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Having to scroll to the top of the page to turn editing on is a constant minor annoyance - top bar should be fixed.

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Once the academic is familiar with the names, uses, available options and the appropriate structures, then it is easy enough to use, not particularly intuitive, but having a short learning curve.

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The arrangement of the modules within the left hand column can be frustrating when one has twenty or thirty modules to navigate - the list is roughly numerical but never fully so, often placing modules with concurrent numbers apart from each other for no apparent reason.

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Large file uploads are always problematic, often requiring multiple attempts - especially when required to upload while working remotely.

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Our experience is that community that supports educational growth comes best through physical interaction within studio culture -  as in the case with the profession that are training towards - indeed, that the ability to manage social interaction is a core skill within employability. We don't look for or expect a VLE to provide this sense of community.

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The ability within Zoom to record to the cloud and then simply copy paste the URL link into the module pages has been incredibly useful. We now use this for much of our sessions, allowing students to watch back tutorials and demonstrations.

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Assignment Folders are very useful - we use them for interim work submissions (tutorials), Review (Formative grading) and Portfolio Submissions (Summative grading) - they are well like by students, are easy to understand and use and can be tracked using Activity Completion reports - we would hope to retain this functionality.

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We have found the app largely irrelevant as student navigate to the MyLearning module pages directly.

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The timetable has never worked well for programmes with dedicated studios and a studio culture - timetabled activity needs to have an element of updatability, by teaching staff, centralised timetables only enforce stagnation within teaching frameworks. We insert (using the label function) a Google calendar into module pages and that works simply and is updatable by teaching staff, easily accessed by students by navigating to each module. We would hope to continue with this practice as it is supportive of the true student experience.

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We would want to continue with Moodle as it has take a couple of years to find our best working processes within this system and it would disruptive to change to a different system for the sake of 'change' - Moodle has some aspects that are not ideal, but all systems that try to fit such a wide range of educational needs would always end up being broad and generic, never a perfect fit for individual programmes but a reasonable common ground.

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Activity Completion Reports are very useful and we use these to track student engagement/access of files and uploading of Assignments - we would hope to retain this functionality.

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Rollover of uploaded content is very useful - but we have found that the Activity Completion setting change from 'the student must open' to 'the student can tick' which is annoying as we have to manually edit each file.

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If My Learning had easier collaboration process we might collaborate more - current everything is module based so no cross programme collab is possible.

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I'd like a tool to upload a batch of videos into Kaltura at one time.  Currently each video has to be dropped into the interface one at a time, and edited by scrolling through that frame within a window. A lot of time wasted.
I bet Kaltura has this kind of tool available, maybe they'll make it or share one.

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There are no tools to help use this system in MyLearning.

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We created an extensive wiki for our course, but if I want to share it with another course, then there's no way to do that unless we enroll their students.
The silo approach to modules in MyLearning isn't conducive to collaboration and sharing.

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Rollover of modules is a manual nightmare

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Rollover of modules is a manual nightmare

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Ensuring we have the right modules - IN TIME - across the whole programme and across the overseas campuses is a time-consuming and manual task. Would prefer to be able to identify the module page needs for the next AY in spring, and then be sure that all pages will be created in a timely manner (by early August at latest) and to ensure that all campuses and key personnel have access. If this could be automated through a Teams table (similar to the assessment board process) it would save a lot of time in September chasing and auditing.

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It would be useful to have a table in April/May to identify the modules that need to be rolled over or eliminated across all campuses, to streamline the rollover process. Currently I need to do an audit in September and it's all done manually and is very time consuming, especially for overseas campuses.

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I don't know what it is the students see. Yes we can view module pages to view as students but what about the rest of MyLearning. I don't know what they see under the MyStudent tab. This maybe more around MyUniHub though. But I don't know how to guide students when they ask about navigating these online spaces.

