From moodle.org/news/ 1 6 June 2013

Moodle 2.5 is now released! by Martin Dougiamas - Wednesday, 15 May 2013, 3:32 PM

Hello all Moodlers,

It's my pleasure to put this cherry on the top of the collective cake that is Moodle 2.5, and to announce that it is now ready for you to use! (Download a package or use Git)

This is the first release under the new May/November release schedule, so we had one less month than usual. Still we collectively managed to close an impressive record 705 issues in that time, and we had code contributions from 112 developers, the most ever in a single major release. This release has also been the most-tested in history. I wish we were all in one room so we could create some applause but instead you might like to message some of your favourite contributors with a personal thank you.

For a more user-friendly tour of the highlights see our New Features page. Full technical details and credits are on the Moodle 2.5 release notes.

There are three major features in 2.5 I'd particularly like to highlight here:

1. Badges: Moodle is (I think!) the first LMS to support badges! Moodle teachers and admins can now design and award their own badges for any users on their sites, using their own criteria. These badges are compatible with the Open Badges standard from Mozilla, and can be used outside Moodle as well. I think this is a really great standard that will allow educators to experiment with a wide variety of techniques for certification and motivation.

2. Bootstrap: Moodle now includes a new Bootstrap base theme, and we have begun the migration towards using this framework for all our themes. Bootstrap is rapidly becoming the defacto framework for responsive design around the web, so I'm sure this will make a lot of theme designers (and users!) very happy. Moodle itself still needs further improvements to fully take advantage of this framework, and this is a very high priority for our core developers in 2.6. Our aim is to make Moodle look and perform equally well on every device, for every theme. We still support older themes and will continue to for some time, but if you are updating your theme or making a new one, then we highly encourage you to use the new Bootstrap framework.

3. Usability: Moodle 2.5 contains a lot of other smaller usability and accessibility improvements, from simplified forms to more navigable course pages. This continues our incremental usability improvement made in every version, and is difficult but very important work that we will continue to focus on in every release.

From moodle.org/news/ 2 6 June 2013

In addition, we also released updates for our stable branches: 2.4.4, 2.3.7 and 2.2.10.

I hope you enjoy all the new releases and that they are helping you improve the quality of education wherever you are. Thank you for your support and for being part of the Moodle community.

Moodle on!

Martin

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 3 6 June 2013

New features Moodle 2.5 brings a lot of exciting new features for teachers, students and administrators. This page highlights a few of the most interesting!

Full details of the release, with technical information, can be found in the Moodle 2.5 Release notes [http://docs.moodle.org/dev/Moodle_2.5_release_notes].

Contents

1 For teachers and students: 1.1 Badges 1.2 Forms are much shorter 1.3 Reports moved to the Administration block 1.4 Quickly "Jump to.." another section 1.5 Drag and drop media and text onto the course page 1.6 Folders can be displayed inline on a course page 1.7 Assignment enhancements 1.8 Word count in forum posts 1.9 Templates for Essay question types 1.10 Glossary block enhancements 1.11 Search the list of enrolled users

2 For administrators: 2.1 New themes suited to all screen sizes 2.2 Install add-ons from inside Moodle

3 See also [http://docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features#See_also]

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 4 6 June 2013

For teachers and students: Editor’s note: Larger images are used for detail; placement not consistent with the original document.

Badges

Badges are a nice way to acknowledge good work, and it's now possible for teachers to award course badges based on a variety of chosen criteria. These badges are fully compatible with Mozilla Open Badges.

Teacher sets up a badge

[no higher resolutions images are available for some images]

Student view of allocated badges

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 5 6 June 2013

Badges from backpack. openbadge on student profile

This blog post has some interesting reflection on when badges might be most appropriate: The Badges of Oz [alex.halavais.net/ozbadge].

Forms are much shorter

Moodle has a lot of settings and features, which means some of our forms have been getting rather long. We know this is daunting for new users!

We've made changes so that non-essential settings on forms are collapsed by default, yet you can quickly access them when you need them.

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 6 6 June 2013

Note the “expand all” option and condensed links

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 7 6 June 2013

“Show more” (and “show less” options

The rich text editor is collapsed and can be expanded:

In a similar space-saver, you can choose whether or not to enable the rich text editor when creating quiz questions:

Formatting options collapsed and box is narrow

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 8 6 June 2013

Formatting options shown and box expanded

In a similar space-saver, you can choose whether or not to enable the rich text editor when creating quiz questions:

Without the editing tools

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 9 6 June 2013

With the editing tools

Reports moved to the Administration block

Reports have moved and can now be seen in the newly named Administration block, (formerly Settings.)

Administration block with Reports

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 10 6 June 2013

Quickly "Jump to.." another section

If you're using the 'one section per page' setting, you can now move to other sections from a drop down menu:

The ‘jump to’ drop down menu returns

Drag and drop media and text onto the course page

You can now drag an image or some text onto your course page and choose whether to display it embedded in a label or as a clickable resource. See the Label documentation for more information.

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 11 6 June 2013

Drag an image onto your course page

Choose “add a label” or page if you prefer)

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 12 6 June 2013

And here it is !

Text selected from a Word document is dragged over

Choose “add a label” (or page if you prefer)

And here it is !

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 13 6 June 2013

Folders can be displayed inline on a course page

You can now choose whether to have a folder show its contents in a separate screen, as previously, or to have it display them inline with any subfolders expanded:

Typical folder display before 2.5

Folder displayed inline

Folder displayed inline with subfolders expanded

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 14 6 June 2013

Assignment enhancements

Along with neater options for choosing submission and feedback types, resubmitting options are much improved. See Assignment settings for more information.

Neater assignment set up screen

New settings for resubmissions

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 15 6 June 2013

Word count in forum posts

A new setting in forums will display the number of words in a post:

Templates for Essay question types

When using the Essay question type in a quiz, you can now set a template which appears in the students' text editor for scaffolding their response:

Response template in question set up screen

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 16 6 June 2013

What the student sees

Glossary block enhancements

You can now use a global glossary in the random glossary block, and you can display the entries in alphabetical order:

Entries will display in alphabetical order

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 17 6 June 2013

Search the list of enrolled users

A new Enrolled users search box makes finding users in very large courses much easier:

A search facility allows teachers to search for specific users.

For administrators:

New themes suited to all screen sizes

Many of your favourite sites around the web these days use Bootstrap as a base framework and now Moodle does too! We have a new 'base' theme called "Bootstrapbase" that implements the basics, and a new usable theme called 'Clean' which extends it with some simple configuration options and also functions as a good template example for developing your own Bootstrap-based themes. It also (along with Afterburner) allows you to upload a logo directly from the file picker.

The Bootstrap framework allows us to responsively reformat the layout according to the screensize of the device used - on phone or tablet screens blocks move to the bottom, freeing up space for the main content at the top. In the future we hope everyone will want to migrate their Moodle themes to be Bootstrap-based.

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 18 6 June 2013

Clean theme on standard screen

Clean theme on smaller screen; note position of Navigation block

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 19 6 June 2013

Add your logo from the file picker in Clean theme

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 20 6 June 2013

Install add-ons from inside Moodle

It's now possible to install add-ons from within Moodle, rather than accessing folders on the server; useful for those admins who do not have FTP access. Add-ons can be uploaded and installed from a zip file or located and installed from the Moodle plugins directory:

Add-on install tool

From docs.moodle.org/25/en/New_features 21 6 June 2013

Add-on passes validation, ready to go.