Announcing Moodle LMS 4.1 – a refined user experience

by Marie Achour.  

Hi everyone,

I am very proud to announce the latest release of Moodle LMS 4.1!

Our latest release builds on the user experience enhancements and features of Moodle LMS 4.0, giving more possibilities to build better learning experiences and for learners to find what they want when they need it. As a Long Term Support release, Moodle LMS 4.1 also ensures security support for three years – 18 months more than the standard edition.

A smoother experience with UX enhancements

In the latest release of Moodle LMS 4.1 UX improvements have been made to Database activity, including a useful start page, an improved Image gallery preset, plus three new presets: Journal, Proposals and Resources, which can be previewed. These four ready-made presets mean that you can use and adapt one of the four on offer to fit your needs, without having to build a layout from nothing. The presets can also be previewed before use so that you can be sure it is the layout you are looking for. These UX improvements have been supported by the Moodle Users Association. 

Caption: Moodle LMS 4.1 comes with four presets to use as a starting point.

UX improvements have also been made to the Gradebook to make it easier to navigate. With Moodle LMS 4.1, a new ‘Grades summary’ page has been added to provide a summary of the grade averages for each course activity and can be filtered by activity. There is an improved ‘User report’ with a more modern design and collapsible categories, and a ‘Single view report’ with improved design and the ability to simply search by user, group or grade item, and more easily do bulk actions. This allows teachers and trainers to more easily analyse the success of formative and summative assessments and inform improvements to course design.

Caption: The new ‘Grades summary’ page provides a summary of the grade averages for each course activity.

Maximising the use of BigBlueButton

Moodle LMS 4.1 also includes improvements to BigBlueButton, the open source virtual classroom integrated into Moodle as a standard feature, including the ability to invite external guests to a BigBlueButton video conferencing session. 

Improving the text editor

In Moodle LMS 4.1, TinyMCE 6 is included as an additional text editor, alongside the standard Atto editor. TinyMCE 6 is a modern and intuitive text editor that is accessible and offers an improved user experience. 

Caption: TinyMCE 6 is included as an additional editor alongside the standard Atto editor.

Manage and collaborate with ease using the Moodle Question bank 

Moodle LMS 4.1 features improvements to the Question bank features, making it easier for teachers and course creators to manage and collaborate on quiz questions. These improvements include inline editing of the question title, a new “Modified by” column to see who modified a question, and a new “Last used” column to see when a question was last attempted by a student.   

More control over custom report settings

Custom reports now include a number of new useful report sources, including Badges, Comments, Notes, Course participants, Blogs, and Files. There is a new custom report settings page, allowing the admin to limit the number of reports and disable live editing.

Other key improvements

More helpful additions in the Moodle LMS 4.1 release include:

• Profiles can now display the user’s timezone.
• The grading scale can now have additional letters, going beyond the previous limit of fourteen.
• Completion reports include custom profile fields and the time of completion. 
• A new admin setting to control the availability of the “Contact site support” form.

Find out more about Moodle LMS 4.1 and watch our short videos on Database activity, the Gradebook and Customer reports.

Enjoy!

Marie