Moodle 4.0 UX update 4

Informed by an extensive discovery and consultation process with Moodle’s community of students, teachers, administrators, developers, partners and the Moodle Users Association, Moodle 4.0 will incorporate a new navigation and improved course page structure including the My Courses page, course index and other improvements that will make the course page easier and quicker to use.

As a result of these improvements, the purpose of Moodle’s Dashboard, the primary landing page for educators and learners, has evolved to focus on providing users an intuitive interface to review and manage their deadlines and what they need to do next.

In particular, we are pleased to reveal the new design of the Timeline and Calendar blocks on the Dashboard.

Managing deadlines made easier with Timeline

Moodle’s Timeline now has a redesigned information architecture that reduces cognitive load, and clearly displays the actions required for each activity, sorted by date or by course

• The clear call to action buttons allow learners to easily navigate to the activity to complete the requirements; e.g. submit an assignment.
• The introduction of highly visible “overdue” badges allows learners to identify missed deadlines more effectively. 
• The new activity icons enable users to easily recognise the type of activity that requires action.
• A new search function means that learners can search deadlines by course, activity name or activity type.

A fully responsive Calendar to help keep learners organised

The redesigned Dashboard also incorporates Moodle’s Calendar so that the important dates of different types of events and activities are highlighted, allowing educators to help organise their learners, and learners to organise themselves.

• The updated design is fully responsive and displays as a large block in the main Dashboard page.
• The Calendar now displays an improved indication of current day events and event summary, including how actions and deadlines are displayed on a particular day.

• Both educators and learners will benefit from simplified workflows which allow users to add or export calendars into other programs, as a backup or to create a copy.

For more information on the Moodle 4.0, please join the Moodle UX community, sign up to our usability testing and review our Moodle 4.0 documentation.