Getting Started with EServer Courses Using EServer.org for Open-Source, Open-Access Teaching

Getting Started with EServer Courses Using EServer.org for Open-Source, Open-Access Teaching

Introduction What is the EServer Course Management System? And what is Moodle? The EServer Course Management System is a web application that uses open-source software called Moodle to create course websites for instructors who are EServer editors. Moodle is designed to help instructors distribute syllabi, manage course materials, collect student assignments, facilitate discussions, and record grades. Unlike some university-run systems, which often focus primarily on managing large lecture courses, Moodle works especially well in small classes focused less on information dissemination and more on community-building and collaboration, including courses in the arts and humanities. Moodle is open-source software, which means that it can be modified to meet the specific needs of EServer members. The EServer Course Management has been extensively modified to suit our members past reported needs, and can be adjusted further in the future, as more members use it. The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to educational theorists. It s also a verb that describes the process of meandering through something, doing things as it occurs to you to do them, an enjoyable tinkering that often leads to insight and creativity. As such, the word applies both to the way Moodle was developed, and to the way a student or teacher might approach studying or teaching an online course. Using this Guide This guide is designed to introduce you to some of our Moodle s basic functions and walk you through the process of creating your first course in the EServer CMS. Each page of the guide addresses one topic, and the pages can be read in sequence or at random. As you read, you ll see plenty of images taken directly from the EServer s Moodle site, with descriptions and step-by-step instructions for accomplishing specific tasks. In the margins, you ll notice three types of colored boxes: Definitions Like most software programs, Moodle has its share of confusing terminology. Look for these blue definition boxes when you re not sure about the meaning of a specific word or phrase within Moodle. Tips and Tricks Some of Moodle s functions aren t immediately apparant to new users. And sometimes the system can be picky. You ll find tips about how to use Moodle s hidden capabilities in these green boxes. Links This guide only scratches the surface of what you can do with Moodle. Additional help can often be found online. These yellow boxes will point you to websites with more detailed documentation. Contents Creating an Account...3 Creating Your First Course...5 Managing the Layout of Your Site...7 Using the Text Editor...9 Creating Assignments and Quizzes... 10 Backing Up Your Course Data... 12 Additional Resources... 12

Creating an Account The EServer Course Management System is open to any EServer member who is the instructor of a course (as professor, lecturer, teaching assistant, etc.) and an EServer member level 2 or above, as well as being open to their students. To create your account, go to the EServer Course Management homepage at http://courses.eserver.org/ and click on Create new account on the right-hand side of the screen, below the Calendar. EServer Course Management offers instructor accounts to any EServer members who teach higher education courses and are members of levels 2-5. To read more about levels of EServer membership, read: http://about.eserver.org/membership/ The EServer CMS is located at: http://courses.eserver.org/ You may want to bookmark this site in your personal web browser. Next, select a username and password. Your username cannot contain spaces or nonalphanumeric characters. For the sake of convenience, you may want to use your EServer username as your CMS username. When you click on Create my new account, the site will send a confirmation message to the address you listed. This step ensures that only you can create an account for yourself. Instructors and students create their own accounts on the CMS and retain control of their own accounts. TIP: Your students will use this same procedure when they create accounts on the site. Moodle treats all first-time users instructors and students alike, until one of the site administrators assigns you to be an instructor.

You will now need to check your email to confirm your account. When you click on the link in your email, you will be brought back to the EServer CMS. With your newly activated account, you can add information to your profile, change your password, and edit your preferences for receiving email, subscribing to forums, etc. Auto-subscribe: By default, when you post a message to one of Moodle s forums, the site automatically subscribes you to that forum, which means that every time someone responds to your forum post on the site, you will receive the response as an email message. If your email inbox is already overcrowded, you may want to change the auto-subscribe option to No, or choose to receive forum posts in a digest format (one email message per day). Now that you ve created an account, you can navigate the site and see things as your students will see them. To create a course of your own, however, you must request a course, then one of the EServer administrators will need to approve your course request and designate you as an instructor. EServer members may offer open courses, free of charge to students, or may use the EServer to support courses offered by an accredited institution. EServer policies prevent its CMS from being used for individually-offered pay-for-access courses.

Creating Your First Course Once you have created an account, you ll see a list of courses. You may become a student in one of these, or click the button at the bottom of the form to request the EServer create your course site: TIP: Before you fill out the form to request a course, make sure you know the course number and all the details for the class you ll be teaching. If you re a level 2 or higher member, an EServer administrator can approve your course and set your status to instructor. You will need to be an instructor to use most of the features in the rest of this guide, so it s important to complete this step early. The first three lines on the course settings page (Full name, Short name, and ID Number) will be set by one of the EServer administrators. These fields are used to keep all of the EServer courses organized in the Moodle database and on the home page. Please do not edit them. After the course has been created and you are set as the instructor, you will have privileges to edit the Settings for your course site. TIP: After each item on the course settings page, you ll see a blue question mark icon. Clicking on these icons will provide definitions and additional information about the available options for each setting. Unlike many software programs, Moodle s built-in help documentation is, for the most part, thorough and easy to understand.

