MH Consulting - Moodle

Welcome to my Moodle Introduction

I will add more to this page as I have time, including how-to tutorials.

My Moodle Demo Site | How To Setup A Moodle Server

Moodle is an open source course management system. Because Moodle is open source it is free of charge to use and install. You can change it to fit your business or schools individual’s needs. Most schools are familiar with Blackboard; Moodle offers many of the same features of Blackboard but without the cost.

Free curriculum, quizzes, and courses for your own Moodle site can be found at The Exchange for Moodle.

Moodle can run on Linux, Windows, or the Mac OS. I have set up Moodle on Ubuntu, Centos, Red Hat, Fedora and it works great with all of them. Depending on which one you choose there will be slightly different installation steps. I suggest using Linux because of the ease of setting up LAMP and of course because of its cost, free. If you want to deploy Moodle for you school/business and are in need of some training, consultation or help MH consulting can help.

A course management system is a software package that has the ability to teach a course and/or keep track of students and their grades. Moodle can be used as a complete online class solution or even just a place for teachers to put resources that their students can access from any computer. More information can be found here: moodle.org

Moodle is one of the most well documented programs I have used with an explanation for just about everything. Just click on the help icon if you don't understand something. If for some reason you still need more information you can use the help forms on moodle.org where everyone is friendly and willing to help.

Here is an index of all help files for Moodle on the demo site I setup.

Some common used features of Moodle include:

Submit assignments online
Messages, discussion forms, Chats
Quizzes, Tests, auto grading
Lessons, Glossaries, Wikis
Handouts, assignment, links
Surveys
Emailing members
Grade book

A few important notes about Moodle (Defaults): - Links to Information & News will usually be on the right side - Links to Settings and Controls will usually be on the left side. - The interactive part (assignments, changing settings, anything you actually do) will be in the center. - Users are joined/created using the lowest security group (student). Once a user exists then someone with higher permissions can add permissions to that user based on their account. - At anytime as a teacher you can switch your role to student so see what your course looks like to a student.

Moodle Icons:

Move Down

Move Right/Indent

Move Left/Unindent

Move Up

Move UP/Down

Edit

Delete/Remove

Hide/Show

Grouping/Groups

Explanation & Help window

Assign Roles - Who is allowed to do something

High Light a top as the current topic students should be on.

Calendar
calendar system allows for events to be categorized to course user and site (global). Any message posted to the site or global will be visible to anyone who access Moodle. To add a site event to the school calendar start by logging into Moodle and clink on the calendar. Next click on "New Event" and select "site event" this will allow it to be seen by everyone, press "ok" and fill out the event information. If you would like to have an event for you personally then just select "user event" instead and it will not be displayed on the site calendar.

Create Your Course
Once you have logged in to Moodle click on a course and click on "Add a new course". Then select the category you wish the course to be listed under. Give the course a full name, short name, and ID. Please use the exact name as they are listed in schoolmaster. This way students can find your course easily. After you have done that you can give it a summery and select all the settings you wish for your course. Once you press save changes at the bottom of the page you will automatically become the teacher for the course. If you wish you may add more teachers later, this can be useful during the 3 weeks semester so all of the teachers have access to the same course. * Note if you join someone else's course you become a student by default in that course.

Create an Assignment or Resource
Login to your course and "turn editing on". Select to resource or activity you wish to add in the topic section you wish it to be in. Then add the content to the assignment or resource. The content will differ depending on the assignment or resource you add.

Activity Modules
Moodle contains a wide range of activity modules that can be used to build up any type of course.

Assignments
Assignments allow the teacher to specify a task that requires students to prepare digital content (any format) and submit it by uploading it to the server. Typical assignments include essays, projects, reports and so on. This module includes grading facilities.

Chats
The Chat module allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion via the web. This is a useful way to get a different understanding of each other and the topic being discussed - the mode of using a chat room is quite different from the asynchronous forums. The Chat module contains a number of features for managing and reviewing chat discussions.

Choices
A choice activity is very simple - the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to vote on a direction for the course; or to gather research consent.

Database Activity
The Database 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. You may be familiar with similar technology from building Microsoft Access or Filemaker databases.

Forums
This activity can be the most important - it is here that most discussion takes place. Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in a variety for formats, and can include attachments. By subscribing to a forum, participants will receive copies of each new posting in their email. A teacher can impose subscription on everyone if they want to.

Glossary
This activity allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary.
The entries can be searched or browsed in many different formats.
The glossary also allows teachers to export entries from one glossary to another (the main one) within the same course.
Finally, it is possible to automatically create links to these entries from throughout the course.

Hot Potatoes
This module, the "HotPot" module, allows teachers to administer Hot Potatoes quizzes via Moodle. The quizzes are created on the teacher's computer and then uploaded to the Moodle course.
After students have attempted the quizzes, a number of reports are available which show how individual questions were answered and some statistical trends in the scores.

Journals
This module is a very important reflective activity. The teacher asks the student to reflect on a particular topic, and the student can edit and refine their answer over time. This answer is private and can only be seen by the teacher, who can offer feedback and a grade on each journal entry. It's usually a good idea to have about one Journal activity per week.

Lesson
A lesson delivers content in an interesting and flexible way. It consists of a number of pages. Each page normally ends with a question and a number of possible answers. Depending on the student's choice of answer they either progress to the next page or are taken back to a previous page. Navigation through the lesson can be straight forward or complex, depending largely on the structure of the material being presented.

Quizzes
This module allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers. This module includes grading facilities.

Resources Resources are content: information the teacher wants to bring into the course. These can be prepared files uploaded to the course server; pages edited directly in Moodle; or external web pages made to appear part of this course.

SCORM/AICC Packages
A package is a bundle of web content packaged in a way that follows the SCORM or the AICC standard for learning objects. These packages can include web pages, graphics, Javascript programs, Flash presentations and anything else that works in web browsers. The Package module allows you to easily upload any standard SCORM or AICC package and make it part of your course.

Surveys
The Survey module provides a number of verified survey instruments that have been found useful in assessing and stimulating learning in online environments. Teachers can use these to gather data from their students that will help them learn about their class and reflect on their own teaching.

Wikis
A Wiki enables documents to be authored collectively in a simple markup language using a web browser.

"Wiki wiki" means "super fast" in the Hawaiian language, and it is the speed of creating and updating pages that is one of the defining aspects of wiki technology. Generally, there is no prior review before modifications are accepted, and most wikis are open to the general public or at least to all persons who also have access to the wiki server.

The Moodle Wiki module enables participants to work together on web pages to add, expand and change the content. Old versions are never deleted and can be restored.

This module is based on Erfurt Wiki.

Workshop

A Workshop is a peer assessment activity with a huge array of options. It allows participants to assess each other's projects, as well as exemplar projects, in a number of ways. It also coordinates the collection and distribution of these assessments in a variety of ways. The Workshop module is contributed by Ray Kingdon.