Over the summer, two key (separate) things take place with Moodle. These are the annual Moodle “rollover” and Moodle upgrade.
The following is an explanation and “Frequently Asked Questions” (FAQ) about what these mean, and why this is relevant for academic staff.
Moodle sites being “rolled over” means “creating a new version of an existing site, for the new academic year.
Rolling sites over helps ensure the right student cohorts have access to the correct material for each module. It also ensures that academics can produce new (or review existing) teaching materials for the following year, without causing problems for students who are still using current sites. In addition, it means we can keep a copy of previous years’ sites for data protection/freedom of information purposes. The Moodle Archive stores old sites for a period of 3 years.
It’s also useful to get rid of older sites which are no longer needed, as these can slow Moodle down for staff and students.
Regardless of whether your module will run during TB1/TB2 or throughout the year, we try and manage this process over the summer to avoid disruption later in the year. There are occasional exceptions to this but in that instance we’ll chat to you about it to come up with the best solution.
The list of modules and courses managed by a School doesn’t always match up with the list of sites on Moodle, and different course teams choose to structure their online learning materials in different ways, so we need your guidance to ensure this works correctly.
Most modules have a dedicated Moodle site, but this isn’t always the case. Some modules share sites, while others are split across multiple sites. Some use a single course site instead of dedicated sites for each module. The key thing to bear in mind is that there isn’t necessarily a 1-1 relationship between modules and Moodle sites.
Like files on your computer, Moodle is arranged into folders, each named after the owning faculty and department. It’s crucial that sites are located and rolled over to the correct location, in order to maintain links with Panopto videos for those sites, for future reference.
Any module site(s) need to be rolled over. Course sites and faculty-wide information sites don’t need to be rolled over.
A new version is created, which links to the SITS code for that module. Students for the relevant cohorts then get attached to that new site. The old site then gets archived on a predetermined date (usually January of the following year e.g. Jan 2024 for 2022-23 sites).
If you are running a new module, please speak to your course admin team to ensure that there is a relevant MAV (module availability) code for your module, as this is what we use to ensure that students are able to see all the modules on their curriculum.
The choice of how a site is rolled over is up to you and the academic course team. We can offer:
- A mirror copy of the existing site’s materials (structure, documents, videos etc.),
- A fresh blank site (ready to populate with materials from scratch), or
- A variation of the above (please get in touch with us if you have concerns).
This is a good opportunity to do a spring clean of sites, and to ensure parity/consistency of messaging across modules and courses within your School. For example, some Schools make the decision that all of their sites will be rolled “blank” or use this as a chance to roll out a particular pedagogic approach. The Faculty has produced a checklist to help provide a benchmark for consistency and accessibility, which is updated annually. If you are an Associate Head or Programme Lead, please consider your preferences for rollover carefully and communicate with your School staff about this.
If you are planning to use Panopto videos from last year, your new students will be granted access to these, as long as they are stored in the module folder and not a member of staff’s personal Panopto area (“My Folder”).
If a site contains assessment dropboxes, these will not be rolled over (to avoid technical issues). Multiple choice quizzes and question banks will still be available to allow staff to build on question banks from previous years (but previous quiz attempts are removed). However, please bear in mind that timings and dates will need to be adjusted for the current year.
In addition to the sites being rolled over during the summer, DCQE will upgrade Moodle itself to the latest stable version. This usually takes place during the August bank holiday week (this process and date is controlled centrally).
If you have DA courses within your subject group/department, the rollover process for this is managed separately by Andy Taggart. For Portsmouth Online courses, this process is managed by CEG Digital. They will communicate with teaching teams separately about the process.
Any sites that we don’t receive specific instructions for, will be archived before TB1 begins.