Roadmap

This roadmap collects the best information about upcoming features in Moodle. It is not 100% certain - features may change according to available funding and developers.

Version 2.0

Expected mid 2009 <- this is obviously wrong! (or, at least, inaccurate) :-P

Major features

• Moodle 2.0 will require PHP 5.2 as a minimum, allowing us to clean up the code in some areas. For more info see: gophp5.org.

File handling improvements

• File API - Moodle.com

maintains an internal repository of files and governs access to them

• Repository API - Moodle.com

allows users to browse external repositories and select files to bring into Moodle

• Portfolio API - Moodle.com

allows Moodle content to be captured and pushed out to external repositories.

These three are separate but complementary so will be developed together.

Improvements to the organisation of courses

• Conditional activities - Open University (Sam Marshall)

Allowing dependencies and forced paths through activities: ie "You can't do this thing until that thing is completed".

• Progress tracking - REQUIRES FUNDING!

AKA Proper competency tracking, so that individuals can have learning plans listing outcomes/courses which are updated when courses are completed.

• Pagelib 2.0, Blocks 2.0 - REQUIRES FUNDING!

refactor Blocks and Pages using contexts to allow blocks to go anywhere in Moodle with better control.

• Course completion

interface that allows teachers to specify exactly when a course should be considered finished for each user

Changes to activity modules

• New Wiki module (nwiki) - DFWikiteam-UPC

To be cleaned up and included as a core module.

• Feedback module - Andreas Grabs

Polished and included as a core module.

• Quiz module and question bank
  • Quiz report enhancements - Jamie Pratt, contracted by The Open University

    Major improvements to the quiz reports, especially regrading and item analysis.

  • Quiz navigation improvements for students - Tim Hunt, The Open University
  • Flagging questions during a quiz attempt - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Quiz editing interface improvements - Olli Savolainen, Finnish Summer Code project.
  • MDL-8648 Essay questions can now be randomised by random questions. Note that this change is not backwards compatible if you upgrade a Moodle 1.9 site with random questions that pick from categories containing a mixture of essay and non-essay questions. The behaviour of some quizzes will change. - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Question tagging and improved searching in the question bank - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Administration page for question types - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.
  • Regular Expression question type added to the official Moodle distribution - Joseph Rézeau.

Improvements to other bits of Moodle

• HTML editor 2.0 - Moodle.com

Replaces our ageing HTMLarea with a new one that works on more browsers, enforces XHTML strict and better integrates with the new File API

• Blog 2.0 - Moodle.com

Add commenting to blogs (MDL-8776), as well as support for external blogs

• Messaging 2.0 - Moodle.com

Refactor messaging to use plugins for input and output, controlled by users

• Secure RSS feeds - Moodle.com

Obscure RSS feed URLs using private keys, controlled by users.

• Backup 2.0 - Moodle.com

New backup that actually works on large courses etc and is faster. Old backup will be retained as a separate directory to import old backups.

• IMS Common Cartridge (REQUIRES FUNDING!)

IMS CC import and hopefully export.

• Site-wide groups - Moodle.com (REQUIRES FUNDING!)

Site wide groups are a number one request

• More tagging

Tagging of courses, activities and other things

• AJAX for gradebook User Interfaces - Moodle.com (REQUIRES FUNDING!)

A host of UI improvements to enhance usability and speed

• General usability review - Moodle.com

We'll be attacking many of the most popular issues from the Moodle Tracker

Administrative improvements

• Community hub interfaces - Moodle.com and others

Makes it easy for users to find and navigate other systems and external Moodle repositories, leveraging the Moodle Network in various ways.

• Standard Web Services Layer - UPC and moodle.com

Standard set of core API functions made available via SOAP and XML-RPC

• Enrolments improvements including groups synchronisation - moodle.com (skodak)

Several major improvements related guest access, course enrolments, metacourses and groups synchronisations (aka global groups)

• Improvements to the roles administration interfaces - Tim Hunt, moodle.com and others.

• Admin report plugins can choose where in the admin tree they get added - Tim Hunt, moodle.com.

Internal clean-ups

• DB layer 2.0 - Moodle.com

MDL-14679 Database access is to be refactored so that: we can use prepared statements everywhere for increased security and some performance, we put datalib functions in a class to allow better unit tests (mock db), and remove the need for slashes in userspace. This will cause breakage for 3rd party modules (but fixing them won't be too hard).

• Old DB install/upgrade system removed - Moodle.com

The deprecated system for installing or upgrading database entries used in Moodle < 1.7 will be completely removed, while supporting only the new XML based database scheme introduced in 1.7.

Hopefully

• Student Information API

API for integrating external systems for managing student information

• Moodle Voice

Moodle Voice is a project for embedding VoiceXML support into Moodle Core.

• Learning Design export? - Moodle.com and Open University of The Netherlands

We plan to have a very simple export for any Moodle course into IMS LD format, as a proof of concept and to help the community start learning about IMS LD.

• Turnitin Integration - Dan Marsden with support from Catalyst NZ
• Workshop module refactoring and re-inclusion - (REQUIRES FUNDING!)
• Lesson module refactoring - (REQUIRES FUNDING!)

See also

• Release Notes