Contributions and Summer Releases

By: Phill Miller, VP of Product Strategy

It’s an exciting time here at Moodlerooms.

Today, we are proud to announce along with our partners, NetSpot, that we have contributed new open-source code to the Moodle community. While NetSpot has contributed of a new Assignment module, which has already been included in June’s global release of Moodle’s core software (Moodle 2.3); Moodlerooms has contributed Flexpage, a tool that helps educators and instructional designers create more engaging and visually appealing courses by streamlining the organization and presentation of their course content.

These contributions are the first of many, so stay tuned for more throughout the summer. For more information on Flexpage, check out our blog tomorrow for a full review by Co-Founder and VP of Product Marketing, Tom Murdock.

In addition to open-source contribution, last week, we launched our joule Summer release, which was a big step forward for our customers and the joule platform. For the release, we identified key areas that are important to instructors and created enhanced features that are simple to use and enable those instructors to get more done in a shorter period of time.

Here’s a quick rundown of the new features in the joule Summer release:

• joule Grader: For teachers, grading is a task that was a bit of a hassle when using the LMS. We created joule Grader to make grading a much simpler process, increase a teacher's efficiency and save them substantial amounts of time.

• Advanced Forums: Forums have always been a useful activity and communication tool. But in the past, navigating forums was at times difficult. We created Advanced Forums to be easier to organize, navigate and use.

• joule Comparison Reports: joule Comparison reports give administrators and teachers access to the kinds of data that helps them track the effectiveness of their course content, improve that content as needed and provide more help to students that require it.

• Rubrics Advanced Grading Method: Rubrics enable instructors to be more consistent when grading assignments and makes the assignment grading criteria more transparent..

• Checklist Advanced Grading Method: The Checklist Advanced Grading Method gives teachers an easier way to inform students of an assignment’s grading criteria and grade those assignments more quickly.

• Webcam: Today, video is more important than ever in the e-Learning environment, not only as a format for learning content, but for more personalized communication. We created Webcam so that teachers and students can easily capture an audio or video recording using their computer’s built-in webcam and post it anywhere in joule that they have typically typed a message.
  

Over the next few weeks, our Learning Solutions team will be focusing on these new joule features in our weekly “Best Practices” blogs. Stay tuned for the first installment on joule Grader this Thursday.

All the best,

- Phill