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I don't know what it is the students see. Yes we can view module pages to view as students but what about the rest of MyLearning. I don't know what they see under the MyStudent tab. This maybe more around MyUniHub though. But I don't know how to guide students when they ask about navigating these online spaces.

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The right hand 'blocks' are essentially unusable and ignored.

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The right hand 'blocks' are essentially unusable and ignored.

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The Calendar, Reading List and other components are probably useful, but students don't access them, and thus we don't use them. Quickmail is the only function I've ever used.

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As much as Teams does have potential to combine a lot of functions, there is A LOT to be said for the intuitiveness of Zoom for precisely the opposite reason.

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I would use Teams for our course if we had more freedom to create and manage the various aspects of it, without reyling on CCSS.

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Every September I have to do my own MyLearning page audit to ensure that we have pages set up for all modules across the degree, and across 4 campuses. It's incredibly time consuming and invariably there are always modules that are missed. How can we streamline this process and avoid missing modules?

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MDX has a tendency to centralise everything, but a lot of ACI programmes need to opt-out of various systems, e.g. in Theatre Arts we don't use central timetabling. However, when students are logging in via MDXapp or following central comms from the university, they'll come across messaging or links that will direct them back to a system, e.g. the timetable widget, which doesn't work for them. It dilutes communication and undermines student confidence in the systems.

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Outsourcing our grading/assessment tracking to Google

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Outsourcing our grading/assessment tracking to Google

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We have all decided to track grades and moderations in Excel or Google sheets. It would be WAY more efficient to be able to keep track of grades, moderation etc and figure out final grades through the system. Seems crazy that we need to create an entire alternate universe to do this.

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I would like to be able to collapse a section that is not being used or hidden from students, on my own page 

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I would like to be able to collapse a section that is not being used or hidden from students, on my own page 

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It doesn't support collaboration at all.

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It doesn't support collaboration at all.

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It would be great to have an easy way to view an individual student's engagement, attendance across all moduels, etc.

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We use Office 365 heavily, especially OneDrive for project work. You can integrate these loosely with URLs, but in a way 365 offers a lot more power beyond Moodle, e.g. in Teams/OneNote.

Google has some great learning platforms as well but obviously the case for institutional adoption of these is weak compared to Microsoft.

On Teams: our team is reluctant to adopt multiple systems, so we haven't exploited it fully while we are also using Moodle, Zoom and OneDrive. But I can see much more potential in centralising around an app like Teams.

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Submission of coursework and feedback on assignments goes through Turnitin/My Learning but all collation of grades, etc. is done on a shared Excel spreadsheet on Teams

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Submission of coursework and feedback on assignments goes through Turnitin/My Learning but all collation of grades, etc. is done on a shared Excel spreadsheet on Teams

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Once I changed all my modules sections to be folders it became a lot easier. But when the sections were not collapsable it was very hard to navigate. I do like the highlight feature on the module pages, this helps me guide the students eye but if we could highlight more than one section at a time would be good. Sometimes you want to highlight an assessment folder with a teaching week. 

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Once I changed all my modules sections to be folders it became a lot easier. But when the sections were not collapsable it was very hard to navigate. I do like the highlight feature on the module pages, this helps me guide the students eye but if we could highlight more than one section at a time would be good. Sometimes you want to highlight an assessment folder with a teaching week. 

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Tighter integration between VLE and our Office 356 tools would be great.

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issue uploading and embedding media - always seems to time out before I've managed to complete the process!

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issue uploading and embedding media - always seems to time out before I've managed to complete the process!

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Very irritating not being able to drag and drop when organising uploaded files and media - e.g. when i'm editing a folder section, having uploaded files, then subsequently created a subfolder and wanting to add the uploaded files into it... maybe there's a way, but I'v not figured it yet 

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Very irritating not being able to drag and drop when organising uploaded files and media - e.g. when i'm editing a folder section, having uploaded files, then subsequently created a subfolder and wanting to add the uploaded files into it... maybe there's a way, but I'v not figured it yet 

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Not having a read loud feature on Turn It In or on MyLearning makes it difficult to read assessments. Could there be a way to make a VLE more accessible by integrating features of Read&Write, like Read Aloud, dictation etc. 

