Moodle 4.3 version is released today which is the last major Moodle version of this year. With the new Major Moodle version the Early Bird badge is up for grab for all the plugin developers. As usual the Early Bird badge for Moodle 4.3 is announced and it will be given to Moodle plugins.
The Early Bird 4.3 badge will be given to the Moodle plugins who have a tested working 4.3 compatible version available on Monday 23 October 2023.
The Early bird badge is given to the Moodle plugin developers who gets a compatible plugin version close to the Major Moodle release. The Badge gives a boost to the plugin usage as it shows the active maintenance of the plugin by the developer.
The Plugin developers are expected to:
Test plugins intensively against Moodle 4.3
Fix all eventually raised warnings, notices, regressions and problems.
Release a new compatible version
Which Moodle plugins you are using on your Moodle site? When you are upgrading your Moodle site to Moodle 4.3 version? Please share with us in the comments section below.
Join MoodleMoot Nederland en Vlaanderen 2024 on 31 January 2024
The 16th edition of the MoodleMoot Nederland en Vlaanderen will take place on 31 January 2024 in Dordrecht, The Netherlands. The edtech event is one of the oldest MoodleMoot event which allows the Moodlers in the region to connect and network with each other.
The MoodleMoot Nederland en Vlaanderen 2024 is organized by the Avetica – the Moodle Partner in the Netherlands and Belgium region. The event will be a perfect opportunity for teachers, trainers, managers, functional administrators and developers to share knowledge and experiences about Moodle LMS.
The edtech conference will be held in the Van der Valk hotel in Dordrecht. The conference program is still under preparation. You can register your seats for the MoodleMoot Nederland en Vlaanderen 2024. The costs per participant are €219, including lunch.
The early bird discounted pricing is available till 1st December 2023 which will cost you €189. However, the registrations will also start soon for the event.
For more details, please check out the official website of MoodleMoot Nederland en Vlaanderen 2024 here.
Moodle Admins - Moodle 4.3 & other minor versions released today!
Moodle LMS 4.3 version has been released today along with other minor versions of the supported versions. The Moodle 4.3 version is the last Major version to be released for this year.
The Moodle 4.3 version is packed with a lot of exciting new features along with other fixes and improvements. You can download the Moodle 4.3 version from the official Moodle Download page or through the GitHub repository.
Along with Moodle 4.3 version, there are others minor versions also released. Here are the details:
Here is a glimpse of the new features included in Moodle 4.3 version:
Sleeker Activity Cards – Activity cards are now more intuitive, allowing seamless management of groups, restrictions, and activity completion conditions directly from the course screen.
Default site-level settings for activity completion – Administrators and educators can now set default activity completion conditions at the site level. This improvement results in reduced management effort, increase accuracy, and speedy activity creation for instructors.
More reports directly within Moodle – The added flexibility allows for creating more in-depth reports directly within Moodle, reducing the need for external tools.
Upgraded TinyMCE editor for improved content creation – Moodle LMS 4.3 enhances the TinyMCE text editor with a user-friendly interface, improvements to the HTML editor with code colouring in the markup, and support for TinyMCE premium plugins.
Enhanced grading experience – Improvements have been made to the searching across multiple grade reports to align their behaviours and significantly improve their performance on large courses. The Gradebook setup page has had significant enhancements including the addition of a sticky footer for common actions.
Enhanced Messaging – The new integration with matrix messaging system allows a contemporary messaging interface directly in the heart of Moodle courses.
When you are upgrading your Moodle site to Moodle 4.3 version? If you need any help while upgrading, please share with us in the comments section below.
India’s First Internship Platform for Teenagers YouVah Raises $210K in Pre-Seed Round
YouVah, India’s pioneering internship platform tailored for teenagers, has raised $210,000 in its pre-seed funding round co-led by CIIE.CO IIM Ahmedabad and the co-founders of American Chase. The Indore-based startup intends to use the funds to launch new programmes and execute growth experiments, with the platform offering vocational training, mentorship, and courses in various fields.
