Moodle Enhancements

Features to explore

With each new Moodle server, we try to accommodate feature requests from faculty. Below you will find the list of plugins (supported by our version of Moodle) we have installed to add functionality to address faculty and student needs.

Activity 

• Attendance: A plugin that allows an attendance log to be kept; includes an optional block for easy access to relevant functions.
• Checklist: A checklist can be created by a teacher (or generated from the activities in a course) and then the students or teachers can check off each item as they are completed.
• Checkmark: This module allows teachers to obtain information about the assignments completed by the students prior to a lesson.
• Journal: This module allows a teacher to ask students to reflect on a particular topic. The students can edit and refine their answer over time.
• Questionnaire: Custom Survey Creation
• Scheduler: An appointment scheduler for planning face-to-face meetings between teachers and students. Teachers can set up time slots, and students can choose one of these on Moodle.
• Student folder: With the module student folder (mod/publication) students can upload documents that can be made visible by teachers. 

Assignment/Feedback

• Solution sheet: Allows teachers to upload files with solutions to their assignments, which can be released to students manually or at a scheduled time.

Book/Book Tools

• Microsoft Word file Import/Export (Book): Import the contents of a Microsoft Word file into a book, splitting it into chapters and (optionally) subchapters, based on the heading styles. The file can be saved from Microsoft Word, Google Docs or LibreOffice, as long as it has a '.docx' suffix. Also supports exporting books to Word format, for round-trip editing.

Quiz/Reports

• Manual grading by student: A quiz ‘report’ add-on for Moodle, like the normal manual grading report, but which lets you grade one student at a time, rather than one question at a time.

Blocks

• Filtered course list: The Filtered Course List block displays a configurable list of courses. It is intended as a replacement for the My Courses block, although both may be used. It is maintained by the Collaborative Liberal Arts Moodle Project (CLAMP).
• Grade Me: Shows a teacher all of the assignments and manual quiz questions (essays and file responses) that have been submitted, but not graded.
• Microsoft block: This block provides a user-facing menu to access various Office 365 integration features, resources, and settings.
• Sharing cart: The Sharing Cart is a block that enables sharing of Moodle content (resources, activities) between multiple courses on your site.

Question types

• CodeRunner: A question type that allows question authors to set programming questions in which the student answer is code in some programming language, which is graded by running it. More generally it can handle any question to which the answer is text that can be graded by a computer program written by the question author.
• Combined: A Moodle question type that allows questions to be built up from parts that are other simpler question types (requires you to have these question types installed)
• OU multiple response: The main difference from the standard Moodle multiple choice question type is in the way that grading works. When creating the question, the teacher just indicates which choices are correct. If there are n correct choices, then the student scores 1/n for each correct choice. If they select too many choices, then incorrect choices outweigh correct ones.
• Pattern match: Allows a short response of one or a few sentences that is graded by comparing against various model answers, which are described using the OU's pattern match syntax.
• Record audio/video: A manually graded Moodle question type, where the student records a short audio response to answer the question asked.
• Variable numeric: A calculated numeric question type with variable and expression evaluation. Random values are generated for each student attempting the quiz.
• Variable numeric set: A calculated numeric question type with variable and expression evaluation. All values are precalculated although a question can have several variants with different variable values for each variant.

Question behaviours

• Adaptive adapted for coderunner: A specialised version of the standard Moodle adaptive behaviour for use with the CodeRunner plugin (qtype_coderunner).
• Self-assessment: A question behaviour for manually graded question types, to let students self-assess their own response.

Question import/export formats

• Microsoft Word File Import/Export (Question Format): Export questions (including images) in a question bank into a Word file, and also import questions from structured tables in a Word (.docx format) file.

Text filters

• Ally: The Ally filter provides accessibility scores and tools for files uploaded to Moodle by teachers. It also provides alternative download types to enhance accessibility - e.g. audio, braille, etc.

Atto HTML editor/Atto plugins

• Microsoft Word File Import (Atto): Import entire Microsoft Word 2010 (.docx) files, including tables, embedded images and Microsoft Equation Editor equations, cleanly. It also imports LibreOffice and Google Docs files saved to .docx format, but not nearly as well.

TinyMCE editor / TinyMCE plugins

• Tiny Font Color: The Tiny Font Color provides two toolbar buttons and menu entries to set different text and background colors.

Authentication methods

• Companion Account: The Companion Account plugin gives teachers the possibility to log in with a companion account. This will enable them to view and review a course from a participant's perspective unlike the standard Switch role function. See more details in Moodle-PD: Companion account | Training.
• OpenID Connect: The OpenID Connect plugin provides single-sign-on functionality using configurable identity providers. 

Course formats

• Collapsed topics: An interchangeable topic or week-based format that solves the issue of the 'Scroll of Death' when a course has many topics.
• Multitopic format: Shows multiple topics per page, with tabbed navigation between pages. Topics are collapsible and can optionally be timed. 
• Onetopic format: Format to course that allows showing each topic in a tab, keeping the current tab between calls to resources, in such a way that when it returns from a module as the blog or the glossary it returns to tab from where you started.
• Tiles format: A course format that displays course topics as "Tiles", in a grid rather than as a list. When clicked, tile content is displayed under the tile with an animated transition. The layout adapts to different screen sizes and orientations. Within each tile, activities can also be set to display as "sub-tiles". For each tile, the teacher can pick an icon from a predefined set or upload a background photo.
• Weekly format reversed: Weekly format listed in reverse format so first week at bottom and current week at the top

Reports

• Accessibility report: The Ally reporting tool (report_allylti) provides a site-wide accessibility report which can be broken down by course.
• Overview statistics: Produces various site and course report charts. The code has been designed in a way that makes adding more reports easy.

Gradebook reports

• Grade distribution: The grader report grade list module allows for viewing the distribution of student grades for a course regarding the current grade letter boundaries as well as changing these to shift the distribution. 
• Quiz Analytics: This plugin provides users with the most important part of an exam/quiz, i.e, analytics. Every attempt each user make on a quiz is scrutinized and relevant data are portrayed via visually appealing graphs.

Repositories

• Microsoft 365 Repository: This plugin provides access to Office 365 as a repository. Specifically, includes OneDrive for Business, Office Video, Office Delve as well as SharePoint Document Libraries and Group Files associated with Moodle courses.

Themes

• Microsoft 365 Teams Theme:  This theme is used with the Microsoft 365 Teams Integration to display Moodle seamlessly within a Teams environment.

Local plugins

• Liberal Arts Edition: The LAE includes bug fixes, enhancements, and a suite of plugins that our member schools find useful. CLAMP has maintained the distribution since Moodle 1.9.5.
• Microsoft Word file Import/Export (Lesson): Import the contents of a Word file in '.docx' format file into a Lesson, splitting it into pages based on the "Heading 1" style. Also supports exporting lessons to Word format, for round-trip editing.
• Microsoft Office 365 Integration: This plugin provides libraries and services that power other Office 365 plugins.

All descriptions are taken from the Moodle Plugin pages