End of Year Processes

You may recall that the move to Moodle allows us to deliver an often requested feature of allowing students to retain access to all of the modules within Moodle that they have previously studied. In practice this means that once a module has finished for its academic year it needs to be moved into a read only state (to preserve it) and in parallel with this a new module created ready for the forthcoming academic year. It is important that staff do not reuse the 12-13 modules for the 13-14 session. In consultation with staff the Learning Technology Section have developed the following workflow:

Available Imminently

1. Saturn Module for forthcoming academic year gets created.
2. New tabbed module list released (see below).

Available from end of Q2 2013

1. Roles, rights and privileges are copied from the older module to the newer.
2. Academic imports content from the older module to newer or chooses to upload afresh.

From September 2013

1. Teaching begins with newer module
2. Older module is moved to an archive read only area.
   

There will be a staggered implementation of a number of new features within Moodle to better support this workflow. Look out for announcements in the monthly newsletter or the blog. If you require your module ahead of automatic creation then please do not hesitate to contact us for support.

Note about Non Saturn Modules: Non Saturn modules will approximately follow the above workflow. However (unlike modules in Saturn) there is no definitive list of modules that will need to be created for the forthcoming academic year. Staff will be able to request a new non Saturn module from within the previous module.  

Further details on the new functionality and workflow is below.

1. Code has been developed which takes a feed from the Saturn system on all three campuses for newly created modules for the next session. This will be created in Saturn the following working day after they have been approved and uploaded to the Saturn system. It will be created with your choosen theme and have if your school has specified it a template.
2. To improve navigation a new tabbed course list will be released. The two tabs will separate both current and archive modules meaning that the modules that a student requires more often are readily available.
3. There are many people who have access to modules in Moodle beyond students. To preserve this we are developing code which looks back at the previous instance of a module and transfers roles, rights and privelieges from the older module to the new one. E.g. Editing Teacher, Observer, Cohorts, category roles etc.
4. Anybody with edit rights onto a module will be able to use the module content transfer process to transfer files from the older module to the newer. The process will automatically identify and offer assistance with files that will be better handled in other ways E.g. The transfer of video files to the University?s video platform. Please note that due to a technical limitation it is not currently possible to transfer Turnitin assignments between modules.
5. Students will be enrolled onto the newer module and you will be able to teach with it in the same way as previous years.
6. Once teaching has finished with a module then it will be moved into a read only archive area. If you have non standard course dates then you will be able to extend the life of your module so that it will persist in the normal area.