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The upcoming Freyr release introduces an array of supporting plugins to both Moodle LMS and Moodle Workplace customers who are utilising Moodle V4.3.
We are introducing a number of exceptional plugins working alongside our theme, with a large focus on the learning library. This brand new self serve mechanism is a faster, more efficient way of helping users find courses on the platform. In addition to this are a number of new blocks to help bring further value to dashboards, such as announcements, recommended learning and bookmarked learning.
Supported on version(s):
A note from Edd Clementson, Product lead at Titus
The Freyr release is an expansion of our theme plugin into our theme suite, as we introduce a number of supporting plugins to improve the platform further.
We are introducing a new self serve mechanism within Moodle named the Learning library. We have purposefully built this feature in React, meaning it’s lightweight, responsive and delivers a fast performance to end users. There are an array of options available to configure this library on a per tenant basis, including displaying different pieces of information such as course custom fields, prices, course ratings and more.
As always, we greatly encourage you to provide feedback and submit requests/votes via our portal page, for what you’d like to see next.
With thanks to the team who worked on this release:
Edd Clementson, Product Lead
Connor Young, Developer
Vagelis Simitis, Developer
Kristian Burgess, UX Designer
Introducing the golden apple of this release, the Learning library. A new self serve mechanism with a host of options configurable at a multi tenancy level.
This newly built, responsive and fast performing library offers a live search, pagination, the ability to view courses over multiple categories, search via tags and much more. The front end offers both a list and tile view, is fully responsive and allows for courses to be bookmarked. Importantly, using the course custom fields allows you to select if a course is an ‘event’ or ‘resource’ to help certain learning resources stand out further.
Filtered views can easily be shared / linked too, the sort order can be changed and a ‘more details’ modal can be enabled to show detailed information about the course. Furthermore, tags can be used to visually recognise courses that are created for ‘events’ or ‘resources’, the possibilities are huge!
For a list of each setting available, see the ‘additional features and changes’ area at the bottom of this page.
A new report source ‘Search term log’ is being introduced alongside the learning library, allowing you to view which search terms users have been searching for on the platform. In addition to this we have added aggregations to easily view the count of search terms; and also filters and conditions for viewing data before/after certain dates or between a desired date range.
Adjustments have been made to enhance clarity and user experience through the positioning, spacing, language and sizing of a number of elements. We’ve also introduced a new setting to allow for the better display & positioning of background images, preventing distortion.
A number of aesthetics improvements to the navigation bar have been implemented. These include improvements to the hover state animation effect & the removal of the focus highlight on click. Additionally there is now a new theme setting to disable the ‘My Courses’ option from the top navigation bar.
We are excited to introduce new page loading animations to enhance your browsing experience, providing a smoother and more visually appealing transition between pages. These animations aim to reduce perceived loading times and improve overall user satisfaction.
We are excited to announce a new feature for Moodle Workplace that enhances the flexibility of tenant management. Administrators can now toggle branding settings within each tenant’s theme configuration. This feature allows you to choose between using the default tenant’s branding or applying custom branding specific to each tenant.
We are pleased to introduce Theme Presets, a powerful new feature designed to streamline the customisation of your Moodle environment. With Theme Presets, you can effortlessly apply a polished and consistent appearance to your Moodle with just a few clicks; acting as a starting ground and demonstrating some of the themes capabilities. These presets may include colours, fonts and images.
We are thrilled to introduce the new Recommended Learning block in Moodle, designed to enhance personalised learning experiences for users.
This block displays tailored learning content based on tags, implemented through user preferences (user interests) and activity (existing course enrolments).
Further enhancing the dashboards, is the option for a new Bookmarked learning block. Bookmark content from the new Learning Library, and it will appear in the Bookmarked Learning block, making it easy for you to revisit later.
The Announcements block helps keep everyone informed by providing a dedicated space for essential site communications. Admins can choose which site announcements are shown through this block to ensure centralised updates and improved visibility for key messaging.
We have introduced the ability to allow for users to rate courses. We have brought an existing course ratings plugin (freely available) into the theme suite and made a few additional small changes to the aesthetics, including the implementation of course ratings into the Learning Library self serve mechanism.
New functionality accessed by visiting URL/local/library. We recommend adding this link into the top navigation bar. New features include:
Additional settings include:
In a previous release (4.2) the following feature was introduced but due to its importance as part of the self serve mechanism we’re raising this feature again:
A new report source is now available as part of the Custom report builder. This allows you to view which search terms users have been searching for on the platform. In addition to this we have added aggregations to easily view the count of search terms; and also filters and conditions for viewing data before/after certain dates or between a desired date range.
Improved layout: Enhanced the overall layout of the login page. Adjustments have been made to enhance clarity and user experience.
Login page background image display setting: The login page now features a new setting specifically for the display of the login background image. This setting provides flexibility to prevent stretching and resizing based on your preferences for the chosen login background image. Note that this setting only affects layout 2 of the login page.
