Using Moodle Moodle is a virtual learning environment. It can be a very useful learning tool and I will outline briefly how to do some of the basic tasks that make it so powerful. Moodle can do lots of things but my advice would be to use it for: Setting Assignments Marking assignments Keeping written comments/grades on Writing questionnaires Writing quizzes (online tests) This works well because students get feedback and marks quickly, they can give their opinions of things quickly and you can do diagnostic tests to check learning or opinions quickly even in the lesson if you like. I also like to print out all my comments I ve written for my 6 th form parent evenings. It s handy having a summary because it shows the learning that s been going on. I would suggest that you don t use it for File storage Large powerpoints This is because students now have access to the P: drive (their own home drive) from home. This means you can save things for them once and not have to upload so much. Having said that, some teachers like to have complete courses on moodle, notes and all. The Basics: Clicking on internet explorer will automatically bring up the Moodle start screen. All you have to do is sign in using the same login details as you use to get on to the school system
I assume a course will be set up already for you so it s straightforward to navigate to your course, in this case I ll select GCSE Astronomy Yr10. So to get there select Student Area, Science, and then select the course you want. Once you click on a real course it will look like this (see right). The boxes to the left and right can be configured in different ways and you can add different types of boxes such as calendars and test results. There are boxes in the middle or topics that can have text, pictures, files, tasks assignments etc in them. This is where the students go to look for their work. You can put whatever you like in the central boxes. To add anything, you need to click on the Turn editing on at the top of each course. The five icons next to the What if link are always the same. Delete. Move right so things appear on the right hand side! Move to change the order of items in your topic Edit to change the text or properties of an object Hide so things can be made to appear or disappear for students
Now the next step is to have a go at adding useful exercises. Once the Turn editing on is doing its thing, there are two drop down menus. The official explanations might mean more to you: Resources: Labels are a little different from other resources because they are text and images that are actually embedded directly among the other activity links in the course page. Text page This type of resource is a simple page written using plain text. A number of formatting types are available to help turn your plain text into nice-looking web pages. HTML page This sort of resource makes it easy to develop a complete single web page within Moodle, especially when you are using Moodle's WYSIWYG HTML editor. The page is stored in the database, not as a file, and you have a lot of freedom to do almost anything you like using HTML, including Javascript. Files and web pages This resource type allows you to link to any web page or other file on the public web. It also allows you to link to any web page or other file that you have uploaded into your course files area from your own desktop computer. Normal web pages are simply displayed as they are, while multimedia files are dealt with more intelligently and may be embedded within a web page. For example, MP3 files will be displayed using a built-in streaming player, as will movie files, flash animations and so on. There are many options for displaying your content in popup windows, framed windows and so on. In particular, if your resource is a web application or other type of content able to accept parameters, you can choose to send information to your resource such as the user's name, their email, the course they are currently in, and so on. Directory: The directory resource can display a whole directory (and its subdirectories) from your course files area. Students can then browse and view all those files. IMS Content Packages: IMS content packages can be created and edited using a variety of content-authoring software. Content is usually displayed over several pages, with navigation between the pages. The content-authoring software produces a zip file, which can then be uploaded to your course in Moodle. The zip file is unzipped automatically in Moodle, and the content of the package displayed. There are various options for displaying content in a popup window, with a navigation menu or buttons etc.
Activities 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. Labels This is a not a true activity - it is a "dummy" activity that allows you to insert text and graphics among the other activities on the course page. 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. Questionnaire The questionnaire module allows you to construct questionnaires (surveys) using a variety of question types, for the purpose of gathering data from users. It is based on phpesp, and Open Source questionnaire tool. See http://phpesp.sourceforge.net 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 [Don t believe this one I find Questionnaires more useful] 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. Now the Activities I think are best. I ll outline the sorts of things you can do with them but for the construction of them you will need to delve a little more deeply and learn for yourself or come and ask. Questionnaires Questionnaires are great because they allow you to gauge opinion about a range of things or to have answers about specific aspects of your lessons. Here are two common types of question a rank one and an essay or free response one. The questions are on the left and the responses are on the right. There are a lot of different types of question you can ask them and here is a list I d go for rank, essay or tick boxes everytime. Check Boxes Option 1 Option 2 Other (optional) Note.- Radio Buttons and Check Boxes can feature an optional Other button/box with a fill-in-the-blank text field. Date Use the day/month/year format, e.g. for March 14th, 1945: 14/3/1945
Dropdown Box There is no real advantage to using the Dropdown Box over using the Radio Buttons except perhaps for longish lists of options, to save screen space. Essay Box Settings are available for enabling or disabling the HTML editor and for setting the height and width of the plain textarea box. Label This is not a question but a (short) text which will be displayed to introduce a series of questions. Numeric Use this question type if you expect the response to be a correctly formatted number. By using the Max. digits allowed and Nb of decimal digits parameters you can specify the length and number of decimal places required. Radio Buttons vertical display horizontal display Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 Option 4 (optional) Rate (scale 1..5) Option 1 Option 2 Option 3 1 2 3 4 5 N/A See the Nb of scale items & Type of rate scale parameters help for more options for this question type. See also the Possible answers help. Text Box You can set the Input box length of the Text Box and the maximum text length of text entered. Yes/No Yes No
Quizzes This is a typical multiple choice question. You can easily set more than one right answer and not tell the students how many right answers there are. This is a typical matching question. There are usually the same number of answers as questions but you can always add extra red herring answers too. All answers can have weightings so some questions or responses can be worth more than others. You can always prevent students repeating tests or penalise them for each attempt to stop them guessing multiple choice answers! Here are all the different types of question you can include. I tend to go for multiple choice, matching, true/false and word the questions carefully. This way you can get moodle to collate the answers. Multiple Choice: In response to a question (that may include a image) the respondent chooses from multiple answers. There are two types of multiple choice questions - single answer and multiple answer. Short Answer: In response to a question (that may include a image), the respondent types a word or phrase. There may several possible correct answers, with different grades. Answers may or may not be sensitive to case. Numerical: From the student perspective, a numerical question looks just like a short-answer question. The difference is that numerical answers are allowed to have an accepted error. This allows a continuous range of answers to be set. True/False: In response to a question (that may include a image), the respondent selects from two options: True or False. Matching: A list of sub questions is provided, along with a list of answers. The respondent must "match" the correct answers with each question. Embedded Answers (Cloze) These very flexible questions consist of a passage of text (in Moodle format) that has various answers embedded within it, including multiple choice, short answers and numerical answers. Random Short-Answer Matching: From the student perspective, this looks just like a Matching question. The difference is that the subquestions are drawn randomly from Short Answer questions in the current category.
Random: A Random question in a quiz is replaced by a randomly-chosen question from the category that was set. Description: This is not a real question. It simply prints some text (and possibly graphics) without requiring an answer. This can be used to provide some information to be used by a following group of questions, for example. Calculated: Calculated questions offer a way to create individual numerical questions by the use of wildcards that are substituted with individual values when the quiz is taken. Essay: In response to a question (that may include an image) the respondent writes an answer in essay format. Checklists: These are great for reading lists or just keeping tabs on progress through independent work. You set up the list including deadlines the lot. The student ticks it when they think they ve done it. You confirm it and their bar goes green You and the student can add comments.