Things we love about Moodle and Moodle Workplace 4.5
Released in October 2024, Moodle 4.5 is a Long Term Support version of Moodle and is currently being rolled out across the globe. Here are a few features and enhancements that we love about the 4.5 release.
AI
AI and the AI Subsystem is now part of Moodle core with the option to have text, image and summarising options added to the editing functions across Moodle. Once upgraded to Moodle 4.5 your organisation will need an OpenAI or Azure subscription with access to a paid API key.
You can find out more about the AI here.
Assignment
4.5 has seen some great improvements to the Assignment activity. Site administrators can now set a default assignment grade type and scale, reducing effort and creating consistency across courses and programs. Teachers can now grant attempts automatically in Submission settings by enabling more than one attempt in Allowed attempts, and then selecting from the dropdown menu.
You will also notice some UI and UX improvements to the Submissions tab.
Notification preferences
Notifications for Assignments can be configured by learners in their Preferences, to tell them that the assignment is due in 7 days, with additional notifications that the assignment is due soon, and the Assignment is overdue.
Access this link for more on Moodle Assignment.
Quiz
4.5 has many improvements to Moodle Quiz including drag and drop functionality for managing and moving categories in Question bank. There have also been some improvements to the Notification preferences for Quizzes.
Teachers can now also regrade selected questions when regrading a quiz, a great time saver.
Subsections
Moodle LMS 4.5 introduces course Subsections. This new feature allows educators to create nested sections, making course content easier to organise and navigate. You can re-organise entire sections of courses with minimal effort.
With Subsections, course designers can visually group related content, making it easier to build clear, sequential learning paths without the need for additional plugins.
Subsections also benefit learners as they can view content in Subsections in separate dedicated collapsible sections for better focus. This feature also makes it easier to navigate complex topics and see relationships between content – improving the learning experience and engagement.
When enabled by Admins, users will be able to create Subsections via the add an Activity or resource menu at the bottom of Sections. You will still have all the drag and drop functionality and be able to add other activities and resources. A great improvement to being able to better structure courses and reduce cognitive load.
Badges
There are now more improvements to the workflow when creating badges including the ability to have duplicate badges in a course. Manage badges and Course badges reports have been merged to simplify the reports available.
Access this link for more on Moodle Badges.
Course highlighting
Moodle Workplace, Moodle’s enterprise learning solution, has been updated, and the Learning Catalogue, a feature that allows learners to search and enrol in courses they have access to, and use pay option if enabled, has a new Course highlighting feature in 4.5. Course highlighting allows for short courses or other credentials to be showcased in Learning Catalogue.
Access the following links to find out more about Moodle Workplace and Catalogue.
Custom tenant domains
Multi-domains are now available in Moodle Workplace 4.5. You will need to modify your config.php, access Manage tenants page and specify a Custom domain for each tenant.
If you used the ‘experimental’ multi-domain feature in Workplace 4.0-4.4, you will need to migrate the multi-domain tenant domain configuration.
Screen recording
A great new feature in the TinyMCE editor is the new screen recording function. The Record screen functions include, pause, restart and embedding options. Previously users could record audio and record video in the editor, you will now be able to create rich content with screen recordings in 4.5.
Long Term Support
Moodle and Moodle Workplace 4.5 are Long Term Support releases which means your Moodle, once upgraded, will be in support until October 2027. If you want to know more about Long Term Support, we’ve written a blog post on LTS Software.
Read more about the 4.5 release and future releases here:
https://moodledev.io/general/releases/4.5
https://moodledev.io/general/releases
Catalyst IT Australia specialise in large and complex Moodle LMS and Moodle Workplace instances. We are trusted by higher education providers, government, health and major organisations in not-for-profit and commercial sectors.
If you are looking to upgrade your Moodle LMS or Moodle Workplace, reach out to our team.