Co-founded by the visionary trio of Chetan Jachpure, Raghav Parsai, and Rohit Jain, YouVah is committed to shaping the future of India by preparing today’s youth for tomorrow’s challenges. The company aims to empower teenagers by offering them hands-on practical experience, guidance, and opportunities to build their first career resumes. It enables users to enrol in and complete training, access internships, get trained through vocational training and mentorship, and access courses for content writing, social media editing, video editing and other areas.
Speaking about the platform, Co-founder & CEO of YouVah said:
In the past six months, we’ve garnered over 1 lakh monthly visitors and 50,000+ registered users. This funding will enable us to launch new programs and conduct experiments to accelerate our growth.
YouVah claims to have already partnered with 80+ schools, including CBSE, ICSE, and IB curriculum. It has placed 2000+ teenagers as interns in the country’s top-level corporate firms and companies, a testament to its pioneering position in this domain. Adding further about the platform, Rohit Jain, Co-founder & CMO of YouVah, said:
With the National Educational Policy encouraging internships, schools are embracing this culture more than ever. This positions YouVah to launch more programs and benefit teenagers nationwide. YouVah redefines education in the developing world by providing teenagers with authentic internship opportunities, skill learning courses, training, and connections with India’s leading firms and top business ventures, all from the comfort of their homes.
Aligning with the vision of the National Education Policy, YouVah recognizes the importance of practical learning and aims to nurture young minds with a diverse set of skills and industry-specific knowledge.
Moodle Teachers - Design, issue and verify digital certificates using Workplace Course Certificate plugin
Digital certificates play a crucial role in online education by providing a means to verify and recognize the achievements and skills of students and learners in the digital realm. In online education, digital certificates serve as electronic credentials that authenticate the successful completion of courses, programs, or specific learning objectives.
There are few good tools in Moodle LMS to recognize the achievements of students which includes Certificates & Badges etc. To issue course completion certificate in Moodle, you can use the Custom Certificate plugin which remains one of the most popular Moodle plugins. In addition, there is a plugin named as Workplace Course Certificate which is contributed by Moodle Workplace team.
The Workplace Course Certificate plugin allows you to design, issue and verify the course completion certificates easily. The functionality is comparatively similar to the Custom Certificate plugin which includes creation of Certificate templates, custom fields etc.
You can download the Workplace Course Certificate Moodle plugin from the official plugins repository here. It also needs the Certificate Manager plugin (which is also contributed by Moodle Workplace team) as it provides the UI & API for designing the certificate templates.
The Workplace Course Certificate plugin allows you to choose from different certificate templates which will automatically display user data such as full name, course, etc. Users will be able to download a PDF copy of the certificate themselves by accessing this activity, and there are options to send a PDF copy to them by email automatically.
What are the other ways you are using to celebrate the success of your students in Moodle LMS? Please share with us in the comments section below.
Moodle adds MathType by Wiris as Moodle Certified Integration
MathType – developed by Wiris, has been added as the official Moodle Certified Integration. MathType is a leading formula & equation editor which is available for Moodle as an official plugin. Wiris has actively maintained this integration to ensure that all learners have the best experience when dealing with STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) content.
In a recent announcement, Moodle HQ announced the integration of MathType as Moodle Certified Integration. MathType is an editor that simplifies the process of writing mathematical equations, making it as straightforward as writing it on the chalkboard. It smoothly integrates with Moodle, making it simple for users to add math equations and formulas into different types of content like quizzes, assignments, forum posts, and lesson materials.
