A new look for Moodle sites

The grid layout has several benefits over the standard topics format. First, it provides a more compact view of your Moodle site, which reduces the need to scroll or scan for information. Second, it is more visual, which makes it more engaging and easier to navigate. Lastly, grid’s simplified user interface decreases the cognitive load on students trying to locate their learning materials.

The Screen School is responding to staff and student feedback that Moodle sites are often inconsistently organised and difficult to navigate. By introducing ready-made Moodle templates in 22/23, the School hopes to improve the online experience for students and reduce the amount of time staff spend organising and maintaining their Moodle sites. Screen is also launching several new online courses this fall, and Moodle templates can help ensure study-abroad students receive the same advantages as those studying in person.

There are several important dates to know:

– Mid-late June: Project Q&A session in programme meetings

– August 8-19: Templates imported into new 22/23 Moodle course and unit sites

– August 22: Staff can begin to review their new Moodle sites

– September 9-23: two weeks of training sessions on using the new templates

– September 26: first day of classes

This change means that this September, 2022, you will start the new academic year with all your Moodle sites pre-formatted and potentially pre-populated with course content from the previous year. There will still be some work to do for example, re-arranging some materials, adding additional topic areas, re-embedding Panopto videos, and uploading unit guides and assessment briefs, but much of the manual work you do each year to prepare your sites will already be done.

In late-August / early-September, you will be asked to review your Moodle sites to ensure they are organised the way you teach. This might involve:

– personalising the topic area titles

– uploading new thumbnail images into the grid layout

– uploading new documents for the fall term

– setting up tutorial groups

– recording an introductory video

Yes. You will have complete creative control over your Moodle sites. You can add new topic areas, change section titles, upload new images, or re-organise content. The goal of this project is not to prescribe one way of doing things but to ensure every Moodle site has a foundational level of consistency. If the template isn’t a perfect fit for your course we absolutely encourage you to edit it, but please be mindful of our overall goal – to ensure students always know where to find something on Moodle no matter what site they’re on.

The digital learning team will be providing support, guidance, and training to Screen School staff on a programme-by-programme basis. In mid to late June, we will run a Q&A session for each programme that explains what the project is, how it will work, and what important dates you should be aware of. In early September, we will host multiple training sessions over two week to ensure everyone is ready to make the most of their new sites.

Not necessarily. This process may be automated for staff who complete a survey in June to have their 21/22 course content imported into their 22/23 sites.

You will still need to import your previous years’ course content into your new sites in 2023 as you are likely to have done in previous years, but having a pre-populated structure that you can import into any new site will make updating those sites faster and easier.