Alberto Minetti – University of Genoa ITALY

Saturday, February 19, 2013

Savona GE, Italy

What is Moodle?

Moodle is an e-learning software.

Modular

Object

Oriented

Dynamic

Learning

Environment

During this workshop, I will demonstrate various applications of Moodle

What is Moodle?

Created by Martin Dougiamas

Philosophy:

Learners can contribute to the educational

experience

57,256 registered sites and more…

Over 29 million users enrolled

Useful for

Traditional room class

Full online courses

Example Moodle page

Open your browser to

https://130.251.121.80:12443 Accept the certificate

Clicking the option near the RED SHIELD

Login with your own account or this one:

Username: user1

Password: user1-PASSWORD

Username: user2

Password: user2-PASSWORD

Features of Moodle

Easy creation of courses from existing

resources

Course content which can be re-used

Learner involvement

Enrollment and learner authentication

Online learner and teacher management

Support community to help solve problems and

generate new ideas

Affordability

This tutorial will discuss

Adding content to your course such as

Images, PDF files, hyperlinks and Folders

Adding activities such as:

Discussion Forums and Chats

Assignments and Homeworks

Calendar, Events, Surveys

Choices, Quizzes and Grading System

Brief practice usage

Where to find more help and information

A new Course

In the middle there are

the materials you loaded

for each Week or Topic

Information about Course

Oth

er

Blo

cks

Na

vig

ation

Blo

ck

Resources on the Course

Files of Course

First Week or First Topic

Re

ce

nt a

ctivity

Na

vig

ation

Blo

ck Custom Text

Custom image

Editing Mode EDITING MODE is ON

Resources and Activities Assignment Used to assign online or offline tasks;

learners can submit tasks in any file format (e.g. MS Office, PDF, image, a/v etc.)

Chat Allows real-time communication by learners.

Choice Instructors create a question and a number of

choices for learners; results are posted for learners to view. Use this module to do quick surveys on subject matter

Forum Allows for asynchronous message

Quiz for tests

Glossary of terms used in a course. Has

display format options including entry list, encyclopedia, FAQ, dictionary style and more

Wiki Learners reflect, record and revise ideas

File or folders that students can download

Label Add descriptions with images in any area

of the course homepage

Page Add a page for additional info

Forum Threaded discussion boards for asynchronous group exchange on shared subject matter. Participation in forums can be an integral part of the learning experience, helping students define and evolve their understanding of subject matter.

Forum Permissions

Rate a Forum post

Students can Rate a forum post, based

on Scales set up by the course creator

Quiz

Create all the familiar forms of assessment

including true-false, multiple choice, short

answer, matching question, random

questions, numerical questions, embedded

answer questions with descriptive text and

graphics.

Quiz

Quiz

Instructors have granular control in defining

course assessments, and can import quiz

questions from popular formats like

Blackboard, IMS QTI and WebCT. Moodle

also supports embedding audio into a quiz.

Survey This module aids an instructor in making

online classes more effective by offering a

variety of surveys (COLLES, ATTLS),

including critical incident sampling.

HTML input allow insert complex math expressions

LaTeX similar style

Glossary

Glossary terms

appear in

highlight within

all activity

resources.

Moodle includes

its own site

search engine.

Participants info

Access to information about learners in a

course.

Ability to segment participants into groups.

Site, course and user calendar event

scheduling.

And so much more…e.g. applying scales to

different learner activities, managing grades,

tracking user access logs and uploading

external files for use within the course etc.

Participants info

One click and you can view activity from all

participants enrolled in the course

Learners create a personal profile that can

include a picture,

helping connect students socially in the

online learning community.

Participants info

Assigning learners to a group is a common

practice in education and business.

Moodle allows the course instructor to easily

create group categories, and determine how

members will interact with each other and

within various activities.

Calendar and Events

Keeping a calendar of events is important to both the learner and course instructor.

Global events that appear in all courses (admin)

Course events set by an instructor

Group events set by instructor relative only to a group

User events set by learner (e.g. due dates, personal etc.).

Calendar and Events

Upcoming Events appear on the course homepage, alerting the learner across all courses they are enrolled in of different category events.