MathType is used by many institutions worldwide and is dedicated to ensuring that everyone can create and access mathematical content. The benefits of using MathType with Moodle includes:
Easier editing of Mathematical formulas
A user-friendly interface without the need to learn LaTeX
Compatible with Touch devices
Compliant with accessibility requirements
Ramon Eixarch, CEO and Co-founder of Wiris said:
Wiris has been integrated with Moodle for more than 15 years. Now, we embark on a new chapter through this strengthened partnership. As we continue to work closely with Moodle, we are inspired by the impact our collective efforts will have on students and educators around the globe.
Check out more details about MathType & Wiris Quizzes on the official website here.
Cambridge-Based Cartwheel Raises $20M to Address Student Mental Health Crisis
Cartwheel, a startup helping schools tackle the student mental health crisis by delivering affordable, evidence-based telehealth services with no waitlist, has announced that it has raised $20 million in Series A funding led by Menlo Ventures. With this fundraising, the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based company plans to expand mental health services to hundreds of thousands of new students in current service areas and school districts in new states.
Founded in 2022, Cartwheel provides students with immediate access to care and assists schools in developing more robust mental health programmes that catch children before they collapse. The platform serves over 50 school systems across five states, including Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, Illinois, and Rhode Island, supporting thousands of students, families, and school staff.
The company’s founding team, which included Chief Medical Officer Juliana Chen, M.D., a board-certified child, adolescent, and adult psychiatrist, had spent decades working in schools and community mental health clinics and saw a need for stronger school-community partnerships to improve cognitive healthcare accessibility, quality, and financial sustainability.
Kimberly Huffer, Director of Social-Emotional Learning of Cambridge Public Schools, said in a statement on the recent development:
As a district, we’re committed to supporting our students’ social-emotional and mental health to set them up for success—in the classroom and in life. Cartwheel has been a game-changer for us, allowing our students and families to access evidence-based mental healthcare quickly. Cartwheel is collaborative and responsive to the needs of our students and families and empowers our social workers to have a true partner in the community.
Moodle 4.3 – which is going to be released in next week, is the next major Moodle version. The new Moodle LMS version is full of exciting new features. Currently the LMS is going under Quality assurance testing before it is released for everyone.
The Moodle 4.3 version will include many exciting new features such as:
New ‘In Course’ Communication options – The new integration with the Matrix Messaging system will provide access to a modern messaging interface directly in the heart of Moodle along with possibilities of adding Slack or Microsoft Teams. These new in-course communication options will help educators and learners stay better connected, engage more regularly and work more closely together
New Activity Card Designs – New refreshed activity cards will be more streamlined and provide educators easier access to manage groups, access restrictions and activity completion conditions. These improvements will help reduce the time and effort it takes to manage activities in courses and help reduce the scroll length of courses, making them easier to navigate for students.
Site-level settings for Activity Completion – The project funded by Moodle users Association which will allow the educators to get their jobs done faster. This new functionality will enable the management of completion criteria for a whole site, reducing the time and effort required to manage these settings.
Improved LTI Toolsat Course Level – New functionality will include the ability to add and manage pre-configured tools at a course level, providing educators the choice to show these tools in the activity chooser and making the creation of external tool activities easier with a simplified form.
Gradebook Improvements – The new improvements in Moodle gradebook are centered around improving the gradebook experience for teachers and students.There are two main goals:
make it easier and more intuitive for teachers to view and manage the existing course grades.
make it easier and more intuitive for students to view their grades.
Include Two Factor Authentication in Core
Further enhancements to Report Builder
The Quality Assurance testing is carried out by actual real users before the release of any major version to verify the working of all new features. 100% of QA tests needs to be marked as Passed before the first release of any major Moodle version.
The current QA testing which started few days back on September 11, has already completed 94% of the tests as Passed. Out of the total 491 QA tests, 464 tests are marked as Passed.
UK-Based Educational Startup Morphoses Raises $2.2M in Pre-Seed Funding
Morphoses, a UK-based soft skills learning experience platform, has recently announced that it has raised $2.2 million (€2.1 million) in pre-seed funding. The firm intends to use this capital to expand across the UK and Europe, allowing more employers to support their employees and their families. This significant step will help to assess Morphoses’ product-market fit and improve its platform to meet the evolving needs of learners and corporate partners.
