Our latest incarnation of Moodle was released this morning. New functionality includes:

Audio resources pages – enabling audio files traditionally distributed on CD/DVDs to be made available as mp3 files for download
New blog module – we found the existing Moodle blog too restrictive so have had a new system developed – this allows the setting up of personal blogs, course blogs and group blogs, commenting on blog posts, tags, RSS subscription and the ability to publish your blog comments to different groups including your tutorial group, course, the University or the World
Podcasting – we’ve had the Moodle iPodcast module updated and this will allow one podcast channel per course, distribution of mp3 / mp4 files, use of lyrics tags in mp3 files for textual transcriptions, scheduling of podcasts etc
MathML filter – for the display of maths content
Statistics – including numbers of students accessing course sites and particular activities
Shared activities – allowing students and ALs to create their own wikis and forums and invite others to join them
Voting – providing a range of question types and results display options.

There are also lots of enhancements to existing modules such as Quiz and MyStuff. We hope to make most of this available to other Moodle users. OU staff can view further details on the Intranet. I’ll no doubt be blogging more about some of these new features in the coming weeks.