LMS Updates: August 12, 2013

As part of our ongoing efforts to increase the usability & feature set of WolfWare, DELTA recently made several updates to our campus LMS tools, specifically Moodle and Collaborate. Here is a summary of work performed on August 12th, 2013.

Moodle

1. On the courses server, we made login changes allowing for direct to Shibboleth login, reducing the number of clicks required to get to a course homepage.

2. We installed several new blocks/plugins for Moodle. Specifically, we:

• Updated the Blackboard Collaborate block
• Updated the TurningPoint block (info using clickers with moodle)
• Installed the WeBWorK block (more info)
• Installed the Nanogong plugin (more info)
• Installed MathJax

3. We made minor code fixes and security updates to PHP/MySQL.

4. We incorporated additional code to clean up old files on our servers at regular intervals to maintain their performance.

5. We updated the spell checker in Moodle’s HTML editor from Google Spell (discontinued) to ASpell.

Blackboard Collaborate

We upgraded to Collaborate version 12.1.6 which includes the following new features:

• Improved echo cancellation, making it easier to use Collaborate without a headset
• Ability to turn off event notification in the text chat window
• Private chats are displayed as orange text within the main chat area instead of a separate tab

Please note: This Collaborate upgrade does not incorporate mobile support, which is available only to customers that are hosted by Blackboard. (NCSU currently self-hosts.)

We will continue to do our best to improve the suite of online learning tools offered by DELTA.  Please feel free to provide feedback to let us know how we’re doing or request new features. Both options are available under the Feedback section of wolfware.ncsu.edu. And I welcome you to contact me directly as well with any input and suggestions.