Moodle Lesson activity
The lesson module presents a series of HTML pages to the student who is usually asked to make some sort of choice underneath the content area. The choice will send them to a specific page in the Lesson. In a Lesson page’s simplest form, the student can select a continue button at the bottom of the page, which will send them to the next page in the Lesson.
Find out more here. Learn how to build one here See what moodlerooms has to say
Options for Reflective Work in Moodle
Many staff like the idea of having their students keep a reflective journal of their learning journey, but are unsure of the best format for setting this up in Moodle. I’d like to discuss two options that can be set up in Moodle to set up a reflective portfolio that also allows for the convenor to comment. There are in fact, a number of methods, but for the purposes of this article we will look at two of the easier one to set up – forums and wikis.
Forums
A forum allows students to create a series of posts reflecting on their learning journey with the ability for staff to comment on it and even set up grading for the posts. To make a forum into a reflective journal you will want to set up each student as a group of 1 and put then in a grouping. You can then create the forum and set it for Separate groups, and restrict it to only those groups in the grouping you just made. Each student will now have their own forum that they can post to without other students being able to see the posts.
To learn more about using forums check out the Moodle Docs on Using Forums.
Wikis
Wikis are a bit more flexible in that they can take a number of different forms. They are also more easily edited based on students’ changing understanding of their learning. But as a wiki maintains a revision history, it is easy to see where the student has made changes and how those changes reflect their new conceptualisations in their learning journey. Like forums, wikis can also be made into gradebook items. To make a wiki into a reflective journal you will follow the same setup as for a forum, creating groups of 1, setting up the grouping and then making sure that the wiki is set to separate groups and restricted to the grouping you created.
To learn more about working with wikis, visit Moodle Docs page on Using Wikis.
Learning Analytics
Technology Enhanced Learning. eLearning. Educational Technology – this is a field that is so filled with buzzwords we have trouble deciding what to call ourselves.
One emerging field that some might consider a buzzword is Learning Analytics. Simply put, learning analytics is the practice of analysing data from student interactions with online learning material in order to infer information about student learning. A simple example might be looking at the number of times students click on a link to a particular learning activity as a measure of student engagement. Another example might be looking at proportion of students in a cohort who engage in a series of weekly activities – a decrease over time might be inferred to be a decrease in engagement with learning. Continue reading
Moodle Database Activity
The database activity module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited, including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things.
Join the Moodle forum and learn more. Or find some ready made ones here at moodle.net
Creating Groups in Moodle
Moodle provides a way to automatically create groups.
You have options to choose the following:
- Your naming convention
- Students per group, or per number of groups
- Random, or surname based
This video will show you how you how.
Another post will show you how you can use ‘Team Builder’ to create groups based on other variables you set.
Preparing for the Move to eReserve
eReserve – What is it?
In order to keep better track of what digital resources are being used and how often they are being used while satisfying our legal and contractual requirements, the University of Otago has made the decision to move to a software program called eReserve. This program is being administered by the Copyright team and the library to create a one-stop shop for all your course’s published digital resources; whether article links, pdfs, or ebooks.
How do I prepare?
eReserve is already in use in some parts of the University, and if you are ready to use it now, it can be set up for your course. The entire university will be expected to move to eReserve in 2017. To prepare for the move follow these three simple steps and you will be able to easily move over to the new system when you are ready.
- Go through all of your current published digital resources (e.g. journal articles, ebooks, linked articles), make sure you have full reference details for them, and that your resources are up-to-date and important for your students’ learning.
- Set up an EndNote library for the published resources you want to use in your course/module. I recommend that if you teach in multiple courses/modules, that you set up a separate library for each one.
- Once your Endnote library is complete, export it to RIS format (visit https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/ereserve/staff/export-from-citation-manager-for-ereserve/ to learn how), and you will be able to import this document directly into eReserve when you are ready to begin using it.
Where can I learn more?
The Library and Copyright Team have put together a webpage with more information about eReserve and how to set it up for Blackboard and Moodle. Visit https://blogs.otago.ac.nz/ereserve/staff/ to find out more.
If you are interested in getting into eReserve sooner rather than later, feel free to contact your eLearning Facilitator for assistance on getting eReserve set up in your Course/Module page.
