootcamp EarlyWork Raises $1.5M in Seed Round Funding
Sales Training Bootcamp EarlyWork Raises $1.5M in Seed Round Funding

EarlyWork, a sales training startup, has recently raised $1.5 million in a seed round led by Ari and Lucy Klinger’s family fund, No Brand, with support from Jelix Ventures. Dan Brockwell, Jono Herman, and Marina Wu cofounded Earlywork as a careers newsletter in early 2021.

That concept inspired Australia’s first tech bootcamp, Earlywork Academy, which includes a job guarantee in tech sales. Focusing on industry needs, the company collaborates with sales leaders to design a curriculum that produces talent that meets the company’s skill requirements.

Earlywork Academy provides one-on-one job search coaching, in-demand tech sales skills, and direct introductions to top tech companies that are hiring. Its three-week cohort-based programme consists of eight 2-hour live virtual sessions that blend theory and practice. A full-day live sales apprenticeship can also take place.

Speaking about the company, Co-founder of Earlywork Dan Brockwell said:

As tech companies shift their strategy from growth to profitability, quality sales talent is more important than ever. Universities still need to train sales skills, so employers have had to bear the training burden. We want to build a better business school for the tech industry globally.

Brockwell further added:

We’re building an education model that starts with what employers need and works backwards. Earlywork designs and delivers our curriculum alongside sales leaders to train talent with the skills companies need.

While the federal government and the Tech Council of Australia aim to create more than 300,000 new tech jobs by 2030, Earlywork’s focus on training and employment for entry-level tech workers has drawn people from diverse backgrounds.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

Moodle Teachers – Use Signup Sheets to let students sign up for course events

By
Jaswinder Singh
-
Moodle Teachers - Use Signup Sheets to let students sign up for course events
Moodle Teachers - Use Signup Sheets to let students sign up for course events

Moodle LMS allows you to create personalized learning portal for all industries. You can extend the Moodle functionality using free plugins from the official Moodle Plugins collection. Moodle Plugins allows you to extend the functionality of Moodle LMS for all areas such as theme, blocks, enrollment, authentication etc.

Many times Moodle teachers need to allow students to express their interest for any future events. You can think of conducting an exercise for students to register for upcoming field visits. In this post, we will see how you can create a signup sheet in Moodle LMS.

The Signup Sheets Moodle plugin – developed by University of Nottingham, allow instructors of a course to create slots that the students can sign themselves up to. As a Moodle teacher, you can a signup sheet in your course for many different purposes like – Create a session for Revision, Create a session for extra support, schedule interview etc.

You can download the Signup Sheets from official Moodle plugins repository here. Once installed you can use it in your Moodle course like a regular Activity. Here are some exciting features of Signup Sheets plugin:

  • It has a free form design so you can use it for anything.
  • It solves the problem of limited access, as staff and students can access it whenever, wherever
  • One can print out lists in name order or signup order
  • You can email the group should you need to change the time etc.
  • Students sign up themselves, but staff can delete or add students afterwards.
  • You can lock the bookings so no further changes can be made
  • Bookings can be visible to all or private to the student booking it, e.g., for remedial sessions.

What are the other useful plugins which you are using on your Moodle site? Please share with us in the comments section below.

For regular updates about Moodle, eLearning and edtech industry, please visit us regularly at https://lmsdaily.com. You can also like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter, or Subscribe our YouTube Channel.

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