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Not having a read loud feature on Turn It In or on MyLearning makes it difficult to read assessments. Could there be a way to make a VLE more accessible by integrating features of Read&Write, like Read Aloud, dictation etc. 

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Please consult academic staff when considering new VLE solutions.

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It turns out that many of the students are accessing MyLearning with their phones. A new solution should have a well designed mobile implementation.

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Time consuming, not friendly, difficult to use. Need to find 'label' workarounds to post videos and upload time/linking takes forever.

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Quickmail is a pain to use, and I never use the calendar function for assessment deadlines. Quite clear that it could be a useful tool but right now is not fit for purpose. We create our own calendars in a table and put them at the top of the page - seems like a ridiculous workout if there's a calendar option available for a global view!

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We attempted to use the forum facility last year (when all teaching was online) as a site for group work in seminars - where groups could write up a post to present their findings from an exercise, etc. - but the forums are really clunky to set up and undynamic to use.

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We attempted to use the forum facility last year (when all teaching was online) as a site for group work in seminars - where groups could write up a post to present their findings from an exercise, etc. - but the forums are really clunky to set up and undynamic to use.

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I find it very clunky, not visually appealing, and very problematic to add/move elements within each module. 

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I find it very clunky, not visually appealing, and very problematic to add/move elements within each module. 

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The 'Reading List' is all but invisible and I know students NEVER access it. I've taken to creating PDFs and identifying them clearing as READING: xxxxx in the weekly list.

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We used the Forum activity for reflective journaling and project tracking, allowing each student to create only one thread.
That was until we found Miro.

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When I was on an older computer and I was opening up MyLearning to enable editing it ate up so much of my memory I was unable to use the other programmes. 

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When I was on an older computer and I was opening up MyLearning to enable editing it ate up so much of my memory I was unable to use the other programmes. 

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I have had issues with too much lag with multiple images and videos on sections of module pages on Unihub. 

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I have had issues with too much lag with multiple images and videos on sections of module pages on Unihub. 

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I use it to send Programme Wide emails - that's all. No other sense of community available through the platform.

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I use it to send Programme Wide emails - that's all. No other sense of community available through the platform.

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Miro is the blackboard. It's better than powerpoint. It's a great collaboration platform.  Rich media embeds.  This has been a game changer.
BUT, we can only add 100 students per account, so it would be great for the school to invest.

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Discord - we use it for sharing info across the whole programme, updates to modules, DMs and chats for students, quick virtual meetings and creating community/cohort cohesion. A fast, informal and accessible way to stay in touch constantly and not have to deal with the ML interface.

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Discord - we use it for sharing info across the whole programme, updates to modules, DMs and chats for students, quick virtual meetings and creating community/cohort cohesion. A fast, informal and accessible way to stay in touch constantly and not have to deal with the ML interface.

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We use discord for very quick responsive continuous communication with our cohorts.  Great sense of community, and the ability to share rich media content.

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Modules aren't really connected, it looks like each module is a separate Moodle instance, so it's hard to share resources, duplicate activities and resources across modules and courses. Maybe Office365 can be the glue, but that's a bit of a patch.

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The interface looks pretty crude and there is very little customisation available.

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The interface looks pretty crude and there is very little customisation available.

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Quickmail is very poor. I'm not sure colleagues are aware that it now prefixes the subject with the name of the Moodle module it has been sent from, so that can dilute the effectiveness of the email. Attachments are sent as links, not files, which with our students is about as effective as throwing them into the wind!

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I often use the email all feature for a module, but we find the best way to communicate is via email and Discord.

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I often use the email all feature for a module, but we find the best way to communicate is via email and Discord.

