A Tutor’s Guide to Moodle
Modular Object Orientated Dynamic Learning Environment
Moodle is a web-based program that provides a place for teaching and learning resources, submission of assignments, posting news items, creating discussion groups and much more. This introductory guide aims to get you started with using Moodle
Maria Hawthorne
1. Logging On
2. Creating Classes
2.1 Your class
2.1.1 People in your class
2.1.2 Activities
2.1.3 Administering Your Class
2.1.4 Blocks
2.1.5 Settings
2.1.6 Assign roles
3. Editing Classes
3.1 Editing your class
4. Adding Content
4.1 Adding Resources
4.1.1 Compose a text page
4.1.2 Compose a web page
4.1.3 Link to a file or web site
4.1.4 Display a directory
4.1.5 Insert a label
4.2 The Add an activity menu
4.2.1 Assignment
4.2.2 Chat
4.2.3 Choice
4.2.4 Forum
4.2.5 Glossary
4.2.6 Journal
4.2.7 Wiki
4.3 The News Forum
4.4 Recent Activity
1. Logging On
Log onto Moodle by going to nclmoodle.org.ukto see the welcome screen and click the link for Login in the top right hand corner:
Enter your user name and password. Your user name will be in the form of your surname and first initial in lower case (eg John Smith will be smithj). You will be given a password to enter the first time you log in, but will be prompted to change it to one of your own choice. After entering the user name and password, click the Login button:
Before you do anything on Moodle, read the Acceptable Use Policy. You must ensure that you and your learners adhere to this policy at all times. Any local policies for the network you are using also apply.
Suppose you are ATutor and have been given a class called Moodle Training. Click on the name of your course in the My Courses box (top right):
2. Creating Classes
2.1 Your class
The first time you enter your class, it will be empty:
The sections around the edge are called blocks and can be moved around. We will do this later.
2.1.1 People in your class
The People box is upper left of the screen. Clicking on Participants will show you everyone enrolled in your class. There will probably only be you at the moment. When the class has learners, you will see these too. Clicking on the name or picture of a participant will show you the profile (or details) of that person. Click on your own name and you will see something like this:
To edit your personal information, click on Edit Profile. You will see something like this:
Email display allows you to show or hide your email in the class. You can set it so all users (including guests) can see your email, or so that only other students in the class can see your email address, or so that no one can see your email address at all.
Description is where you can add a few words about yourself.
New picture - you may upload a picture to represent you. To do this, click on the Browse button, find the picture you would like to upload, and click on Open.
Click the Update Profile button to save the changes.
You will see an envelope next to your email address. Clicking on it disables all Moodle-generated e-mail, which may be useful when you are on holiday.
You also have an option to create groups. You will see this at the bottom left in the Administration box. This might be useful if you teach the same subject across several groups, and if necessary you can explore this option with your trainer if necessary.
2.1.2 Activities
Click on the name of the class in the upper left of the screen (Moodle Training in this example).
The Activites block lists all of the categories of the things that are available in your classroom (forums, quizzes, assignments, etc.). The first time you enter your classroom, the only category that is listed is Forums. This is because one forum (discussion board) exists by default -the news forum. The activities list will grow as you add activities to your classroom.
Below this is a Search Forums box. The search button allows you or your learners to search for any word (or words) that occur in any forums (discussion groups) you have in your class. This lets you track down any keyword(s) that you are interested in.
2.1.3 Administering Your Class
On the left-hand side of the screen is the Administration box for your class:
Turn editing on allows you to make changes to your class. Click on this now and see the difference. Editing symbols appear next to existing features and two Add boxes appear in each topic (or weekly) area. We will use these later.
Settings allows you to change the look of your class (moreon this later).
Assign roles allows you to add learners and others to your class.
Backup allows your class data to be backed up. You should not normally have to use this. It is there to back up all the data from your course, such as forum discussions. Any teaching resources put onto Moodle should always be backed up somewhere else. You would not put files onto a network and not keep a copy for yourself, so do not do this with the VLE.
Restore allows you to restore old class data (that was previously backed up).
Import allows you to import activities from other courses you may have.
Reset allows you to clear a course of all user data. Use this with caution.
Reports allows you to view the activities of the people in your class.
Questions allows you to compile quizzes from previously set questions.
Scales allows you to define special scales for evaluation. These are made up of word evaluations (i.e., Excellent, Good, Average, etc.).
Files allows you to upload files to your classroom, or to view any files that are already there. We will explore this section in details later.
Grades lists the grades of the tests and quizzes of each enrolled student.
2.1.4 Blocks
Look at the right hand side of the screen.
You will see the Latest News block. This allows you to add a topical discussion, which can also be reached from the News forum link. You will also see Upcoming Events and Recent Activity boxes.
At the top of each block, you will see this set of symbols:
The symbols do the following:
The eye - if you click on the eye when it is open, it will shut. When the eye is shut, you can see the block, but the learners in the class cannot see the block. If the eye is shut and you click on it, it will open, and the block will be visible to the learners again.
X - if you click this symbol, the block will be deleted from your class page.
The arrows – these arrows move the block in the direction indicated. For example, if you click on the left arrow, the block will move to the left-hand side of the class screen. These arrows move blocks around the screen, and this can be repeated as many times as you wish.
At the top right of the screen, and at the top of the Administration block, you will see a button to Turn Editing Off. When you are in editing mode, you will see the Blockssection, which allows you to add extra blocks. For now, the most useful feature of this is to recover accidentally deleted blocks. If you were to delete a block, you can bring it back using the menu accessed by the drop-down arrow next to Add.
