Read about the latest upgrade!

January 2016 Upgrade to Learn@Illinois

On January 6, 2015 Learn@Illinois will underwent a small upgrade. We remain on Moodle 2.8, but and the upgrade brings a number of enhancements to functionality as well as security and bug fixes.

Additions and Improvements

  • UI Group Viewer: Because different groupings are used for different purposes, we added the ability to limit a group viewer block to only show groups from the selected grouping. In addition to this change, you can now include multiple instances of the block in a course with each instance tied to a different grouping and possibly a different label.
  • When adding a student back into a course, the setting to restore grades is checked as a default.
  • The Quick Quiz Entry tool allows you to write simple text input to create a quiz and it’s questions in one quick step.  In addition to the text box, you can now upload plain text files to create the quizzes.  We also updated documentation on this tool.
  • Subscribing to individual forum threads has an improved interface
  • Gradebook now shows always visible averages and column headings at the bottom of the table
  • Multiple plugins to ATTO, an alternative editor, in order to match functionality of standard Tiny MCE editor
  • Dragging and dropping text to a course page will now create a label
  • “Convert URLs into links and images” filter is defaulted to “on” in new course sites. This filter will automatically change URLs into links, and when the link is to an image, it will embed the image.  We recommended this setting, but can change it by going to your administration block > filters > and changing the “Convert URLs into links and images” setting.

Module Updates

The following modules will be updated to a new, improved version!

  • Turnitin plagiarism detection activity
  • Pearson My Lab Mastering integration
  • Illinois Media Space (Kaltura) integration

Bug Fixes

The following tools were experiencing one or more bugs which have been resolved. These tools should function as expected.

  • NetID login
  • My Moodle drop-down menu
  • Dates report
  • UI Fast Grader
  • Quick Grading
  • Theme and formatting changes to reduce crowding and overlap of text/objects.