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Moodle Workshop for York Librarians
Contents
1. Overview 1
2. Accessing Moodle 2
3. General Moodle course organization 2
4. eDITING yOUR cOURSE: bASICS (fROM mOODLE dOCS)………………………………….3
5. Resources (Inserting files or Links to Web Pages)………………………………..4
6. How do I upload and post files from my computer? 4
6.1 Uploading files from your computer 4
6.2 Posting pre-uploaded files for your students 5
7. How do I put text and images directly into Moodle? 5
7.1 Adding and editing section summary 5
7.2 Placing content on the main page via labels 6
8. Blocks 7
9. Activity Modules 8
7.2 Notifying the whole class at once (e-mail notifications) 8
10.General Advice 9
1. Overview[1]
Moodle is a course management system designed to help educators who want to create quality online courses. The software is used all over the world by universities, schools, companies and independent teachers. Moodle is open source and completely free to use (from Moodle website).
Currently Moodle is becoming a primary course management system at both Keele and Glendon, while older systems, such as WebCT and QuickPlace are slowly being phased out.
In short, Moodle gives instructors a secure site to which they can post documents and communicate with their students. Moodle also offers many features that have not been seen with older systems, such as:
- integration with Passport York – which means that instructors do not need to do extra work managing their class lists or creating new users
- introduction of Web 2.0 technologies such as Blogs, Wikis and RSS feeds
- ability to view usage statistics for individual students
- unlike QuickPlace, Moodle was designed for academic use, and most students and instructors will find it more intuitive and more user-friendly
- ability to continuously add new features for free
2. Accessing Moodle
Moodle can be accessed on the web at the following address: http://moodle.yorku.ca . This is the address that should be given out to students.
Both instructors and students need to log into the system with their Passport York username and password. This allows our system to retrieve the full name and email of each user from Keele servers, as well as to restrict students to their appropriate classes. This way, instructors need not to worry about changing class list due to class adds/drops – the system keeps track of who is officially enrolled and who is not, and access to each course is based on that information.
3. General Moodle Course Organization
Most course homepage formats are broken into course sections (often by week or topic). Resources and activities are added to each section. When writing text in Moodle you have a range of Formatting options, including using HTML in Moodle. The Course settings are robust and offer different ways to enroll Students or format the course.
The illustration below shows a new course set up with topic sections in the middle column. In the right and left columns are a few of Moodle's many blocks such as "Latest News" or "Administration". Editing has been turned on. The teacher is ready to add resources and activities.
4. Editing course section[2]
To add or alter activities or resources a teacher must turn editing on using the "Turn editing on" button on the course homepage. The same button will also turn editing off.
When editing has been turned on, a variety of editing icons appear next to all editable objects in the course. The table below illustrates some of the icons you are likely to see. Your icons may look different because of your Theme. For more details about each editing activity, visit editing a course.
Icon / Effect / Icon / Effect / Icon / Effect / Icon / Effect/ Edit item / * / Close/Hide item / ** / Delete/Remove / / Move (up/down)
/ See all weeks/topics / * / Open/Show Item / / Indent/shift right / / Move here
/ See one week/topic / / Help / / Make Current (highlight) week/topic
* (Note that the open eye indicates that the resource is visible, while clicking it changes it to be invisible (to students), and vice versa with the closed eye. ** Note that the X deletes resources and activities (with a warning) whereas it only removes blocks (which can be added at any time later)
To ADD items you must use the appropriate drop-downs for them.
Similarly, the "Turn student view on" button allows the teacher to see the course page as a student would see it.
5. Resources (Inserting files or links to web pages)
Add a resource drop-down menu
Moodle supports a range of different resource types that allow you to include almost any kind of digital content into your courses. These can be added by using the add a resource dropdown box when editing is turned on.
A Text page is a simple page written using plain text from a link in the course. Text pages aren't pretty, but they're a good place to put some information or instructions. If you are after more options for your new page then you should be thinking about adding a Web page and making use of Moodle's WYSIWYG editor.
Of course the resource may already exist in electronic form so you may want to link to an uploaded file or external website or simply display the complete contents of a directory in your course files and let your students pick the file themselves. If you have an IMS content package then this can be easily added to your course.
Labels allow you to add more information between activity or resource links in your course.
6. How do I upload and post files from my computer?
6.1 Uploading files from your computer
Each Moodle course has a Files folder, which acts as a repository of documents and media that you will be posting for your students. You can access it though the Administration block (blocks are boxes that you should see on the sidelines of your Moodle course).
In the Administration block, look for the third link from the bottom – Files / Fichiers. Click it to see the documents that you already uploaded to this course, if any. When in that screen, follow these steps to upload more files:
1. To upload a new file, click Upload a file button
2. Click Browse, find and select your file, and then click Open
3. You should now see the name of your file in the text box. Click Upload this file.
4. You will now see your updated Files folder.
6.2 Posting pre-uploaded files for your students
To post a pre-uploaded file, first go to the main page of your course. In the top right corner, click Turn editing on (Fr.: Activer mode edition) button. You will then see drop-down menus Add a Resource (Ajoutez une ressource) for each week or each chapter of your course.
