Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Only academic Moodle courses from September 2023 will have to use the new Brookes VLE template.

Academic Moodle courses from previous years will remain as they are now. They will just look Moodle 4 after the Moodle upgrade in July.

Academic Moodle courses that run in Semester 3 (2022-2023) will remain as they are now. They will just look Moodle 4 after the Moodle upgrade in July.

Academic Moodle courses that started during academic year 2022-2023 but span across Semester 1 2023-2024 will remain as they are now. They will just look Moodle 4 after the Moodle upgrade in July.

Yes, colleagues will be able to roll over content from previous years.

However, for academic year 2023/24 we have contracted a third-party to carry out the rollover process. Learn more about the rollover process this year.

No. Both of these formats are third party add-ons to our Moodle system and we have made the decision to prevent colleagues from using them in new courses because:

• they haven't been fully updated to embrace the new look and feel nor functionality of Moodle 4. 

• they make academic courses susceptible to accessibility issues, which doesn't help us meet the accessibility guidelines and legal requirements. 

• they are not supported by the creators of Moodle.

• they might not get updated on time (or not at all) to implement new features or user interface changes of Moodle itself. This means that we are relying on third-party developers to find time or even choose whether to implement improvements and accessibility fixes.

Yes, if your module delivery is better suited to organising content by themes, topics or sessions, then you don't have to adopt the weekly section titles. In fact, any naming convention of these sections that you were using in the previous runs will be carried over to the new run of the course with the course rollover process.

The naming and the order of the standard sections that appear before the weeks (i.e. Overview, Key Resources, Keep in touch, Assessment and Resits) must not be changed, as these will help us achieve a consistent student experience across all academic Moodle courses.

Programme Sites or Subject Group Spaces that are linked to Banner won't have to use the Brookes VLE template. They will just look Moodle 4 after the Moodle upgrade in July 2023. We will revisit this decision depending on what the requirements on consistency and accessibility for these Moodle spaces are.

Moodle spaces that are not linked to Banner won't have to use the Brookes VLE template and will remain as they are now. They will just look Moodle 4 after the Moodle upgrade in July 2023.

Yes. Moodle 4 won't affect your current access and any enrolments to previous courses will be retained after the Moodle upgrade on 28 July.

It's not technically possible to add images next to the title of each section, but you will be able to add images after you click on a section to reveal its contents.

The September 2023 academic Moodle courses will have to be ready and visible to students by Week 0 in September 2023. As soon as we gather feedback about the template (the feedback form is open until 15 April 2023), we will ask IT Services to create the new empty courses in Moodle, so that colleagues can start working on their content in our current system.

Yes. Moodle has been developed to be responsive (mobile-friendly) on devices using a browser such as Safari, Firefox or Chrome which means that it resizes appropriately and adapts to different screen-sizes. Therefore, Moodle 4 and the Brookes VLE template work well on mobile when using a browser on iOS or Android.