Moodle 2.5 is coming this summer and after seeing some of the features demoed during the General Developer’s Meeting yesterday I can say that I am very excited. Here are my top five improvements to Moodle 2.5:
1. WordPress like install and update for plugins: Administrating your Moodle and managing plugins and addons just became wayyyy easier. This is perhaps my favorite advancement to Moodle since I’ve started using it. No longer will users be required to have FTP or write access to their servers just to install a new theme or try out a plugin, by connecting sites to Moodle.org everyone now has just a few clicks to install a new addon and get it up and running. Even better: when there is and update you’ll be prompted to update as well! So awesome.
Below is a demonstration of how this works as recorded during the General Developer’s Meeting on 4/23:
2. Boot Strap: this is a new base theme for Moodle (which I believe will be called “Shoelace” or “Simple – Base”) which has responsive design and a few other features. It’s a slick looking theme, check out our earlier coverage here.
3. Shorter Forms: collapsed forms give Moodle a much less daunting and clean look when working with the long forms of Quizzes, Administration and Course settings. A good admin can set the defaults and save teachers a lot of guessing at what settings do what and which are necessary to configure their next course or activity. Try it out today at QA.Moodle.net.
4. Badges: fully integrated with http://openbadges.org/ this is going to be a super way to highlight certifications, mastery and other milestones that your students have achieved. Certificates on steroids. Read more about the integration here: http://docs.moodle.org/dev/openbadges
5. Assignment Improvements: Assignment history and more settings for mastery http://docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features#Assignment_enhancements
I agree – these improvements and others are going to make 2.5 really great! The Bootstrap theme available in Moodle is going to be called “clean” after much discussion by the way.
Clean works. Someone can always create a child theme called Shoelace based on Clean.
The idea of “Clean” is that you copy it like a template to start your own themes. So generally your new theme, like Clean, is a child theme of “bootstrapbase”.
Is there a video available on the discussion about openbadges?
Ignore/delete that last comment. Sorry – didnt realise the video I watched started on minute 46!.
Congrats Moodle HQ!!
The ability to update of plugins/themes inside Moodle is a fantastic game changing improvement.
cheers
frank
I couldn’t agree with you more, especially regarding quizzes!
Still think the Bootstrap theme should be called ‘Moobstrap’ but the tatoo is a step to far for me ; )
Explanation here: https://twitter.com/moodler/status/329991473372205056
I would contribute to a crowdfunded Moobstrap tattoo campaign…
Likewise, but I don’t think we can crowdfund a forehead : )
I have already installed the stable version to start a new production site. I am looking for performance improvements mainly, such as the Moodle Cache feature that Moodle 2.4 introduced.