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Introductory Tutorials for Teachers

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PLEASE HELP - This set of tutorials is under construction. Other experienced Moodle users are encouraged to contribute. The purpose is to introduce teachers to the use of Moodle by bringing them through a very limited number of sample tasks.

What is Moodle?

Moodle is a tool that allows a teacher to build an interactive website for his or her own course. It allows the teacher to easily insert items in their course website to do many different tasks. The following are examples of the most popular:

  • Upload documents that your students can view or download (eg. Word, PowerPoint, PDF etc.)
  • Create links to other websites of interest to your students.
  • Post messages to your students (and send them to their email accounts)
  • Allow students to post messages that can be viewed by you and their fellow students (useful for queries and student discussions)
  • Allow students to electronically submit assignments.
  • Allow the teacher to privately give feedback and grades for assignments.
  • Create and facilitate access to online quizzes.
  • Allow the teacher to view student activity and grades.

What you need to get started

Firstly you need your Moodle administrator to set up a Moodle area for your course. Then you are ready to go. However, this assumes that your organisation has Moodle installed somewhere on a server and that you have a Moodle administrator.

If you are prepared to see the even more overwhelming choices that an administrator sees, you can be one! The nice thing is that you usually just accept the defaults and everything works very well. Here are some alternatives:

It is possible to make a local Moodle that can be run on a computer or a local network. There are packages at Moodle.org which contain Moodle and a preconfigured Apache Server and MySQL database and it is quite easy to install on one machine. With some small changes it can be accessed on a network.

There are companies that can host Moodle for you or your school. Moodle Partners are specialized on this. For a modest number of students one can even use some "$5 a month" hosts to get started.

Structure of a course room

Login to Moodle. In 'My Courses' select the course you want to enter. On the left and the right sides you see blocks. Blocks contain additional information, participants, calender etc, for the course. In the middle is the main information about the course, ressources, discussions and activities. You can add, hide or edit/change material or activities at any time. Order your material based on your topics or the weeks of your course.

Basic rules for using a Moodle course page as teacher

Login to Moodle. In 'My Courses' select the course you want to enter. Click 'Turn editing on' button. Many new choices appear on the page: For all the existing resources, icons appear that allow you to Edit, Hide or Delete them. Each section/week also gets two dropdown lists for adding new elements. Go to a Section (Topic or Week). Choose 'Add a resource' or 'Add an activity' (it might be as well to run through an example below to get an idea of how this works) Edit the settings page for the resource or activity. All settings pages have the same basic structure. Create or edit the name which will appear on the course page. Give additional content or informations about the resource or activity in the description area. (This info is usually only displayed in the resource lists.) Make additional changes in the settings as required Save your settings with the Save button at the bottom of the page.

Navigating your blank course and changing your settings

Inserting Labels and improving the appearance of your course

Using a News forum to send post messages to students

Setting up a simple discussion forum

Using a discussion forum

Adding Resources

Creating a link to another website in a new window

Not ready yet - for the moment check here

Creating a Simple Web Page

Creating a simple web page (formatting and creating links

Making Documents available through your Moodle site

Not ready yet - for the moment check here

Adding Activities

Assignments

What is an assignment?

An activity for students to carry out and submit (by hand or electronically via Moodle), and which the lecturer can award a mark and give feedback via Moodle.

How to Create an Assignment.

  1. Make sure you click on Turn editing on in the top right hand corner if it is not already done.
  2. From the Add an activity drop down list (in the area/week you want it), select Assignment
  3. Fill in the form that comes up as follows:
    • Assignment name: a meaningful short description of the assignment that will appear in the area/week you put the assignment. (This should contain as much information as possible in a very terse form eg. "Assignment Submission area: No. 3: A powerpoint presentation" - it can stretchover more than one line if necessary)
    • Description: you can specify the activity to be carried out here. If it is a very long specifications that you may already have prepared in another format (eg. MS Word), you can upload and link to the full description elsewhere (Add a resource.. Link to file or website) and just write a few words here telling them where to find it. If you want to write a longer explanation here you can, or you can copy and paste from a Word document. If this is one of the first times your students have had to make an electronic submission you may wish to include a description of how to do it. You can copy and paste in these instructions if you like:
      • "To submit your document electronically, use the Browse button below, find the document form on your PC (you may have to select the correct drive and folder), click on it and then click on Open, then select Upload this file."
    • Grade: set the maximum mark for the assignment. You can have No grade if you just want to provide feedback only.
    • Due date: make sure it is realistic, students tend to take this seriously. It won't allow them upload after that date - unless you specifically specify that they can (in which case you will be informed that the submission was late and can mark accordingly)
    • Assignment type: Important - there are three types of assignments here (all useful)
      • Offline activity - If they cannot submit electronically you can examine their work in another way, but you can then use Moodle to award the marks and to send feedback. This facilitates fast communication back to the learner, but possibly even more importantly - keeps a record of the mark and feedback
      • Upload a single file - if you want them to submit a file electronically (on the next page in a minute you will have to specify the maximum size, whether you want to be emailed for every submission and whether you will allow them to resubmit more than once)
      • Online Text - if you just want them to type their submission directly into Moodle (instead of using a Word Processor). This is useful for shorter assignments, or where they are constantly making small changes. It also allows you to insert comments in the middle of their assignments. (on the next page in a minute you will have to specify whether they can resubmit more than once, whether you want to be emailed for every submission made and whether you want to be able to insert comments inside their submission "inline comments")
    • Select Next to move on to some other settings as described in the section immediately above.
    • Continue

For more details, see Moodle Docs: Creating an assignment submission area


Grades Tutorial on feedback and grading.

Quizzes

Not ready yet - for the moment here is a rough tutorial.

Modifying entries in your subject

Getting your students enroled in your course