Enhance GauchoSpace Service Quality
Maintain a secure, easy to use, and pedagogically-useful learning environment. Continue to deploy and apply core Moodle software updates for security and bug fixes. Continue to gather and expand campus constituent feedback from instructors, students, and others through surveys and focus groups organized by the GauchoSpace Planning Committee. Deploy quarterly systems and code updates, including requested enhancements, new plugins, local code modifications, and integrations with external tools and applications.
Improve access to GauchoSpace for all users, from any device. Utilize principles of universal design, with specific focus on mobile accessibility, in all UX/UI updates. Deploy a mobile application for iOS and Android devices for campus use, designed around student feedback and priorities.
Continue to update GauchoSpace based on Moodle long term-support releases. The most recent major update to GauchoSpace was in December 2020, updating core code from Moodle 3.5 to Moodle 3.9., which is supported until 2023. Moodle is planning a major UX overhaul for Moodle 4.0 in November 2021, which we will evaluate and plan around upon release. Our current target for the next major GauchoSpace update will be Moodle 4.1, to be released in 2022.
UCSB Campus Cloud hosted GauchoSpace
Leverage the UCSB Campus Cloud to the extent possible to modernize the GauchoSpace infrastructure for increased resilience, reliability, and scalability. In early 2021, we are testing an auto-scaling version of Moodle in the Campus Cloud AWS environment for suitability for production service and planning for how and when to move the infrastructure.
Liberate the GauchoSpace Data
Deepen integration with relevant campus data sources via the campus API gateway. Maintain and enhance integrations with existing and new campus-wide applications and services (e.g. G-Suite, Zoom, UCSB Library discovery resources and research guides, etc.). Develop improved processes and expand resources for instructors and departments for utilizing and integrating external applications (such as textbook publishers’ homework tools, or third-party communication tools).
Securely design and deploy dashboards for students, instructors, advisors, and campus leadership. Working with campus parters, we are working to help consume GauchoSpace log data into the Campus Data Lake Lagoon, in order to enrich this data source with learning data. We are targeting a Spring 2021 ingestion.