Moodle 3.8 Is Out! H5P, Analytics, Forums & Everything You Need To Know About The Latest Release Of The Largest, Open Source LMS

The official release of Moodle 3.8 is finally available for download.

Part of our MootGlobal 2019 coverage #MootGlobal19

Kickstarting MoodleMoot Global + Open EdTech Global 2019, Moodle has made the release available right on schedule. While H5P is one of its most welcome additions, the new Forum features would probably get the most use. Learning Analytics should also see some increased usage by teachers.

What’s new

Consumer-only H5P, baked in

The H5P engine comes in the box from now on. This version only allows embedding content already made somewhere else or through the H5P Plugin.

Without authoring in November. With authoring hopefully in May (Moodle 3.9)

— H5P (@H5PTechnology) October 16, 2019

Now an “H5P” icon comes on the editor. This inclusion does allow a couple of things not able through the plugin:

• Embed H5P on the Atto Editor using filters
• Control who is able to deploy H5P activities
• Set sitewide H5P display options
• Allow or prevent upgrading H5P libraries

Learning Analytics, progressed

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A few, much needed improvements on the Learning Analytics front hope to make the tool more useful and intuitive for common teachers. More default predictors, a visual dashboard and the ability to direct message students according to “risky” prediction values could help improve course outcomes.

Forums, advanced

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By popular request, the Forum can become a gradable activity, part of the Gradebook. Other usability improvements have been added, such as a pop-up summary view and an experimental nested view. Finally, Forum conversations can be exported, with a menu allowing the selection of participants and date intervals.

Finer details

Admins can now determine the layouts and filtering available for end users on their Course Dashboards.

And Course Color Patterns provide visual grouping and guidance for different subjects.

The Emojis interface is improved and a button on the text editor is available.

Calendar offers slight visualization tweaks and filtering, including an “upcoming events view.”

You can check every single issue fixed for the Moodle 3.8 release here, they include small functional tweaks, enhancements for admins’ eyes only, and updates to web services and APIs (for developers).

Some of the most popular include:

• Time-out alert. Moodle informs the session is about to disconnect automatically due to inactivity (MDL-34498)
• Quiz editing menu. It adds new features and makes it easy to fix things on the spot. (MDL-66956)
• “Hidden from students course label.” Now teachers know which courses are hidden from their students (MDL-65621)
• Alphabet filtering in students lists (MDL-48610)