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Wattle 4.0 upgrade – A new look and easier navigation

 As long-time ANU staff members will know, on the first Monday in December – when the campus ducklings are shedding their down for feathers – the Wattle upgrade is due. As usual, Wattle was out of action on Monday 5 December this year for its upgrade to Moodle 4.0. After extensive technical testing by the ITS teams, plus input from every College, the Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT), and some ANU lecturers and students, final approval was given for the upgrade. Now Wattle is back online with a new look and feel. Congratulations to the ITS teams for their quick and thorough work!

The upgrade, which was necessary to maintain full support and cyber security, introduces excellent new usability features, especially improvements to the navigation.Please note that all the existing tools and activities continue to function the same as before, with a couple of handy additions.

Course index and tabbed menu 

The Course index (left hand menu) has significant improvements, including: 

  • Direct navigation to all sections, activities and resources 
  • Collapsible sections 
  • Ability to move and reorganise all items while in Edit mode.

The new tab style navigation menu (located under the course title) is now context sensitive, giving quicker access to the most used items on that page.

Easier access to editing 

The Edit mode switch is now pinned in the top menu, making it available from all views within a course, saving quite a bit of scrolling time. Adding the ability to reorganise items using drag-n-drop within the Course index, and between the Course indexand the main page, means managing a large Wattle course is now much easier.

Responsiveness to various screen sizes, including mobile devices

Wattle 4.0 has a modern look with increased white space to support responsiveness for mobile devices. The menus on the left and the right now open and close responsively depending on screen width, and each of the topics is now also collapsible, both on the main page and in the Course index.

Now that the upgrade is completed, please check how your course appears in this new version. More information about the upgrade is available at Teaching at ANU: Making the most of Wattle 4.0 for your course including: 

The Wattle User Manual is in the process of being updated – high priority articles are completed, the rest is coming soon.

Further Support

If you need further assistance and information, please contact the Wattle Support Team and Educational Designers in your College. Alternatively, please log a request in the Service Desk portal or Wattle.Support@anu.edu.au.

December 2022


Jenny Edwards, Learning Environment Specialist, Nguyen Bui and Melinda Drummond, Education designers, Education Design Team, Centre for Learning and Teaching (CLT)