Moodle 2.3

I have ordered my tips in decreasing order of importance i.e. the ones that really matter are at the top. When reading the graphs, make sure you take a look at the scale, as differences can be minimal. It is important to remember that sound pedagogy and good course design are more important than a super fast server. For the impatient (spoiler) Things that impact performance Amount of blocks displayed on your course pages ‘Show one section only’ in your course settings Images in labels Amount of sections, resources & activities Activity tracking & conditional activities Forum tracking ‘Theme designer’ mode ‘Cache language strings’ option Things that don’t really impact performance Theme Course format Groups/Groupings Note: I ran a series of tests to find out what made a difference when displaying course pages on Moodle, as a student....

Last month I wrote a blog post comparing different versions of Moodle and the demands they each place on hardware. With Moodle 2.4 release just around the corner, I thought I would perform the same series of tests – here are the results. Warning: these tests are not scientific by any standards but I am comparing apples with apples, please read my previous blog post to check my methodology – I did not change anything on my server/Moodle site since my last round of tests....

1. The ‘News forum’ won’t go away! So you have tried a million times to delete the ‘News forum’ at the top of your Moodle course to no avail. The thing is tougher than a cockroach and simply won’t die! Sure you could hide it from students, but that’s cheating. Problem in context: whenever you create a new Moodle course, you get a ‘News forum’ created at the top – whether you want it or not....

Note: apologies for the poor sound quality, I didn’t have access to my usual recording equipment.

1. Do some of the work for them Don’t you love it when you come back to a hotel room to find out that it has been tidied up for you, bed made and a chocolate left on the pillow, maybe even some cool towel art? Before creating new Moodle courses for teachers, I ask Heads of Department/Faculty for their unit/subunit titles for each course. I then create the course ‘shells’ or ‘templates’, so that the first time the teacher logs in to their course (even if they are first time Moodle users), they feel as though they are in known territory, as their syllabus is there right in front of them looking all pretty....