Moodle 2.4 was recently released to much fanfare and excitement. It contains new features, enhancements, bug fixes and security patches. Here’s our overview of the more significant software changes.
Performance improvements
Various improvements have been made to improve performance. Some require configuration by your administrator or host provider but can make better use of hardware resulting in faster page serving and increased user concurrency.
Plugin updating
Moodle notifies your administrator when a plugin is outdated and now also enables an update via the web interface.
Course format plugins
Standard course formats remain unchanged but third-party developers are given more flexibility to create their own course formats and provide their own settings for courses and sections and control all pages in a course.
Icons
The default Moodle icon set has had an extreme makeover, in fact, the first time since version 1.0. The icons are bigger, more colourful and scaleable for all devices.
Themes
Improved usability with all pages now served with HTML5 doctype as default. Also, improved compatibility with Internet Explorer version 8, 9 and 10.
TinyMCE editor
Significant enhancements to the inbuilt editor including support for configurable TinyMCE extension plugins,ability for administrators to customise the toolbar by enabling/disabling icons and built-in browser spell checking.
Enrolments
Cohorts can now be synchronised to course groups. It is also possible to expire enrolments and notify of pending expiration for manual and self enrolment methods.
Calendar integration
Moodle Tracker’s most-voted feature request has been delivered. Stream external calendars into the Moodle calendar using the iCal standard.
Assignment
There has been numerous enhancements to the assignment activity. It is now possible to set a group assignment for collaborative work and group members receive a common (or individual) grade. Blind marking where the assessor does not know the identity of students when grading is a welcome feature. Likewise, offline marking, whereby teachers can download all assignments and the grading sheet, view, grade and feedback offline, then upload to Moodle with grades, files and comments pushed to the grade book.
Minimum software requirements
If you intend to upgrade to Moodle 2.4 from an earlier version, you must first upgrade to at least 2.2. Also, note that IE8 may not be supported for Moodle 2.5 as IE10 is currently required for file drag and drop outside browser into Moodle. In terms of minimum software requirements, note the following recommendations:
- Web browser: Firefox 4, Internet Explorer 8, Safari 5 and Chrome 11;
- Database: Postgres 8.3, MySQL 5.1.33, MSSQL 2005 or Oracle 10.2;
- PHP: 5.3.2
Follow the link to view the official Moodle 2.4 release notes.