A final useful feature is the Switch role to box, allowing you to switch temporarily to another role so that you can see what the course would look like to someone with that role
Some of the blocks not on by default are discussed next. These blocks can be added to your class at any time.
TheCalendar shows events that are happening in your classroom. Events are added to the calendar, and can be for individual users, for your defined groups, or for your courses. If you add closing dates to assignments, forums, quizzes, etc., these will also show up on the calendar. If you use Upcoming events to add an event, you will also see this in the calendar.
You can view previous or future months by clicking on the left or right arrows next to the current month's name.
Today's date is always outlined in black. Other events are colour coded based on what the event is (the colour key is under the calendar). You can hide or show the various categories of events by clicking on the colourkey. To see more detail on an event, you can click on the date in question. Using my example, if you click on the 24 September, you get a screen like this:
This shows all the events on that day.
You have the option to add a new event from here using the New Event button in the top right hand corner. This could also be done from the Upcoming events block.
You can add a user event, a group event, or a course event. A user event is private - no one else can see your user events. A group event can only be seen by the members of the group you choose in the pull-down menu. A course event is viewable by everyone enrolled in your class. Global events can only be set by the site administrator. Choose the type of event and click OK.
You will have the following settings for your event:
Name - this can be anything you like, but probably should be short.
Description - this is the full details of the event.
Date - this sets the date and time of the event. The default is today's date. Duration - this sets how long the event lasts. It can have no duration (the
Default setting), or can be set to a given number of days or minutes.
Repeats - this field sets if the event repeats weekly or not. If it does repeat, you must set how many events to create.
Click Save changesto see the details of the event you have put in. Look at the right hand side of the screen. You have symbols allowing you to edit or delete the entry.
Course description – gives a summary of your course. This information is entered in the Settings mode.
Online Users- displays the name and picture of anyone who has been online in the last ten minutes (by default, but may be changed by the site administrator):
Course menu- adds a shortcut menu to each topic or week:
2.1.5Settings
This allows you to change the look of the class. If you click on the Settings link, you should see a screen like this:
All of the individual settings have ? next to them to explain what they do. However, some important comments follow:
ID number- this field is used to create a number that can be used to interface
with other programs. For now, this field can be left blank.
Summary - this can be anything. It usually gives a brief description of a course.
Format- this is an important field. There are three different formats for the class -Weekly, Topic, and Social. The weekly format organizes the class into weeks, with assignments, discussion boards, tests, etc. all residing in a week- by-week block. The Topic format organizes everything by topics (or units), regardless of how long they take. The Social format is built around a forum (bulletin board), which is good for announcements and discussions. The Weekly and Topic formats look very similar, but they are organized very differently. Weekly format lends itself to classes that are structured in a regular format, and Topic lends itself to classes that have distinct units.
The example course in this manual uses the Topic format, but all the features shown work in the other formats.
Number of weeks/topics- this displays the number of weeks or the number of topics displayed on your class page (the default is 10 weeks or 10 topics).
Group mode- This is the default setting for groups for the course. You have three settings to choose from if you use groups:
- No groups - if this is set, the class is one big group. Everyone can see everyone.
- Separate groups - if this is set, each group is separate - the groups cannot see
each other (can not see other groups postings, assignments, etc.).
- Visible groups - if this is set, students belong to groups, but the groups can see each other.
Force (setting related to group mode) - if this is set to No, then groups can be assigned for each module added (each assignment). In this case, the class group setting is the default setting, but that can be changed. If this is set to Yes, then the group setting cannot be changed at the assignment level - the setting for the class level is always the setting.
Enrolment key - this is the classroom password. If you fill in this field, learners will have to put in the password the first time they log in to the class. This is to keep people who are not in your class from joining. The enrolment key can be anything - a word, numbers, or a combination. This can be changed as many times as you like in case the password gets spread outside of class. Learners only need to put this key in the first time - after that they do not have to. If someone from outside of the class joins and then you change the key, they do not have to put in the new key because they have already joined.
Guest access - this controls if people without accounts can get into your classroom. This is set to Do not allow guests in by default, but it can be changed to allow guests in who have the classroom enrolment key (the password) or to allow in any guest, even if they do not have the enrolment key. Guests cannot change anything in a course - they can only read or see what has been done, but you should not allow unlimited access to your classroom.
Hidden sections- this setting controls how hidden sections appear (or not) in your class. Use this if you want to hide a section in your classroom if you aremaking changes on it, or if you do not want the students working ahead (on a future topic). If you hide a section (a topic or a date), a small bar will normally appear to let the learner know there is a hidden section there. The learners cannot see anything in this section, but will know it is there. If you set this to Hidden sections re completely invisible, then nothing shows up in the class for learners to see.
News items to show - this sets how many news items to show for your class. Any time you post something in the News forum (at the top of the classroom), the title will appear in the Latest news box (at the top of the page by default). The number you set here limits how many news items to post before old ones get dropped. If you enter 0 for this menu, the Latest news box will not be displayed.
Show grades - this item sets whether or not students can see the grades you give them on any assignments that support giving grades (which is most of them). By default, this is set to Yes so the student can see the grade you gave. If this is set to No, then students cannot see the grades that were given.
Show activity reports - this feature defaults to No. If this is switched to Yes, then students can see their activity log (logon times, what they did while on, etc.). Note that this can put a strain on a server if this is turned on for large classes. The teacher can always see the activity log of a student, no matter what this feature is set to.
When you have finished modifying the class settings, click on Save changes.
2.1.6 Assign roles
Clicking on this link gives you a list of all roles you can assign, including course leaders, teachers and learners, with an explanation of each. Click on the role type, for example Course Leader, and the screen should look something like this: