Note: This documentation is for Moodle 2.7. For up-to-date documentation see Adding/editing a course.

Adding/editing a course

From MoodleDocs

This page provides teacher documentation on how to add and edit a new course, the main learning and teaching space in Moodle.

Creating your new course

  • A regular Teacher in Moodle can only edit and add content to courses which have already been created. If you need to have a brand new course, you must either ask your admin to set up the blank course for you or else give you Course Creator privileges.
  • If you have been given Course Creatorprivileges then in the Category where you wish to set up your new course, you will see a button "add a new course" beneath the current courses. Click on it to create your new, blank course.

addnewcourse1.png

  • Enter the course settings, then click the "Save changes" button. (You can always go back and change settings later.)
  • On the next screen, choose your students/teachers to assign to the course. (You can skip this step and do it later)

Getting started on your course

  • A blank course looks typically something like the following screenshot, but it may vary according to the theme and default settings of your establishment's Moodle. Down the left and right sides are blocks which can be added to and removed, and in the middle is the "work area". This is your course homepage

blankcourse1.png

  • Once you have a new blank course, you can start work on it by turning on the editing, either with the button top right or the link in the Course Administration block:

turneditingon.png

  • NOTE: If you don't see either the button or the link,then you need to ask your admin to give you Teacher rights in the new course.

Editing icons

When editing is on you will see the following icons:

Edit.gif - the edit icon lets you alter/update whatever resource or activity it is next to by taking you to its setup page.
Duplicateicon.png - the duplicate icon allows you to copy an activity or resource within your course
Help.gif - the help icon will pop-up a relevant help window.
Open.gif - the open-eye icon means an item is visible to students. Clicking it will make the item invisible to participants and change the icon to the closed eye.
Closed.gif - the closed-eye icon means an item is hidden from students. Clicking it will make the item visible to participants and change the icon to the open eye.
Right.gif - the left icon is used to outdent course elements. There is also a right icon for indenting items.
Move.gif - the move icon allows course elements to be moved up or down throughout the course.
Movehere.gif - the move here icon appears when moving a course element. It appears only after you've clicked the move icon, and indicates the destination of the item you're moving.
Ajaxmoveicon.png- the "crosshairs" move icon allows you to move items or sections by dragging and dropping. It appears if your admin has enabled Ajax in Settings > Site Administration > Appearance > Ajax and Javascript


Delete.gif - the delete icon will permanently delete something from the course after you confirm a warning on a second page.
Marker.gif - the marker icon allows you to make a section current.
One.gif - the one icon hides all other sections of the course, showing only this one.
All.gif - the all icon redisplays all sections in a course.

Activity modules

Add an activity drop-down menu

There are a number of interactive learning activity modules that you may add to your course.

Communication and collaboration may take place using Chats and Forums for conversational activities and Choices to gain group feedback. Adding Wikis to your course is an excellent way to allow students to work together on a single project.

Work can be submitted by students and marked by teachers using Assignments or Workshops. Automatic marking can be achieved by using Quizzes. You can even integrate your Hot Potato quizzes by adding a Hotpot activity.

Content may be delivered and supported using Lesson module and SCORM activities. Key words can be added to Glossaries by yourself or, if you allow it, your students.

Surveys and Databases are also very powerful additions to any course.

If all of that does not meet a special need in your course, then your site administrator can add contributed modules that are not part of the official Moodle release!

Resources

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 Resource page is page you can create using the HTML 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 folder in your course files and let your users pick the file themselves. If you have an IMS content package then this can be easily added to your course.

Use a label to embed instructions or information in the course section.

Blocks

Each course homepage generally contains blocks in the left and right columns, 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.

Activity and information blocks

A wide range of blocks exist that can provide additional information or functionality to the learner or teacher. There are both standard blocks that come with Moodle and many contributed blocks developed by Moodlers that an administrator can add to a Moodle site.

Examples of blocks can be see in the Getting Starting image above. "Latest News", "Upcoming Events", and "Recent Activity" are blocks.

Settings block - Course administration

Course administration block 2.1

Course administration menu allows teachers to manage student and teacher enrollments and their groups under the Users menu, view the course gradebook, create custom grading scales, upload Files, view NReports and access the Teacher_forum. Some teachers will find the Reset course, backup, Restore and Import (course data) very handy tools when creating similar courses. . This block also gives access to a question database, used in quizzes/tests or in Lesson module.

The links in the course administration block are only available to teachers of the course. Students will see their own version of the block which will display a link to their own gradebook and, if enabled, their own course reports. As a teacher, you can change the way students (and other teachers) access and view your course by exploring these settings.

For example the course settings allows the teacher format the course which determines how the center sections appear.

General advice

  • Subscribe yourself to all of the forums in your course so that you can keep in touch with your class activity.
  • Encourage all of the students to fill out their user profile (including photos) and read them all - this will help provide some context to their later writings and help you to respond in ways that are tailored to their own needs.
  • Keep notes to yourself in the private "Teacher's Forum". This is especially useful when team teaching.
  • Use the Logs link (under Administration) to get access to complete, raw logs. In there you'll see a link to a popup window that updates every sixty seconds and shows the last hour of activity. This is useful to keep open on your desktop all day so you can feel in touch with what's going on in the course.
  • Use the Activity Reports (next to each name in the list of all people, or from any user profile page). These provide a great way to see what any particular person has been up to in the course.
  • 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


See also