Contain: Image will be resized to fit within the page without cropping. This will show approximately half of the uploaded image but will not distort or squash the image. We recommend approximately a 16:9 aspect ratio for the uploaded background image using this display setting.
Cover: Image will be resized to cover the entire page, potentially cropping edges. This will show approximately half of the uploaded image but will not distort or squash the image. We recommend approximately a 16:9 aspect ratio for the uploaded background image using this display setting.
This upcoming block will display recommended courses to logged in users and is designed for use on the dashboard page (although will work elsewhere). It will recommend courses based on tags via 2 methods:
Course Tags – Tags that have been added against courses the user is already enrolled on.
User interests – Tags that have been added against a users profile. The block will display courses that match the same tags as user interests or course tags the users enrolled in.
There is a sitewide level setting an admin can set to define if the block recommends courses using 1 of the above methods or both. This block will not recommend learning you are already enrolled in.
This new block displays learning that has been bookmarked (or starred) by the logged in users. Learning can be bookmarked from the Learning Library using the bookmark icon located at the top right of each tile image.
Announcements block
The Announcements block has been created to ensure there is a centralised area that displays selected key posts from the Site Announcements forum. (Identified by id=1 on all platforms). In order to display site announcement posts, a tag of ‘announcement’ must be added into the post:
The announcements block displays the profile photo of the poster, the name of the poster, the announcement message and the date/time of the post.
Depending on the number of posts showing there is a left/right button allowing the user to cycle through the posts.
The announcements block can be configured through the block settings below:
Block instance settings:
Site announcements count (1, 3 or 5 max)
Toggle slideshow transition
Toggle (DEFAULT = ON)
When enabled, this means users don’t have to click the left/right icons or the slider circles, to change announcements, it will automatically transition after the defined period, to the next announcement.
We have taken the fantastic plugin publicly available here into the Titus theme suite and consequently made some enhancements and brought this inline with our new Learning Library. If you wish to have a copy of this plugin please get in touch, however without additional Titus enhancement such as the Learning Library it will not add any additional value.
Primarily we have introduced a setting to display course ratings within the Learning Library on course tiles.
This plugin allows students to add ratings and reviews to courses. Other users can then view and read existing reviews.
When installed, a custom course field that stores the average course rating is created automatically. The course ratings will be displayed through the Learning Library providing that theme setting is enabled.
The current course rating is also automatically added to each course home page.
By default every student enrolled into a course can leave a rating. It can be configured that only students who completed the course can action this. There is also an option to allow to enable or disable course ratings for individual courses.
We have introduced new functionality as part of the theme plugin suite, to display automatically created, unique (based on a users name) effects in place of a blank profile photo. These include displaying ‘smiley faces’ or a marble effect, across the platform in all areas where profile photos are displayed.
Within the theme settings there are a number of settings:
Variant – Beam or Marble – There are 2 effects available, beam (smiley faces) and marble (a marble effect).
Example areas where these Smilify images should be shown include:
Program – Users allocated list
Certification – Users allocated list
Custom reports
Organisation structure
Tenant users list
Global users list
Global messaging panel
User profile page
Course participants list
Course gradebook
Course ratings (part of Titus plugin suite)
In the feature filled release we’ve also made the following changes:
Top navbar items hover state: Top navbar items have a new improved ‘on hover’ state animation. The focus highlight has also been removed ‘on click’
Remove click highlight: The highlight ‘on click’ for top navbar items, tenant selector, and logo has been removed.
My courses: A new theme setting has been added to disable the ‘My Courses’ option from the top navigation bar.
MWP Only (Multi-Tenancy)
Custom Tenant Branding Toggle: Added a new toggle setting for enabling/disabling custom tenant branding. When disabled, the branding set in the default tenant (Moodle Workplace only) will be used within that tenant.
Miscellaneous
Theme Presets Option: Introduced a new ‘Theme presets’ option to simplify theme management. With Theme Presets, you can effortlessly apply a polished and consistent appearance to your Moodle with just a few clicks; acting as a starting ground and demonstrating some of the themes capabilities. These presets may include colours, fonts and images.
Bulk Import (MWP)
Asynchronous bulk tenant uploads: Within Moodle Workplace we previously introduced the ability to more easily brand tenants in bulk by uploading an exported theme settings file. We have now improved the performance of this area by allowing this mass tenant settings upload to be performed using Moodle’s asynchronous tasks. This will prevent performance and timeout issues and allow for tenants to be updated in the background without affecting server performance.
Marketing Tiles (Site home) – We have now ensured alignment over the marketing tile links so each tile and each primary button will be aligned with the largest/tallest of the marketing tiles.
My courses (Moodle Workplace) – We have decreased the number of program tiles displayed from 10 to 8 before pagination takes affect.
Settings combined – We have taken the two site home settings toggles for ‘Enable slideshow’ and ‘Enable Feature banner’ and combined these into a dropdown setting named ‘Site home banner’.
Site footer – We have remove the option for ‘Footer image position’ so now all uploaded images will be aligned centrally along with the footer link columns.