Site news

System Upgrade of UMMoodle during 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on 24th August 2013 (Saturday)

System Upgrade of UMMoodle during 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on 24th August 2013 (Saturday)

by Admin, UMMoodle -
Number of replies: 0

To All UMMoodle Users,

Please be informed that ICTO schedules an upgrade of E-learning platform during 09:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. on 24th August 2013 (Saturday). The access to WebCourse (http://webcourse.umac.mo) and UMMoodle (http://ummoodle.umac.mo) will be suspended during the said period.

Moodle 1.9 to be End of Life
The Moodle community had announced that Moodle 1.9 would be end of Life by the end of December, 2013. It means that there should be no more support provided for securityissue or enhancement on its features. After discussing it at the IETC meetings in last academic year, we decided to upgrade UMMoodle to the latest stable version that provides more new features, module improvements and security bug fixed.

New arrangement of UMMoodle
After the system upgrade, the UMMoodle running version 2.5.1 will take up the role of Production Site while the old UMMoodle running version 1.9.19 will step down as Legacy Site. The details arrangement are listed as following:

    • Production Site: from 2.3.1+ to 2.5.1+
    • Legacy Site: 1.9.19+
    • For smooth transition, the Production Site (2.5.1+) and the Legacy Site (1.9.19+) will parallel run for one semester, but the Legacy site will be brought down in 2014. New courses will be created in Production Site by default.


Major Improvement of UMMoodle 2.5

    • Easier to upload files (just drag and drop)
    • Support external repository (e.g. Youtube, Google Docs)
    • Activity modules improvement
    • Navigation enhancement
    • New file picker interface
    • Mobile devices support
    • More useful modules and plugins


Limitation of UMMoodle 2.5
Some third-party plugins are no longer available. They are Hotpot, Team Assignment, Exabis Eportfoilo, Project Format. For Turnitin and VeriGuide, ICTO is still working with the providers for workable plugins for version 2.5.1. We will inform our users once it is available to use. Should you require any assistance, please feel free to contact our webcourse administrator (webcourse@umac.mo).

Course Pre-Creation in UMMoodle 2.5
In order to minimize our teaching staff's effort on creating courses on UMMoodle, starting from the new academic year, we will have a new arrangement as following:

    • On 9 September, we will pre-created the course on UMMoodle for all registered courses.
    • On 4 October, if the new created courses do not used over a month, they will be deleted automatically.
    • By using SIWEB, teaching staff still can maintain their UMMoodle courses according to their own needs.

Course Migration
On request, ICTO will assist our users to migrate courses from UMMoodle 1.9 to UMMoodle 2.5. Should this service is required, please send an email to webcourse@umac.mo with your User ID and the name of Course you would want to migrate.


Thanks for your attention.

Information and Communication Technology Office