Alerts are color-coded by category.

Scales

Default scale is [1..100]

You can set your own scales:

Pass, Not Pass

Bad, Good, Superb

Grades

The Grades feature in Moodle provides a quick view of all Forum, Assignment, Wiki and Quiz grades.

The grading scale applied to a learner’s submission is shown, along with a cumulative total, on a single page.

Grades can be downloaded in Excel or plain text for inclusion into an existing electronic gradebook

Grades

Single page to grades and view all student enrolled

Choose a Grade Category for: Assignments, Homeworks, Projects

Rating in Forums

Literally Grades

Logs and Reports

Track all activity of each Student

Check IP

Check how many Student get a resource or an activity

Files and Navigation

Private Files

All Course Files

Navigation Breadcrumb

Login page and Accounting (that can be integrated with existent databases)

Enrollment keys and Locale

Create a key/password for a course

Set your own Language

Set your own TimeZone

Each student can select the language

E-mail Notifications

When learners “subscribe” to forums they are notified by e-mail of new postings.

Additionally, instructors can set e-mail notification for private Dialogues.

Part II

Practice: login

Open your browser to

https://130.251.121.80:12443

Accept the certificate

Click the option near the RED SHIELD

Login with your own account or this one:

Username: user1

Password: user1-PASSWORD

Practice: create a new Course

Students Enrollment

Manual

Automatic

Teachers Enrollment

Manual

Password to join? Guest can join?

Turn editing on

Practice: the User Profile

Choose your own photo

“Social”

Send message to others

Change settings

Language, personal email, time zone, etc.

Practice: create a new Forum

Default Forum: the News Forum

Only Teachers can post

Learners can view and they are auto-subscribed

Add a new Forum: the Discussion Forum

Everyone can post and view

Other useful forum:

The Teachers’ Forum: only for Teachers

Practice: add a simple Resource

Adding content to your course such as

Page

Label

Hide and Show each Resource or Activity

Labels can be placed everywhere!

And can have images inside

HTML powerful content!

Practice: add a Resource file

Adding content to your course such as

Images

PDF files

Hyperlinks

Folders

Make your own private folder

The Fastest way to add resource!

Practice: add a Glossary

Add the Glossary Activity

Useful for Acronyms

Main Glossary contains all Secondary ones

Insert some entries…

Practice: add a Block

Add the Glossary Block

Modify it

Add the Calendar Block

Set up a future event like an exam

Others:

HTML, Quiz Results, Recent Activity

And much more…

Practice: add a Scale

Choose significant words

Practice: add a Grade Category Using a different Grade Category for each

activity makes easy the grading system

Aggregate on the Category

Then Aggregate over ALL (weights?)

Calculation of Grade

Practice: add a Chat

Useful for synchronous question and answer

Set a start time for a Chat

You see the start time in the Calendar

Censorship and Bad Words Filter

Practice: add a Choice

Simple

Multi-choice answer

Practice: send a Message

Direct asynchronous message to anyone

Practice: add a Wiki

Collaborative Wiki

Using an appropriate index

Individual Wiki

Group Wiki

Practice: create a Group

A Group can contains users

Use different Groupings if you have different

Activities that require different Groups

Practice: add an Assignment

Use it for offline Homeworks

Set the start and the end time

Practice: add a Survey

Choose the type

Check global results

Check results of a single Student

Practice: add a Quiz

Many Options, Useful Feedbacks, Attempts

and Tries, Weighted Questions

Several kind of questions

Multiple choice, Text entry, T/F, Description

Calculation (Automatically generation of numbers)

And more…

Then results are automatically calculated by

the Grade calculator and shown to Students

Practice: view the Participants

Access to the info about the Participants

How many Learners is in this Course?

Track their activity

Detailed Logs and Reports

Useful Links

http://moodle.org/

http://www.moodletutorials.org/

Using Moodle: http://moodle.org/course/category.php?id=1

Teachers Playground Demo: http://moodle.org/course/category.php?id=2

… and all the Web

Bibliography: Bryan C. Williams & Moodle docs