In Wellington: Tehmina Gladman (tehmina.gladman@otago.ac.nz)
In Christchurch: Scott Hallman (scott.hallman@otago.ac.nz)
In Dunedin: Steve Gallagher (steve.gallagher@otago.ac.nz)
How To Add Images to Moodle Quickly
1. In Word or Powerpoint, zoom till the size of the image is about what you want it to be. (add an arrow if you want )
2. Copy a screenshot to the clipboard.
On a Mac Type CMD+Shift+4, Then hold down CTRL while you click and drag over the image. Release the mouse
On a PC with Windows XP you can hold down ALT+PrntScrn, but you get the whole screen. Later versions have the ‘snipping tool’
3. In Moodle, Click your profile picture (top right)>My Profile, Then on the Left “Edit Profile’
4. Scroll down to ‘Preferences’
5. Change the Text editor to ‘Atto HTML editor’
6. Open your quiz, or label, or whichever textbox you are trying to put the picture into.
7. Paste (Rt Click or CMD+V, or CTRL+V)
A video is available at How To Copy Image Into Moodle Quickly on the staff support page.
Confidential Moodle Forums
Discussion forums are useful in many ways, for example for peer/teacher discussion around a clinical case. However, making sure your forum remains confidential for particular staff involved, along with students (or a particular student group) is important.
To adjust the permissions regarding who is allowed to view the discussions.
1. Click on the forum that you have made.
2. Under the ‘Administration’ block (to the left of the page) you will see ‘Forum administration’. Under this heading, click on ‘Permissions’.
3. Scroll down and under the heading ‘Activity: Forum’ find ‘View discussions’.
4. You will see all the roles that can view the discussion board that you have just created. This list is the Moodle default list for viewing Forums.
5. Delete all the roles that you don’t want to view the forum using the ‘x’ button and add any roles with ‘+’ button. To make it private between students and staff, delete all the roles except the roles of ‘Editor’ (the steps above for selected staff), ‘Convenor’ (anyone who is a Convenor for that module) and ‘Local student’ (the students involved in the forum for that module).
Organising the permissions in this way allows only the roles selected to view the forum. As the people you have chosen to view the forum have been given the additional role of ‘Editor’ they can access the forum, along with whoever has the role of ‘Convenor’. If you want the ‘Administrator’ to view the forums, then just add the role of ‘Administrator’.
It is important remove the ‘Staff’ role. This is because all staff enrolled in Moodle are enrolled as ‘Staff’ by default. With this default ‘Staff’ role, you can view most pages on Moodle, which includes all pages made ‘visible’ to ELM and ALM. This means that if someone with the ‘Staff’ role member accidentally clicks on a forum on any page, they will not be able to access the discussions. This is why the role of ‘Editor’ is assigned to the particular staff member(s). It blocks unwanted ‘Staff’ from accidentally clicking on the forum and possibly viewing confidential material, while allowing selected staff to view the discussions.
If you want help setting up forums, please email med.moodle@otago.ac.nz to get in contact with someone to guide you through the process or ask additional questions.
Full instructions with screenshots can be found at Setting-up forums to maintain confidentiality
One Quiz – Many Groups
Often, it is difficult to get all your students in a room at the same time to take a quiz online, usually because the computer lab is not big enough for everyone. One way to deal with this is to create two copies of the same quiz and set one for one group of students with a particular start and end time and the other for the other group of students with its own start and end time.
Although this can work perfectly well, it begins to get messy if you want to make a change to the quiz because now you have two copies you have to remember to change.
Enter the Group Override. You can set a single quiz for your course and using group overrides, and even user overrides, specify open and close times and permissions for the quiz by group.
To do this, all you need to do is create your quiz as usual. Then, in the Quiz Administration block, you will see there is an option for Group Overrides. Click this and add a new Group Override. Complete the required fields for the override, and then you can either Save, or Save and Create Another Group Override. When you have completed all the group overrides you need, you can leave the screen. Now your quiz will obey the group overrides you have set and open and close for each group based on those overrides. And you only have one quiz to tweak when it is time to make changes.
Moving items easily on Moodle page
Assuming you have hit the “Turn Editing On” button in a course.
Double click the 4way arrow, and you can easily position the item, either up or down a long list of resources within a course.
