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Tumble weed

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4.3 on 2nd January

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Starting earlier on a test server and in phases would have ensured a smoother transition.

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Pre-empted any major disasters with thorough testing before the upgrade

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Pre-empted any major disasters with thorough testing before the upgrade

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Nothing catastrophic went wrong. All issues were dealt with quickly.

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Nothing catastrophic went wrong. All issues were dealt with quickly.

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Short periods for testing means pressure on all

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Short periods for testing means pressure on all

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Automated testing

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More training for staff and students

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We have this format on all courses, and the developer has essentially held everyone hostage by only working on certain functions. Looking to move away from this format now.

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UX upgrades with a direct focus on student co-creation

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New theme to make interface less cluttered, removal of some blocks and plugins

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New theme to make interface less cluttered, removal of some blocks and plugins

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Successfully rebuilt the menu to make it go one level deeper.

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Successfully rebuilt the menu to make it go one level deeper.

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We use Moodle as an intranet. As a result, this facility is useful.

Everything else went smoothly.

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Some UI changes were imo, a step backwards. 

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Some UI changes were imo, a step backwards. 

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Became better aligned with the rest of the university: new branding meant more consistency across courses.

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eg particular quiz question types

stopped working

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Removal of individual file icons and indentation

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Removal of individual file icons and indentation

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Two biggest issues that have been raised by staff

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No major errors on launch and thankfully, due to lots of resources made beforehand, staff have adjusted well

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All Moodle 4 databases feeding PowerBI slotted in place without additional work.

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All Moodle 4 databases feeding PowerBI slotted in place without additional work.

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Reports were up and running shortly after the upgrade.

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UCL - smoothest upgrade because working on it for 2 years, well planned, and well supported

Agile model helped

Automated testing process

About 10 in the Team

3.9 to 4.2 only took 3 hours (2am-5am)

UX studies made a big difference

support propagated properly

transparency: remove fear

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The new Activities and Resources logos, though more modern, have become leas intuitive: at first glance they look all similar. The previous versions were easier to identify what activity each represented.

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Some challenges trying to identifying causes of issues due to a lack of a thorough documentations about what settings existed in M3 and what had changed in M4.

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Despite only having a team of 3 people!

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Get rid of the Course Index on the Boost theme - what is the point of it? It is just a repeat of collapsed sections topics in the centre. Seems there is no way of hiding it but without CSS?

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Had a few SCORM based configuration problems impacting tracking.

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Had a few SCORM based configuration problems impacting tracking.

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I think this has been solved by altering a few properties in Moodle. In the interim, I wrote additional SQL reports to record SCORM activities.

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Unable to obtain a demo site early enough to inform training and communications

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Time constraints: we should have started work on the upgrade much earlier than we did to give us more time on it.

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Straight forward to build a new theme for v4. Easy to update custom plugins in PHP v8.

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Straight forward to build a new theme for v4. Easy to update custom plugins in PHP v8.

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Training on course format and progressing away from tabs

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Training on course format and progressing away from tabs

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more engagement with stakeholders

more transparency

actually delivering what stakeholder wants

improved feedback process from both academic and students

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KCL- It happened! pretty smooth when looking back.

Win for our department (King's Digital) was better relationships with central team and specialist roles form our team are more embedded in central team moodle operations

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New template based around M4 design principles and features.

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New template based around M4 design principles and features.

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To submit some WYSIWYG code to toggle comments and bubbles by default on the Assessment plugin.

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To submit some WYSIWYG code to toggle comments and bubbles by default on the Assessment plugin.

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One of our exam boards prefer the comments outside of the bubble format. Particularly on cover sheets. I had to re-program the bubble comments out of Moodle (but still left in an option to use them).

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Doing consultations with staff and students to inform changes was good for us. 

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Doing consultations with staff and students to inform changes was good for us. 

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It went very well, despite being combined with a migration to a new external provider and a compressed timescale (started March 2023, finished August 2023)

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Getting students involved in developing comms & training for students (ambassadors)

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Getting students involved in developing comms & training for students (ambassadors)

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staff and students seemed underwhelmed :)

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staff and students seemed underwhelmed :)

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QMUL's previous theme update did a lot of the heavy lifting in terms of getting people used to changes in interface etc.

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Timeline and being held hostage by plugins which aren't compatible!

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Timeline and being held hostage by plugins which aren't compatible!

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Underestimation of the complexity of Moodle for theme design

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Underestimation of the complexity of Moodle for theme design

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Designers unfamiliar with Moodle were underprepared for how many elements, components, screens and other options should be included in design specifications. This meant a lot of back and forth between designers and developers, resulting in less time available for development.

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Also talked about in the room...we ran "upgrade awareness" sessions which focussed on what was, and wasn't changing. These were very successful.

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Teaching staff have often complained there is no effective way to hide courses/modules that are cluttering their teaching site list. 

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Teaching staff have often complained there is no effective way to hide courses/modules that are cluttering their teaching site list. 

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Reviewing and updating college-wide access courses content and design (moving course format and accessibility enhancement)

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Reviewing and updating college-wide access courses content and design (moving course format and accessibility enhancement)

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Authentication from MS. Teams course generation from Moodle. Really straight forward and effective.

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Short preparation time before the upgrade (>6mo) had a knock-on effect to implementing testing and bug fixes.