Moodle

by Marina Glancy.  Moodle 2.8.1 is now available via the usual open download channels (http://download.moodle.org or Git). Following the release of Moodle 2.8.0 on Monday 10 November 2014, it was discovered that a serious regression (MDL-48204) had ... [More] been introduced immediately prior to the release. Due to the severity of the issue we have released new version with this issue fixed and removed the previous versions from download channels. If you have upgraded your site to 2.8.0 then we strongly recommend that you upgrade your site again as soon as possible. Other stable releases were not affected by this regression and there were also no security issues fixed in the new version. Full details about the releases can be found in the release notes: Moodle 2.8.1 release notesApologies for the inconvenience caused by this regression. Thanks to everyone who responded so swiftly to report and fix this issue. [Less]

by Martin Dougiamas.  Twice a year, in May and November, I have the privilege of announcing the latest major Moodle release that bundles up all the work from Moodle HQ and the whole community over the previous six months.Today we are releasing Moodle ... [More] 2.8, the best version of Moodle we've ever produced and a very solid step along our roadmap into the future.This version brings significant improvements to the gradebook, forums, analytics and usability in many areas to empower teachers and improve functionality for everyone across all devices. Some of these many features, such as forum discussion subscription, come from highly-voted user requests in the Moodle Tracker.   Others build upon recent features in Moodle 2.7, such as the new Event Monitoring tool which watches live events and looks for patterns so it can notify you about them.  One feature which is particularly good for accessibility is the new ability to reply to forum post notifications directly from your email client.Of particular note in this release are the grading-related improvements which make up the bulk of the changes.  This recent work began with community surveys and a gradebook workshop in LA earlier this year with enthusiastic representatives from institutions such as Luther College, University of Minnesota, Louisiana State University, San Francisco State University, University of California and Calpoly, as well as Canberra University in Australia and some Moodle Partners.  This workshop brought together many of the people who have been extending and modifying Moodle's gradebook in their own installations.  By the end of the two-day workshop we had a consensus and a rough specification for the core developers at Moodle HQ to work with.  On behalf of the community, I thank the entire group for their efforts in this project, and especially Bob Puffer and Mark McKay for continuing to work closely with Moodle HQ all year to help our developers through the very difficult development process.  We came a long way and there's more coming in 2.9!This kind of community process is to become a hallmark of Moodle development, so look out for workshops to "Design the next Moodle" at some of the Moodlemoots from next year onwards.To find out more about this release, see our overview videos: ...or look at our New Features page which has text and screenshots.To get right into the details, browse the official Release Notes, play with our Demonstration sites or simply download Moodle 2.8 now and use it.  We hope you enjoy this new version, and if you'd really like to help accelerate the work we can do on Moodle in the future, then consider sending us a donation to support our work! [Less]

by Marina Glancy.  Moodle 2.7.3, 2.6.6 and 2.5.9 are now available via the usual open download channels: http://download.moodle.org or Git. In addition to a number of bug fixes and small improvements, security vulnerabilities have been discovered and ... [More] fixed.  We highly recommend that you upgrade your sites as soon as possible. Upgrading should be very straightforward. As per our usual policy, admins of all registered Moodle sites will be notified of security issue details directly via email and we'll publish details more widely in a week.Other details can be found in our notes for each release: Moodle 2.7.3 release notesMoodle 2.6.6 release notesMoodle 2.5.9 release notes Note that 2.6 branch is now supported for security fixes only and 2.5.9 is the final release in 2.5 branch. [Less]