New Library block and moving to Moodle 2
May 1, 2012
To take advantage of the search capabilities of the Library’s Discover search engine the library block in Stream has been updated. The revised Library block features a search widget for Discover which offers an integrated Google-style search of many of the Library’s article databases, ebooks, the catalogue, Massey Research Online and other resources, instead of searching each resource individually. While Google focuses on publicly available content, Discover focuses on the Library’s licensed, subscribed, scholarly material, as well as locally-held content.
In order to update an library block you will first need to delete the default Massey Library block if it has been added to your course. Please be aware that you shouldn’t delete a customised library block that you and/or library staff may have created. You can tell whether you have a customised block as when you turn editing on the edit icon ( ) will appear for this block. The default Massey Library block does not allow editing so you won’t see the that icon.
The library block can be added from the dropdown list of blocks from the right-hand column in Stream when turning editing on in your Stream Environment (see Fig 1 below).
Fig 1
Moving to Moodle 2
The move to the new version of Moodle (the learning management system at the heart of Stream) is in full swing. All the Massey customisations have be recoded and are being tested before being moved to the new production environment and then being released to staff. A course conversion tool which will convert environments in our current version to an equivalent in the new version is being used to migrate across some 6000 environments. The conversion tool is essential for ensuring the structure, content etc of Stream environments are replicated in the new version and therefore reduces the need for staff to recreate their environments. Invariably there will be things that the course converter tool cannot bring across, in these cases a team of people will manually move whatever is not converted by the tool so as to ensure the workload for academic and general staff is kept at a minimum.
Before migrating, staff will be informed of the move and given the opportunity to remove unwanted content from their environments and to specify what their new environment should be based on. At this stage the plan is to migrate 2012 Stream environments to the new version, however, we are aware that some paper offerings run every second year and some are unlikely to run again in 2013 or beyond.
A suite of professional development courses and information sharing sessions are being planned for each campus to assist with communicating the move and to give every staff member the opportunity to see and hear what the new version offers. A website dedicated to the project has been created at: http://m2.massey.ac.nz. The site provides details about the move, including FAQs and the opportunity to provide feedback about the project. This website is regularly updated and is the place where all the information about the upgrade project can be found.
