← blogs.sussex.ac.uk

Tag Archives: usability

Integrating learning tools with our learning platform

The more learning management systems (LMS) are used for assessments, the more the stakes in the system grow and the more security becomes a serious issue. Iframes are an html technology that is frequently used to share learning objects within institutional systems such as LMS but they can represent a security issue. At Sussex we are […]

Read this post →

The assessment challenge – an end-to-end solution

As some of my last posts have documented, Sussex University has been engaging in the provision of an end-to-end solution for online assessments. Our solution uses Turnitin and GradeMark as the technical infrastructure to support the project. We have presented the project at the Dublin Moodlemoot conference and the Assessment in Higher Education conference and […]

Read this post →

Recommendations for Moodle HQ

This blog post comes on the back of the Moodle moot conference we attended in Edinburgh this month. As in most conferences we received many comments from the Moodle community such as this one by Mark Andrews, University of Cambridge: “Sussex University seems to have sorted out all the problems we have with Moodle“ Well […]

Read this post →

Easy-to-use integration of a library reading list system into Moodle

The library uses a system which allows tutors to create lists of reading resources which simultaneously inform the students what they should be reading and the library of what books and articles they need to purchase. The system is called Talis Aspire and is a market leader in UK University libraries. The system allows flexibility in the […]

Read this post →

Making Moodle more engaging by rethinking the display of content

As many of our regular readers will know, a common theme in this blog has been how it is hard to create Moodle pages that look like the rest of the internet. Many Moodle pages look lists. When we are developing we often ask the question “What would Facebook do?” – or more generally “What […]

Read this post →

New names for the Moodle label and page mods

When you create a Moodle course you can add two generic types of learning material. One provides non-interactive content, and the other provides tools for student interaction. Moodle calls these two material types: “resources” and “activities”. Tutors create the material types through Moodle modules/mods, the names of which reflect what they do – so the […]

Read this post →

E-learning team presentation at Moodle Moot Dublin 2013

In case our Moodlemoot Dublin abstract has left you salivating but you have found that our presentation wasn’t recorded, we thought we’d give a quick overview. Sussex University is a research-led Higher Education institution using a customised Moodle install called Study Direct. We have 1,500 editing tutors, 15,000 students, 2,099 2012/13 Moodle courses  and 13,500 unique hits per […]

Read this post →

Improving Moodle import. Part 3: The application

We have developed a new import tool for importing materials from one course to another. The advantages over the Moodle import are: it is easy to use it is reliable it is fast it only imports questions used in the quiz while maintaining question category structures that are used it shares many similarities with our […]

Read this post →

100% section titles

Section titles are important for a user to get a good experience of a Moodle site. They are used in the contents menu of the site thus making them primary navigation tools. They are like the chapter names in a textbook. They are essential for giving an overview of the site and for finding content within […]

Read this post →

Editing activities, labels & resource

We did some work earlier this year on looking at whats been called moodle’s edit clutter. The edit clutter can roughly be described as the screen ‘noise’ provided by all the amount of icons on a moodle site when your editing content. Alongside the edit clutter we also tried to help with a common question our tutors […]

Read this post →