A little Joule holiday cheer

With a new Joule 2.3 release coming right in step with the holiday season Learning Solutions would like to spread some seasonal cheer (“Jouletide” joy) by highlighting two of the fantastic new features that will be available to instructors after the Dec. 28 product release.

If you’ve been good this year look forward to Joule enhancements which are sure to save you time: the new Joule Gradebook additions and the drag-and-drop file option.

With the Joule Gradebook grading in Moodle™ is simplified in numerous ways. Most importantly the Joule Gradebook allows for quick grading actions! Here are some of the new functions we like best:

• Column grader: Input an activity grade for all course participants at one time.
• Message to incompletes: Send a message to all participants who have not completed a specific activity.
• Message to grade range: Set a grade range that will trigger a custom message to be sent to students whose grades fall within that range.
• Change all grades in this column to: Change all grades for an activity using this feature. If all students except a few have received the same grade you can use this feature to save time by only having to input the exceptions.
• Row grader: Grade all activities for a student at once.
• Message to student: Send a message to one participant directly from the gradebook.

Wishing for a way to simplify your file upload process? Our new drag-and-drop file upload option is sure to be a welcome gift! Now you can easily add files to the front page of your course by simply locating the file on your desktop and dragging it onto the course’s front page. The file uploads and is automatically turned into a file resource. Say so long to the file picker!

Note: You will need to have AJAX enabled on your site and add the Drag and drop upload block for this feature to work.

~Emily