These guidelines offer practical advice on using Moodle effectively in your courses. By following these tips, you can enhance the student learning experience and make course management more efficient.
Design the Moodle course site to serve as a "home base" for the course
A well-designed Moodle course site serves as a home base for your course, where students can find all key information in one place. Easy access to course elements provides students with the assurance that they can always find the information they need. This is especially important for students juggling multiple classes or when various platforms are used to facilitate your course.
- Upload all relevant course documents, including the course syllabus, to provide a comprehensive repository of course information and resources for students.
- While you may be using additional websites and software that exist outside of Moodle, it should still function as a central location for accessing this content. Use the Moodle URL module to add links to key information and outside platforms that students will need access to. Some textbook publishers and educational software companies allow for integrations with Moodle for a more streamlined student experience. Reach out to the Instructional Design team for assistance with possible integrations.
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Organize the course Moodle site in a clear and consistent way
Moodle offers a variety of tools for organizing your course so that it is easy for students to navigate.
- Use the top section of the Moodle course to house general information for the course and items that will need to be accessed frequently throughout the course, such as the syllabus. Information and tasks for a particular week can be loaded into the Moodle section for that week.
- As much as possible, adopt a consistent structure than can be applied across weeks.
- Use Text and Media areas to create headings within each week so that items can be grouped in a meaningful way.
- Give descriptive names to items so that students can identify what they are without doing a lot of clicking around. Avoid shorthand that is difficult to decipher and consider using a naming convention so that students become familiar with how items are named. Moodle allows for renaming of files after they are uploaded so it is easy to make their names student-friendly without renaming the files on your computer.
- Consider using the Weekly Course Template to help organize your course. The template can be uploaded to your course as a backup file and then customized to fit your needs.
Use the Moodle Announcements forum to communicate with the class
The Moodle Announcements forum is the recommended and supported method for communicating with your class. This forum is a reliable way to send emails to students, as students cannot opt out of receiving these emails. Additionally, it allows all announcements to be conveniently accessed and referenced in one location on the Moodle course site.
Possible ways to use the Announcements forum:
- Provide an overview of weekly tasks or reminders about upcoming due dates.
- Communicate urgent updates, such as inclement weather or instructor emergencies, with instructions on how to proceed.
- Share supplementary resources or relate course content to current events and contemporary news articles.
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Provide students with a repository of learning resources
Use Moodle to provide students with essential course materials, such as readings, presentations, and external resources. Centralizing course content ensures that students can locate key resources when completing coursework or preparing for exams.
Tips for sharing resources:
- Resources can be shared as files or links to external sites.
- Files can be downloaded or viewed directly in a student's browser, depending on the format.
- Links make it easy to access external resources. Some content, such as YouTube videos, can be embedded directly in Moodle.
Collect student work through Moodle assignments and other Moodle modules
Moodle has a variety of module types for collecting student work. Collecting work in Moodle makes it easy to manage, view, and grade student work all in one place.
- The Moodle Assignment module can be used for collecting a variety of types of student work, including files, text, audio, and video.
- For other types of activities and assignments, other Moodle modules may be appropriate. Some of the more popular options are Quizzes, Forums, and Turnitin Assignments which offer plagiarism detection functionality.
- Barring any extenuating circumstances, student work should not be collected by email.
- If using an external homework program such as Pearson MyLab or McGraw Hill Connect, it may be appropriate for students to complete work outside of Moodle. If possible, an integration should be configured to connect Moodle with the external program.
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Use the Moodle gradebook and assignment feedback features to keep students informed about their progress.
Utilizing the Moodle gradebook and assignment feedback features makes it possible to effectively communicate and track academic progress. These tools not only streamline the grading process but also enhance transparency and communication between instructors and students.
- Utilize the feedback features within Moodle Assignments to streamline your grading workflow and offer personalized feedback for each submission. Feedback can include text, audio, or video comments.
- Configure the gradebook at the start of the semester to reflect the grading policies outlined in your course syllabus. This configuration automates grade calculations, allowing instructors and students to monitor grades in real time.
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Use Moodle Forums to foster collaboration and interaction
Encourage engagement and collaboration by using the Forum module in Moodle!Forums can be used for a variety of educational activities, such as discussions, debates, peer support, and collaborative activities.
- Forums can be set up to support whole group and small group discussions.
- Students can post text responses as well as audio and video responses.
- Forums support grading and participation tracking for assessment purposes.
Learn more:
Adding a Simple Discussion Forum
Enabling Student Audio and Video in Assignments, Forums, and Quizzes