From TechHelp

Moodle is an Online learning environment that is web based. This product has a community of support around it, and there is a lot of documentation on the product at both Moodle.org as well as their document project. These are both great places to find information on using Moodle as a teacher.

Contents 1 Course Basics 1.1 Initial Login 1.2 Profiles 1.3 Resources vs. Activities 1.3.1 Resources 1.3.2 Activities 1.4 Creating Activities and Resources 1.5 Enrolling Students

[edit] Course Basics

There are some basic things that you will need to know about Moodle to begin using it. The first is that you have to create a username and password using your email, or have the accounts created by the Moodle administrator. You will see a link in the top right hand corner of the screen that says (Login). You will want to click on this whether or not you have an account.

Once you are at the login page you will want to login. If you have never logged in you can create an account on the right hand of the screen by clicking on Create new account.

Now you will want to fill out your the form with a:

• Username
• Password
• Email address
• Email (again)
• First name
• Surname
• City/town
• Country

Then click on the Create my new account button and you will be sent an email with you account information.

[edit] Initial Login

Once you make it to the home page of a Moodle learning environment you will usually see a list of the courses that are part of that environment.

Once you are at this opening page you will want to click on the Login link in the top right hand corner of the screen. Once you have clicked on this link you will be brought to the login page.

Now if you haven't created an account at this time, you will be able to on the right hand side of the page. If you have created an account, or an account was created for you, enter your username and password and click login.

Once you are logged in you will be brought to a page that shows you the courses that you are a part of.

Under each course you will see the specific role that you have within that course, whether you are a teacher or student. From here you can simply enter the course by clicking on the title of the course. Now depending on how the teacher has layed out the course will determine the way the course appears to you. There are three basic layouts of a course. They are:

• Weekly
• Topic
• Social

Depending on your goals of the class will determine the settings of the course.

[edit] Profiles

Each user has a profile that is determined by what role you play in a course. For example once you have created an account you may have to ask to be able to create a course. You can also be enrolled in a course as a student by a teacher of another course. Once you have created an account you will want to fill in your Profile which tells who you are.

[edit] Resources vs. Activities

By clicking on the title of the course for the first time you will see a screen that only shows a limited amount of information. In the example below you will see a listing of weeks. This is due to the weekly layout of this course, the other layouts only differ slightly from this.

Each section that is labeled with a open square is a learning week in this case. In other cases it can be a learning module. Each of these areas can have activities and resources added to them.

To begin adding resources and activities you will turn on the editing mode inside of Moodle. If you look in the upper right hand corner of the screen you will see a button called Turn editing on. By clicking on this button the pages look will change and you should see icons next to the areas of your page.

Now you should see areas that say Add a resource and Add an activity. Both of these are drop down menus that allow you to choose things that you may want your class to participate in.

[edit] Resources

Compose a text page

This gives you the ability to add a simple text page to an area.

Compose a web page

This give you the ability to create a more dynamic page for an area.

Link to a file or web site

This allows you to link outside of Moodle to another page or to a specific file that you have uploaded.

Display a directory

This will display a directory of files that have been uploaded.

Insert a label

This is the heading or subheading within an area.

[edit] Activities

Assignment

This allows you to add an assignment for students to complete on or off line.

Chat

This allows you to create a chat room for live chat.

Choice

This allows you to poll students asking a question for them to respond to specific choices.

Forum

A forum tends to be a linear asynchronous chart area. It can be set up in a variety of ways.

Glossary

This allows you to add definitions to a glossary, this can be useful for students to learn new terms.

Lesson

A lesson is a set of instructions that allows you to move students through different activities.

Quiz

A quiz allows you to create a set of questions that students have to answer.

SCROM

Stands for Shareable Content Object Reference Model, which allows people to move lesson like modules to different learning management systems.

Survey

The Survey module provides a number of verified survey instruments that have been found useful in assessing and stimulating learning in online environments.

Wiki

This allows you to create a wiki page for students or for the educator. A wiki is a quickly editable web page and allows for interactive editing by the class.

Workshop

A Workshop is a peer assessment activity with a huge array of options.

[edit] Creating Activities and Resources

As a facilitator of a course you will notice that when you have the editing turned on that there will be two different drop down boxes in the lower right hand section of the main area of your web page. One is labeled Resources the other is labeled Activities. By clicking the drop down menu you will be able to select any of the options. Two resources that you will most likely want to start using right away are the forums and Compose a web page.

When you are enrolled in your course you will want to layout some basic rules with students, doing so with the Compose a web page option will give you the ability to do this easily. Select Compose a web page from the drop down menu, which will take you to your new web page.

Now you can give the page a name, type a summary, which will appear on the main page, and then begin to enter the full text of your document.

If you get half way through the page and aren't ready to publish it, you can choose to hide the page for the time being by changing the visible setting to hide. Then you can come back and edit the page as you have time. Once you are ready to publish it simply change the value to show. Now make sure that you click on the Save changes button, if you move away from this page everything that you have typed will be lost.

Creating Forums

One of the most basic communication devices within Moodle is the Forum. By choosing forum from the activity drop down you will open the forum creation menu.

At this point you will want to give the forum a title and a description. There are a lot of different options on the creation of forums, keeping it as Standard forum for general use is a good place to start. In the section after the description you will also see a lot of different options. There are three sections that are important to understand when first using Moodle. The first is the Force everyone to subscribe? question. If you choose to you can force every participant to receive emails with the updates to the forum. This can be useful for important information in the class. You can also select the option to Yes, initially force subscription. This is a great way to have students join in a conversation, but allow them to opt out in receiving updates in the future.

The next option is related to attachment size. If you want students to be able to upload documents or pictures you will want to increase this to the maximum and make sure students realize that this restriction is in affect. The last option that you will want to be aware of is the Visible option which allows you to create forums, hide them, and then open them at a later date. This can be very nice for planning purposes.

Once you have done this you will now have a forum for students to participate in.

[edit] Enrolling Students

Students can be enrolled in one of two ways. They can be added by the student themselves using a valid email address, once they fill out the form they will be enrolled in the Moodle system, then a teacher can add them to a class. There is also a way that the administrator of the Moodle can enroll the students using an flat file database or another authentication scheme.

There are two ways to enroll students into a course. The first is to use an enrollment key, which is probably the easiest way, the other is to enroll each student by hand.

To use an enrollment key you will want to open the settings of the course and make sure that you enter a key in the field labeled enrollment key.

Now students once logged in will be able to click on your course name and enter the enrollment key and they will be enrolled in the course.

Once a student is part of the system as a teacher you will have to enroll them into their course. To do this you will want to click on the Participants link.

This will open up a web page that lists the teachers and the students in the course at this time. It will show who has logged in and when they last logged in.

To add students you will want to click on the icon the hand with a pencil in it, next to the sutdent list. This is the edit button.

You will then be presented with a list of potential students. The list is alphabetic by first name. You can also search for students using the search button. Once you have found the student or students you would like to enroll, you will simply need to click on the arrow pointing to the enrolled students side of the page. Once this is done students when they login will see your course as an option to login to.