On this page you can write a brief summary describing your course, which your students will see when they add themselves to your class, and set the general parameters that govern the operation of your course site. Because so many other functions hinge on these settings, it is important to set some of them correctly before you begin adding materials to your site. Format: Allows you to organize your course chronologically, topically, or using a freeform social format. Most instructors new to Moodle begin with a weekly format. Course start date: Establishes when your course begins. You should set the start date as the Sunday before the first day of the semester. Enrollment duration: Used for courses with a rolling student population (i.e., online courses). For courses that follow a semester format, leave this set to unlimited. Number of weeks/topics: If you chose a weekly format, this sets the number of weeks in the semester. Because Moodle doesn t keep track of vacations in the middle of semesters, it s a good idea to add an extra week to keep the calendar on track. For a typical semester, the number of weeks should be set to 17 (this includes finals week). Group mode: Determines whether students will complete assignments as individuals or in small groups. If only a few of your assignments are group assignments, leave this set to no groups you will still be able to assign groups on a per-assignment basis. Availability: Choosing This course is not available to students allows you to hide your course while you develop it. However, when the semester begins, you should change the setting to available so your students can enroll in the course. TIP: If you plan to use your course website to distribute course readings (similar to library reserve) or other materials protected by copyright, you should use an enrollment key and set guest access to Do not allow guests in. Enrollment key: Allows you to set a password that students must have in order to enroll in the course. Students are only required to enter this password one time, after which they will be attached to your course each time they log in. Set this to an obscure password, then write it on the board the first day of class. This will limit the people who can access your course website to your actual students. Guest access: Determines whether guests can view your site. You can allow anyone to view your site, or limit visitors to individuals who know the enrollment key. Show grades: Allows you to show or hide grades from students. If you plan to use a paper gradebook, this should be set to No.

Managing the Layout of Your Course A default EServer course (using the weekly format) has a simple three-column layout: Additional information about managing your course site and adding resources and activities can be found online: http://docs.moodle.org/en/ Teacher_documentation The left- and right-hand columns contain various blocks, while the center column contains a week-by-week breakdown of resources and activities (both of which will be discussed in greater detail in later sections). To begin making modifications to your site, you will need to turn editing on by clicking the button near the upper right-hand side of the screen. The image on the following page shows that the course site looks quite different in editing mode. Blocks Blocks are easily identified by their headings and hairline borders. In editing mode, you will see a new block in the lower right-hand corner entitled, confusingly enough, Blocks. This menu allows you to add new blocks to either the right- or left-hand column of your site. A wide range of block types can provide additional information or functionality to your and/or your students. As the instructor, you will also see an Administration block in the left-hand column, which provides you access to course settings, the gradebook, and other administrative functions. Your students will never see this block.

Resources Moodle supports a range of different resource types that allow you to include almost any kind of digital content into your courses. These can be added by using the Add a resource dropdown menu when editing is turned on. A text page is a simple page written using plain text. Text pages aren t pretty, but they re a good place to put basic information or instructions. A Web page offers more formatting options using Moodle s WYSIWYG editor. If the resource already exists in electronic form, you can link to a file or web site, or display a directory of files. Labels can be used to embed titles or more detailed information into the center column. Activities Moodle allows you to add several types of activity modules to your course site. Students can communicate and collaborate using the Chat, Forum, and Wiki modules. You can solicit feedback from your students with the Choice, Survey, and Questionnaire modules. Students can submit work to you for grading using the Assignment and Workshop modules. Quizzes and Lessons can be automatically scored. You or your students can create a Glossary of key terms or compile a Book of related pages. Additional activity modules can be added by one of the EServer administrators upon request.

Using the Text Editor When writing text in Moodle you have a range of formatting options, from plain text to formatted text to HTML code. With a few exceptions (such as text pages ) any activity or resource you add to your course site will create a text editing window, in which you can customize the visual presentation of your course materials: TIP: The word-processing buttons you see in the image to the left do not appear in certain Internet browsers (e.g., Safari and Opera). For best results with the text-editing window, use Firefox or Internet Explorer. The WYSIWG text editor allows you to select typefaces, add color to text and backgrounds, insert pictures, tables, and hyperlinks, and so on. Obviously, the text editor lacks many functions offered in popular word processing programs, but its formatting capabilities are quite robust. As you use the WYSIWGY editor, Moodle automatically converts the styles you apply into HTML code. If you need to manually edit the code, or if you prefer to work in HTML, you can edit the code directly by clicking on the < > button: WYSIWG stands for What You See Is What You Get. The way the text appears in the text editor is a very close approximation of how your students will see the materials on the site. If you re worried about creating content from scratch inside your browser window, you may want to develop course materials in your word processor, then copy and paste them into the text editor. With a bit of practice, this process will become second nature, and you will have print and electronic versions of your materials.