Co-founded by Anna Natsvlishvili, Ilia Tzortzopoulou, and Alexandros Pithamitsis, Morphoses is a leading EdTech platform focused on developing soft skills in learners aged 6 to 17, providing a gamified learning experience that empowers individuals both personally and professionally. The company aims to address the employability skills gap, a persistent issue in today’s labour market in which job seekers lack critical soft skills that employers demand.
Speaking on the fundraising, Co-founder & CEO of Morphoses, Anna Natsvlishvili, said:
We’re thrilled to announce that Uni.Fund, alongside a dynamic group of angel investors, has joined forces to champion our mission of equipping learners with vital soft skills. This oversubscribed pre-seed round signifies our solution’s substantial impact on learners, families, and businesses. Together, we’re shaping the future of education.
Morphoses has earned the trust of top employers in the EU and SEE Region, including those in conventional industries like pharmaceuticals, aviation, oil and gas, manufacturing, and heavy industries.
Learners attend weekly one-hour classes designed to help them build, conquer, and assess their soft skills. This fosters the ability to take risks, learn from failures, and take charge. It leads to becoming better coworkers, friends, leaders, parents, and, most importantly, individuals. The approach combines educational techniques, psychology, game theories, gamification, and interaction, and it was developed through extensive research and collaboration with leading educators and psychologists, as well as a network of 250 teachers from India and Germany to England and South Africa.
Introducing Moodle’s first student authorship plugin specifically designed for writing: Cursive
Cursive recently launched its Moodle plugin for educators and administrators who believe that writing is an essential skill. In the age of AI, plagiarism detection has become a major challenge and the effective evaluation of student writing has been called into question.
Many teachers are reverting to writing in the classroom, handwritten tests, and other high and low-tech ways to ensure that what they’re reviewing was written by the student. Some suggested practices include using revision history from Google Docs and other systems.
Cursive collects a new layer of data that supports writing courses from the ground up: by collecting 100s of times the data from the writing process itself, through Moodle’s default text editor, TinyMCE.
TinyMCE Editor in Moodle
How it works:
As students write within Moodle, TinyMCE collects key stroke events as structured log data which can be analyzed at will. Cursive employs several ML/AI (Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence) models which report back student effort (time writing, editing effort, and more) for all writing on the system and ensures that the student writer matches across writing sessions.
Writing Statistics Report
This unique approach provides ‘proof of effort’ and actionable information to teachers and students right in the site, leveraging the same tools already used in classes (forums, quizzes, online text). Teachers save time and energy by taking the guesswork out of student authorship.
How to install:
Once you have the plugin folder (it will be soon released in the Moodle plugins repository), install it to the TinyMCE folder on your site or by using the drag and drop plugin installer as Administrator. If you are not familiar with Moodle plugins installation, check out the complete Moodle Plugins Installation guide here.
How to setup:
Cursive can be used with a local utility or by connecting directly to the ML server with a secure token. Settings include:
A feature for capturing information about copy-pasted text from students
Token and ML server configuration
The frequency of communication with the ML server
After installation, the site is automatically setup to create a new session-based JSON record of student writing which enables site administrators, teachers, and students to see their data automatically or analyze files ad hoc, locally.
A few other notes:
Cursive is designed to support academic integrity throughout the writing process, starting with the writing that happens on your Moodle site. After installation student effort and authorship is measured for online text, essay questions in quizzes, and discussion forums, ensuring that you’re getting the best measure of student effort across the curriculum.
If you want to learn more, attend a webinar with Cursive on 10/18 at 3pm EST / 7pm UST.
Kindly Note that this is a sponsored post by Cursive Technologies. More detailed information can be found here. All reviews and opinions expressed in this post are based on my personal view.
