On January 2, 2022, during the scheduled monthly system maintenance window, Course Site was upgraded to Moodle version 3.9. Several new features and enhancements were added along with some key updates to help lay the groundwork for major changes coming over the next year. The complete public release notes are available in the LTS Knowledge base along with simple screenshots and brief overview videos of key features.
Looking ahead over the next year, there are a few significant changes on the horizon. The first, and most important, change will be to the overall look-and-feel of Course Site. The Classic theme, the current default theme for several years, is no longer supported and will be completely removed from Moodle at the end of 2022. The newer Boost theme will become the default theme. The Boost theme has been available in Course Site for several years now, and many are already using it. It provides a much more modern look, offering a significantly cleaner and more accessible interface. To help us transition to this new default theme, we will be taking the following action over the coming year:
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Monday, May 23, 2022: We will switch the site-wide default theme to Boost.
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January 2023: The Classic theme will be completely removed from Moodle.
In the meantime, we strongly recommend you switch your preferred theme to Boost and start familiarizing yourself with it this semester. It’s typical if it takes some time getting used to the new theme.
The second major change is related to the Course Site home page (not to be confused with the login page). When you first log in to Course Site, the current home page is less than useful for most users, and analytics show that most of its content is ignored. For a while now, the Moodle community has been putting great effort into the Dashboard page. The Moodle dashboard is the primary launching point for users to quickly access their courses in one click, view a comprehensive calendar of activities and due dates at-a-glance, and jump back into recently accessed courses. Based on our recent survey results, many are already successfully using the Dashboard as their home page.
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Monday, May 23, 2022: We will switch the default Course Site home page upon successful login to be the Dashboard
Each of these changes offer significant overall improvements for all users regarding how they interact with Course Site. These changes strongly align with the great feedback we have received from recent and ongoing surveys. We hope you will take the time to familiarize yourself with each ahead of the end of the Spring 2022 semester. More information can be found in the Course Site section of the LTS Knowledge base.