Topic outline

  • General

    Moodle for Teaching and Learning

    • Teacher Title imageA warm welcome to this course. This course will assist you to develop engaging online learning activities for your students using Moodle.

      This course is delivered using Moodle. If you are new to Moodle this quick start guide will quickly assist you to get started and use the tools in this course page:

    • The following announcements forum is a one-way bulletin-style forum from your course tutors to you. It contains any important course-related notices.

  • Topic 1

    Moodle and teaching and learning

    • So what is Moodle and what can it do for your teaching and learning?

      Moodle provides you with a system for delivering online learning to your students.  They can access your online course wherever they have internet access. You can use Moodle to create learning resources, activities and even assessments, such as quizzes for your students.

      Find out a bit more about Moodle below before you start:

    • Learn about how you can use a variety of online resources and sites to assist you with your knowledge of using Moodle in teaching and learning:

    • Planning your online course

      It’s time to get started on your own course. Designing an online course page is like lesson planning. You need to think about the outcomes, what activities will fulfill those outcomes and what resources or tools you will use.

    • The following template might help you plan out the sequence of online activities at a high level:

    • You may consider going straight from your high level design and do a ‘rapid’ detailed design straight into your Moodle page. Another option is to create a detailed design script prior to this step, which is especially useful if you are working as a team and need to share tasks. Take a look at the following options:

  • Topic 2

    An online introduction to your students

    • If teaching online, expecially at a distance, the 'social' aspect of learning can be harder to implement in your teaching approach. For online teaching we have to go the extra mile to build in strategies for how we can 'socialise' with our students through learning and communication activities.

      Simply making sure your students know who you are, how they can contact you and when you might be available is an important first step.  You can provide information about yourself in a couple of ways: Create your Profile and Create an Introductory web page resource.

    • Getting started with basic editing in Moodle

    • Before you get started, you may want to take a quick look at the following 'How to..." resources which prepares you for basic editing tools in Moodle.

    • Create your online profile

      Anywhere on the Moodle page where you see your name as a link (underlined) you can click on this and go directly to your profile page. On this page you can enter a useful description for your students.

      See the "How to.." resource below to see how to do this.

    • Creating a web page introduction

      Your profile will be available across all the course pages you teach. You could create a small pop up web page resource specifically for a course page with an introduction in it.  See how to do this below:

  • Topic 3

    Structuring your course page

    • Take a look around the course page that you are in right now.  You'll notice that the content sits in the main part of the page, while at the top you have a header space with some navigational items, and at the sides you can see 'blocks' of options which can vary and be added to.

      How will you structure your course page?  Read the following 'How to..." resources to find out more:

    • Adding Moodle blocks to your course page

    • What kinds of side tools on your course page might be useful? A Calendar so you can advertise what is happening and when?  Or maybe a random glossary entry block which automatically displays a different entry every so often? Explore what is available.
    • You can find out a lot more about useful 'Blocks' and tools for your course page by visiting Blocks in the Moodle.org website.

  • Topic 4

    Adding information resources to your page

    • To support learning activities, you will most likely be using a range of information resources, such as existing documents or files you have created outside of Moodle, links to useful websites, or you can create your own web resources using Moodle's web page creation tool. We'll cover your options in this topic.

    • Creating a web page using Moodle

      We created a small web page introduction to your students in an earlier topic. This illustrates how you can use the 'Compose a web page' function in the 'Add an Activity' drop down menu which is available once you 'Turn editing on' using the button at the top right of your page.  Here's a 'How to..." reminder, and an example of a web page created for an online course:

    • Using files created outside of Moodle

      You wil probably have a range of documents, presentations or other files you want to use in your activities. You can bring these into your Moodle course page and create a link so that your students can open them from within the page. Let's see how here:

    • Link to a web site

    • There are of course many excellent teaching resources being shared by educators across the world, and you may choose to use these in your teaching.  Have you heard about 'Webquests?' There is a useful website on how to use webquests as a learning tool.   To create web links from your Moodle page, see the 'How to...' resource below:

    • Organising your files!

      Whenever you bring files into Moodle, such as documents or images, you will be placing them in a storage area in your course page.  This is the 'Files' area.  See the Files menu option located in the Administration menu to the left of your screen.  Look at the 'How to...' resource for how to manage your files here:

    • Adding Multimedia files to your page

      Audio and video files provide different ways of engaging your students. Of course, you need to be careful with the sizes of your files as this may prohibit students from being able to download and play them online, so be careful!