1. In the appropriate place, click on Add a Resource (Ajoutez une ressource) dropbox and change it to Link to a file or a website (Lier à un fichier ou un site web).
2. Fill-in the Name of the file (this is not your filename, but the text of the link that your students will click on)
3. Write anything in the description (the large, empty textbox right under Name).
4. Click Choose or upload a file (Choisir ou téléverser un fichier sur le serveur...)
5. You will see a pop-up with a list of files from your depository. Look for a file that you want to post. In the right column, click Choose (Choisir). It is recommended that you set “Window” preference to a “New Window” (see the figure below).
6. At the bottom of the page, click Save and return to course
7. How do I put text and images directly onto the centre section in Moodle?
You can put formatted text and images directly into the Moodle course. This can be done in two ways – by putting your content into the summary of each week or topic, or by adding labels in the appropriate place.
7.1 Adding and editing section summary
1. Go to the course where you want to add the content, and click Turn Editing On button in the top right corner.
2. You should now see the following icon at the top of each section of your course.
3. Click on that icon.
4. You will be presented with the screen, similar to the one below:
5. Detailed instructions on how to change font, color, and add images, tables and links are available here: http://docs.moodle.org/en/HTML_editor
7.2 Placing content on the main page via labels
Labels are simple items that can be added anywhere within your course. They are different from section summaries because you can move them between sections, and they do not have to be the first item within the section, unlike the summary. Furthermore, you can have as many labels as you want, while you can only have one summary.
To add a label to your section:
1. Go to your course and click Turn Editing On in the top right corner.
2. Open Add a resource drop-down menu (see the figure below)
3. Select Insert a label
4. You will be presented with the screen, similar to the one below:
5. Detailed instructions on how to change font, color, and add images, tables and links are available here: http://docs.moodle.org/en/HTML_editor
8. Blocks
Blocks seen by students
Each course homepage generally contains blocks on the left and right with the centre column containing the course content. Blocks may be added, hidden, deleted, and moved up, down and left/right when editing is turned on. Examples of blocks can be seen in the Getting Started image above. "Latest News", "Blogs", "Upcoming Events", and "Recent Activity" are a few examples.
A wide range of over 16 different block types can provide additional information or functionality to the learner by the teacher. The standard blocks that come with Moodle are shown on the right. There are also many contributed developed by Moodlers that an administrator can add to this list.
Course administration block
A teacher with editing rights will also have a course administration block. This is an important tool for a teacher. It has sub menus for course: backup, restore, Assign roles, grades, activity logs/reports, Files and the useful Course settings.
9. Activity modules
There are a number of robust interactive learning activity modules that you may add to your course with the "Add an activity" drop down menu.
Communication and collaboration may take place using live Chats or asynchronous discussion Forums for conversational activities. You can also use Choices to gain group feedback. Adding Wikis to your courses is an excellent way to allow students to work together on a collaboratively-authored project.
Work can be uploaded and submitted by students and scored by teachers using Assignments or Workshops. Workshops such as these have several assessment options, including instructor-assessment, self-assessment, and even peer-assessment. Online Quizzes offer several options for automatic and manual scoring. You can even integrate your Hot Potato quizzes by adding a Hotpot activity.
Lessons and SCORM activities deliver content and offer ways of individualizing your presentation based upon a student's choices. Glossaries of keywords can be set up by the instructor, and can be configured to allow students to edit, add, or rate entries.
Surveys and Databases are also very powerful additions to any course.
9.1 Notifying the whole class at once (e-mail notifications)
The best way to contact the whole class is to use the News Forum (Forum des nouvelles). By default, a copy of every message that is posted on that forum is being emailed to the whole class (these settings can be changed). A link to the News Forum can be found at the top of the page, usually as the first item of week 0 (see the graphic below).
10.General advice
· Subscribe yourself to all of the forums in your course so that you can keep in touch with your class activity.
· Respond quickly to students. Don't leave it for later - do it right away. Not only is it easy to become overwhelmed with the volume that can be generated, but it's a crucial part of building and maintaining a community feel in your course.
· Don't be afraid to experiment: feel free to poke around and change things. It's hard to break anything in a Moodle course, and even if you do it's usually easy to fix it.
· Use the navigation bar at the top of each page - this should help remind you where you are and prevent getting lost
[1] Information in this handout was adapted from the Moodle@Glendon instruction booklet created by Boris Issaev and from Moodle docs see http://docs.moodle.org/en/Getting_started_for_teachers
[2] From Moodle docs see http://docs.moodle.org/en/Getting_started_for_teachers