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I find the marking criteria grid, shortcuts and comments section very useful in marking written assignments. This has helped me in terms of efficiency--I wouldn't want to lose this kind of feature.

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I find the marking criteria grid, shortcuts and comments section very useful in marking written assignments. This has helped me in terms of efficiency--I wouldn't want to lose this kind of feature.

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Where two programmes share one module, they have to have a shared page which has proved a significant issue for the programme beneath the top one 

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Where two programmes share one module, they have to have a shared page which has proved a significant issue for the programme beneath the top one 

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The login process is a bit repetitive, and if a session times out then I need to start a fresh tab to log in.

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We struggle with separating formative from summative assessments, and not triggering a 100% turnitin score. The feedback mechanisms are cumbersome and it's not clear that students can access them easily. 

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We struggle with separating formative from summative assessments, and not triggering a 100% turnitin score. The feedback mechanisms are cumbersome and it's not clear that students can access them easily. 

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I find it quite difficult to find my modules becuase of the lists. All the titles, module codes etc are listed in the smae font, colour, style. So for someone who is dyslexic I am constantly clicking on the wrong page. 

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I find it quite difficult to find my modules becuase of the lists. All the titles, module codes etc are listed in the smae font, colour, style. So for someone who is dyslexic I am constantly clicking on the wrong page. 

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It has improved. It works okay for me because I have a rudimentary grasp of HTML formatting so there is a certain logic to it and I can make it work for what I need. Consistency across teams with varying technical skill is difficult to achieve.

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As a PL, I have WAY too many modules over many years I need to navigate through to find the modules I want to access. Constantly scrolling, scrolling scrolling. For learning activities, there appear to be lots of options, but I only use 3-4 and don't really understand what the others are. I have developed workarounds to get videos, links etc up but don't find it intuitive or useful. Overall way too many options and not a streamlined approach to accessing them.

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As a PL, I have WAY too many modules over many years I need to navigate through to find the modules I want to access. Constantly scrolling, scrolling scrolling. For learning activities, there appear to be lots of options, but I only use 3-4 and don't really understand what the others are. I have developed workarounds to get videos, links etc up but don't find it intuitive or useful. Overall way too many options and not a streamlined approach to accessing them.

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It would be good for the VLE systems to connect with other systems. Attendance going over to Attendance Monitoring, Grades routing into MISIS, etc.

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There are so many layers in front of My Learning that it can be difficult to penetrate. Historically that was a huge mental block that made me reluctant to use it. I've worked around this by creating a system of direct links to module pages in my browser bookmarks; otherwise there are so many clicks before you can even get inside a module, let alone begin to edit it.

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'A 'Lego Set' Moodle founder, Martin Dougiamas (@moodler) compares it to a 'lego set': 

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'A 'Lego Set' Moodle founder, Martin Dougiamas (@moodler) compares it to a 'lego set': 

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The term "LMS" can mean a lot of things and I rarely use it for Moodle. Moodle was always designed as a learning platform, more like an operating system or a "lego set" which allows you to create exactly the tool you need for a particular learning situation, ranging from the smallest home school up to the largest University. Every class is different.

This is possible because Moodle has evolved with a lot of configuration options over the years, and most importantly, because we are open source, our community includes a whole ecosystem of developers that have created hundreds of plugins, integrations and techniques to address specific needs and niches. It's amazing what you can create with Moodle.

The downside of all this is that the staff who are implementing Moodle at a particular institution need to take a fairly deep and serious approach to analysing what they need, researching what is available, and customising Moodle by removing options, adding plugins and designing the interface to make it the optimal tool for their own situation. It should be well-integrated with the other systems around it. It should be made to look good with attractive school branding. Finally, like any major IT system, the inclusion, training and enculturing of the educators who will be using Moodle is absolutely critical to success. I see a lot of schools just install a vanilla Moodle with its default configuration and expect great online learning to start happening - it rarely does. Teachers on the frontline are generally far too overworked already to work all this out on their own.