  • Topic 5

    Adding and using communication tools

    • Your learning activities may require students to collaborate and 'talk' online with each other.  This is particularly useful if you have a group exercise or a small project so that your students can use the online communication tools to work out their solution.  It is also useful to set up communication options like 'frequently asked questions' so that when students ask a question online, the answer is also seen by the rest of the group. There are a few ways in which you can communicate in the Moodle course page, so read on...

    • Using online forums

      Take a look at the information on the difference between synchronous (chats in Moodle) and asynchronous (forums in Moodle) information below. We have also provided you with example online ice-breaker information and a 'How to...' resource for how to set up and use a forum.

    • Using online chat tools

      Online chat is a bit like using your mobile phone to text chat, except its on your PC screen. The whole group takes part and you can see the 'string' of messages flowing, one after the other in real time. See how below:

    • Using the Dialogue tool

      This tool allows a one-on-one chat between a teacher and a student. Its for a private discussion. See how below:

    • Sending messages to one or more students

      Rather than a group forum activity, you can also send messages directly to students' email addresses using the course page 'Participant List'. See how to below:

  • Topic 6

    Creating learning activities

    • In addition to creating information resources and using communication tools, Moodle also provides us with an array of great learning activity tools. Moodle called these 'Activity Modules' and once you have turned on the editing button on your page, and clicked on any of the 'Add an activity' drop down fields that appear in every page section you will see the tools' list.

    • Using the Choice tool - polling your student's opinions

      This tool allows you to set up a single question where you want to students to 'vote' from a range of possible answers. The results are displayed, so you can get a quick view of your students' reactions to a topic anytime in the course.  You can set up as many choices across the course page as you want.

    • Using the Glossary tool

      Useful not only for listing terminology, but as a learning activity your students could create and comment on their own definitions. See how:

    • Using the Database tool

      The database tool provides an opportunity for a learning activity where you wish your students to gather information and complete a number of pre-set fields (defined by you). You and the class can then see a 'report' on the overall findings and analyse these further.

    • Using the Lesson tool - a decision-making activity tool

      The lesson tool allows you to create a series of 'screens' with questions, and depending on the students' answer you can direct the student to a specific screen, creating different pathways through the lesson. See how:

    • Using the Wiki tool

      The wiki tool is like giving your students an online 'piece of paper' on which they can write or insert images. It can be used by individual, or you can allow the whole group to collaboratively create this online page.

    • Using the Stamp collection

      You can present your students with 'stamps' for many reasons - e.g. as a reward. These are comments about someone's work. You can allow students to present stamps to each other too. See how:

  • Topic 7

    Using Quizzes and Assessments

    • Learners of all ages love to have a go at quizzes, and its a great way for us teachers to create further opportunities for teaching interventions through the feedback we put into our online questions. Learners learn a lot from getting answers wrong!

      Moodle also provides us with an online 'drop box' so students who are working at a distance can submit their work to you online, and the process is all tracked and recorded. This is called the 'Assignment Module'. You too can grade the work and use the same tool in Moodle to send back grades individually to students. This makes life so much easier than posting papers, and gets away from using individual email inboxes!

    • Using the Quiz tool

      A quiz is a great tool to support your students’ learning as well as being used for assessment. Quizzes are set up in two steps 1) First create a bank of questions 2) Then create an online quiz to use these questions (you can create many different quizzes which re-use the same questions again and again). Read how to here:

    • Using the Assignment tool - your online drop box

      Read below how to set up your online drop box using the 'Assignment Activity Module' in Moodle.

  • Topic 8

    Recording student progress in their course

    • As we described at the beginning of this course, Moodle is not just a repository for your learning materials and activities, but it is also a database that stores lots of data about your students. Every action, every result, every communication is recorded in Moodle. Read more about these powerful tools, and the efficiencies they bring for your monitoring purposes:

    • The Gradebook - collating student results

      The Gradebook in your course page is where you can see an overview of all graded activities completed by your students in the course page. You can define how you want student overall results to be calculated, and displayed. It also provides a facility for you to print off reports. Read more here:

    • Other tools for monitoring and reporting on progress

      As well as the 'results' in the Gradebook, there are many tools in Moodle to help you monitor and manage student progress through their course. The following descriptions of these tools should give you a few useful ideas:

  • Topic 9

    Housekeeping

    • Feeling a little exhausted after all your Moodle discoveries? We have a few final tips to help make life easier.

      To measure how successful your course is and to make contant improvements you need to get feedback from your students. Moodle provides a very easy to use tool to get feedback instantly without using paper feedback sheets.  See how here:

    • How secure is your course page? You may have full administration support for your Moodle, but it is always good to know for yourself how to take a back-up of your course page. Look in Moodle.org for information on how to back up and restore a course.

  • Topic 10

    Congratulations!