Creating Assignments and Quizzes Two of the most popular types of activities in Moodle are Assignments and Quizzes. The assignment module provides the simplest way for students to upload their work to the course website, or for you to record grades for an in-class activity. Our installation of Moodle offers four types of assignments: Offline activity: For use with assignments that have no electronic component (i.e., completed in the real world ). TIP: When you ask students to upload a single file, Moodle will accept any type of file, from word processing documents to photographs to small audio and video clips. Anything your students create can be uploaded to the site. Online text: For short assignments in which students type their work directly into a text-editing window in Moodle. Upload a single file: For use when students need to upload their completed assignments to the course website. Upload & Review: For use when you want to respond to students work by uploading another file with your comments or suggestions embedded in the file (i.e., using Microsoft Word s track changes ). Nervous about breaking your site when you experiment with new features? Don t worry it s usually quite easy to undo simple mistakes. But if you d prefer to experiment in a totally safe environment, Moodle hosts a demonstration site that will allow you to play an hour at a time for free: http://demo.moodle.org When you create a new assignment, you should give it a meaningful name, since your students will see this name on the home page of the course site. You can then type (or copy and paste) the description of the assignment and set parameters governing, among other things, how much the assignment is worth, when it is due, and whether or not you will accept late submissions. 10

Moodle s quiz module is one of the most powerful components of the system. As a result, it can also be one of the most confusing to new users. With a bit of practice, however, you can develop numerous types of quizzes to serve different pedagogical purposes. When you select Quiz from the Add an activity... dropdown menu, you will the familiar text editing window, followed by a long list of options. Once you have typed in a title and description, you will select specific settings for the quiz using a series of dropdown menus. As always, clicking on the blue icon with the question mark inside will explain how each option affects the quiz. Here are some of the more important options: Open/Close the quiz: This setting allows you to limit the time during which students can take a quiz (i.e., during the first ten minutes of class). Shuffle questions/answers: This option will randomly reorganize the order of the questions and the order of the answers for each question every time the quiz is accessed. As a result, each student gets a unique quiz. Adaptive mode: Quizzes can set to get harder or easier based on how well a student has done on previous questions. Students may review: This series of checkboxes allows you to determine whether or not (and when) students can see their scores, the feedback you have programmed into the system, and the correct answers for the quiz. After you have determined the settings for your quiz, you can create the quiz itself, by adding different types of questions (multiple choice, true/false, etc.) and placing those questions into pools that you create. Once the questions are written and the correct answers are assigned in the system, Moodle does the rest, grading the students responses and adding their scores to the course gradebook. Pools of questions can be based on chapters, weeks in the semester, important concepts, or any other organizational scheme. Once you have created a pool, you can share it with other instructors or save it for use in future classes. 11

Backing Up Your Course Data The English department s Moodle site automatically creates backup files for all course sites each night, but at the end of the semester, you should create a personal backup of your course data, which you can then re-import into the system when you create a new course. To make a backup, click on Backup in the left-hand Administration menu. Doing so will generate a screen that looks like the image at the left. You can choose which activities and resources you want to backup, and whether or not you want to include the student data associated with those items. In general, it is a good idea to create two backups of your site at the end of the semester: one backup with all materials and all student data, which will provide a snapshot of the course as it existed at the end of the semester, and another backup with all of the materials but none of the student data, which will provide a skeleton course website that you can re-import into the site the next time you teach the course. Important! If your course website is not accessed by either its instuctors or students for 180 days, the system will automatically delete the course. Backing up your course websites at the end of each semester will ensure that the site you have created doesn t disappear before you teach the same class again. Additional Resources Learning a new web application doesn t happen all at once. This guide was designed to get you started, but as you experiment with the EServer CMS, you will likely have questions about features of Moodle that aren t addressed here. A few online resources are especially helpful for answering these questions: Moodle Docs, the home page for all Moodle documentation resources: http://docs.moodle.org/en/ Using Moodle, a complete software manual, available for free download in PDF format: http://docs.moodle.org/en/using_moodle_book A collection of Moodle manuals like this one, developed independently by Moodle users at other institutions (most in PDF format): http://docs.moodle.org/en/moodle_manuals 12