From our viewpoint of working on the core Moodle platform, our priorities have been building good infrastructure that enables our community to build on top. This includes creation of good data to support analytics and computer-aided teaching and learning, better theming for beauty, responsive design and usability, better performance and stability for easier maintenance, better navigation and interfaces for getting around the system, a quality Moodle Mobile application to allow offline work on mobile devices and so on. If you haven't looked at Moodle in a while, then our most recent releases may surprise you.

We also work on providing support services for education institutions. As well as the free community resources at moodle.org which include forums, documentation and mechanisms for sharing ideas, templates and code, we have built a comprehensive network of Moodle Partners around the world, companies who can provide the detailed support needed to produce optimal results from Moodle in a particular online or blended learning situation.

What hasn't changed is how people really learn. Sure, we use different tools and software but our brains have been physically the same for a very long time.

Ultimately it comes down to building workflows of giving information to the student to start learning, allowing them to express what they learned to other people and use their knowledge in practical situations, and then receiving good quality constant feedback on these expressions so they can continue to improve and consolidate knowledge into their long-term memory and overall thinking.

Moodle was based on a philosophy of social constructionism, which is really just an efficient way of enabling all these activities to happen among a largish group of people, and this hasn't changed. An expert teacher using Moodle can create wonderfully rich and exciting learning environments that take advantage of all the benefits that information and communications technology provides to us.

Another thing that hasn't changed much, however, is that teachers in general are undervalued in our society. They are overworked, underpaid and in many cases doing a good job despite the situations that the often complex and underfunded administration of teaching throws at them.

So what needs to change?

I can't speak for all "LMSes" but I can speak for Moodle. Moodle in the end is just a tool in the hands of people and it's not going to solve every educational problem on its own, but there are still a lot of things we can do to make Moodle more usable and accessible.

From an IT perspective, Moodle must be easier to install, configure and manage. We have a number of initiatives coming up in the software itself and in our services that will help enormously with this.

Moodle needs to be easier to learn and use well. We are improving how Moodle works on touch devices in all aspects. We should see a more gradual "slope" in the learning curve of the interface, with reduced options at the beginning that expand over time. The software itself, through analytics, can understand something of what you are doing as a teacher and proactively assist you in creating new workflows, content and activities, attending to particular events within the class, and informing you in timely fashion of things you need to know to be a good facilitator in an online course. This means true computer-aided teaching via our now-ubiquitous mobile devices. Likewise for students, analytics allow us to take a more proactive approach in reminding them of things they need to do, drawing them into conversations and other activities via gamification and other methods, and providing them with real rewards.

Finally, our work on Moodle will allow it to integrate better with other systems in the worlds of work and qualifications, reducing friction and complexity in these areas.

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Some reflections about where Moodle is at

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The term "LMS" can mean a lot of things and I rarely use it for Moodle. Moodle was always designed as a learning platform, more like an operating system or a "lego set" which allows you to create exactly the tool you need for a particular learning situation, ranging from the smallest home school up...

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Please contribute via any mode you wish, anonymously or not, or only mention your programme area. If possible, please add your work group at the end of your comment (e.g. Academic / Support Staff / Technicians)

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Please contribute in any way you feel comfortable; don't forget to 'like' contributions by clicking on the heart icon, or to add further comments underneath each post. Alongside text,  please also add images / useful links / videos.

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Please continue adding comments after this meeting. This Padlet Wall will remain open until 1st Dec.

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We have explored the use of Social Media communication with students but found it lacking - we were also concerned that students would fail to learn important profession skills - so we continue to use email for all communication, and encourage students to communicate back to us in the same many as this is a standard within the eventual profession that the students are preparing for. We do encourage students to set up community Whatsapp groups within their groups but separate from university oversight so that they have it as personal open forum outside of our control.