Check out these important updates and reminders from Academic Technology:
- Don’t Lose Student-Created Research!
- Annual Deletion of 5-year-old Moodle Courses
- Looking Ahead: ADA Compliant Moodle Courses and Other Online Materials
- New Look for Classroom Touchscreens
- Need New or Updated Lab Software? Let us know!
Don’t Lose Student-Created Research!
If you have worked with students who are graduating, please take a moment to check that all files they shared with you are in your Shared Drive for your research, not sitting in their My Drive and simply shared with you. Make a copy of the files or ask your student to transfer ownership to you. This will ensure that you will have full control over these files in the future.
Annual Deletion of 5-year-old Moodle Courses
All Moodle courses from the 2020-2021 Academic Year will be deleted on August 1st. That was a big year for courses taught online, so please take a look so nothing historic will be lost to you. If you want to save a copy of your course materials, we recommend you create a backup file of your course (opens in a new tab) and download that to your preferred file storage location.
NOTE: The backup of your course will only be viewable if you restore it to Moodle. If you want a more easily accessible version of your course, consider printing to PDF so that you can quickly see how your Moodle course is organized.
Looking Ahead: ADA Compliant Moodle Courses and Other Online Materials
There will NOT be any major updates to Moodle in 2026. Instead, we recommend that you focus on familiarizing yourself with the WCAG 2.1 AA standard and building ADA compliance into your upcoming Moodle courses and other materials you are sharing with students and the larger Carleton community. While your Fall and Winter courses do not need to meet these requirements, Spring courses will need to meet these requirements by April 2027 as mandated by the Department of Justice.
During the summer, Academic Technologists will develop the following resources for faculty and staff to revise and build new teaching materials and learning activities:
- A Moodle course that outlines and demonstrates how to ensure the Moodle course shell is ADA compliant (expected release end of August 2026).
- An online summer workshop to introduce faculty and staff to the most common issues in ADA compliance and how to resolve them. Join us for the workshop on July 8, 10:30-noon. Register for Summer 2026 Faculty Workshops here
- Student workers who can help with remediating content, especially PDF files.
- Exploring AI tools to help with the remediation, such as Ask AIMee, WebAIM’s accessibility chatbot that can answer questions about accessibility.
You can also reach out to at@carleton.edu to schedule departmental workshops or one-on-one sessions. AT drop-in hours during the next year will also be a place where we can discuss ADA compliance questions.
New Look for Classroom Touchscreens
ITS will be rolling out a new look for the classroom AV touchscreens with the same functionality and a new minimalist look over the coming years. One new feature is a help page people can access by pressing the “circle I” international symbol for information. The first rooms to get this new look, starting this summer, will include CMC 110, 206, 209, 301 and 319; Leighton 236, 303, 304, 305, 402 and 426; as well as Sayles 251 and 253.
Need New or Updated Lab Software? Let us know!
Whether you need to request new software for lab computers or want to update existing software, ITS can help! Simply send us an email at helpdesk@carleton.edu.