moodel

How to use Moodle 2.7

Teacher’s Manual for the world’s most popular LMS
Jaswinder Singh

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License

This book is dedicated to my whole family & friends who kept their complete belief in me and
my capabilities and helped me to become a good human being.

Contents

Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
What is Moodle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Who Is This Book For? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
Prerequisites—What Do You Need Before You Start? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i
How to Use This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ii
Happy Moodling!!! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . iii

Chapter 1: Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
What is a Learning Management System? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Why Should You Use a LMS? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
What Makes Moodle Special? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

Chapter 2: How can I use Moodle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
What is a Learning Environment? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Course Design Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Introductory Survey Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Skills Development Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Theory/Discussion Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Capstone Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
The Moodle Interface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Languages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Moodle’s Help System and Documentation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
Creating an Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Editing Your User Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
A First Look at a Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Course Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Course Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
Enrolling Students in the course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Editing Mode (“Turn Editing On” Button) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Adding content to the course: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

CONTENTS

Chapter 4: Managing Content in Moodle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Adding Content to Moodle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Adding a Label . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
Composing a Page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
Adding URL to the course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Creating a folder resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
Creating a file resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
Adding an IMS content package . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
Adding a book resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
To add Multilanguage content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Adding Media files to your course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
Managing and updating your content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Creating an alias/shortcut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Tracking Versions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Effective Content Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
File Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
Reducing file sizes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Strategy 1: Save your PowerPoint presentations as PDF . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Strategy 2: Scan articles as text, not images . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Strategy 3: Reduce your image size and use compression . . . . . . . . . . 53
Creative Content . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Uploading lecture notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
External web sites . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

Chapter 5: Managing Your Class . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Understanding and Using Roles: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Moodle’s Default roles description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
Assigning Roles in Your Course: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
Removing Students . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Temporarily Suspending a User Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Managing Enrollment Methods for your course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
Capabilities and Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Override Permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
Locations for overriding permissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Overriding permission in activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
Student Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
Group levels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Why use groups? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
Creating a group . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Auto-create groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
Backup and Restore . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Backing up a course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
Automated course backup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Restore a course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
Creative uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71

CONTENTS

Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73

Chapter 6: Using Moodle Text Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Moodle Text Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Atto HTML editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 74
Equation editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Plugins for Atto . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
TinyMCE Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Plugins for TinyMCE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
File Picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Getting files from the file picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Viewing your files in the file picker . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
File Repositories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Standard repositories: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82

Chapter 7: Chat, Messaging and forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Chat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Why use chat? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Why NOT use chat? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Creating Chat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Using Chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
Chat Reports . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Effective Chat Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Creative Chat Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Online office hours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Group chats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Last-minute exam preparation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Instant messaging . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
Sending messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
To send a message to selected course participants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Managing contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Message history . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Effective Messaging Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Creative Messaging Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Tutorial support . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
Encouraging participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Creating a Forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Using Forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Searching Forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Managing Forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Managing expectations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Behavior issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

CONTENTS

Archiving forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Quarantining a forum post . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100

Forum Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
Effective Forum Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102

Starting the discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Encouraging participation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Grading forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Creative Forum Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Peer assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Q & A forums for problem solving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
Interviews . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Debates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Role-playing and storytelling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Frequently asked questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Reading study groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Social forum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106

Chapter 8: Quizzes and Question Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Quiz Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Standard Question Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Creative Quiz Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
How to Create a Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
Creating the Quiz Body . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
Building Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Question Bank . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 115
Select a category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
To add a category . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Adding questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Creating a new question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Calculated Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Adding/deleting your own values: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Calculated Multichoice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Calculated Simple . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Description . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Embedded Answers (Cloze) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Essay . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
Matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Multiple Choice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Single Answer Questions- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
Multiple Answer Questions- . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Numerical . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Random short-answer matching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Short Answer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
True/False Question . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
Importing Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130

CONTENTS

Exporting Questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Adding Questions to a Quiz . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Random questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
Managing Quizzes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
Grades report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Responses report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Statistics report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
Manual grading report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Quiz Capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
Effective Quiz Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Creative Quiz Uses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139

Chapter checks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Test Practice . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Data gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140
Progressive testing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Quiz Security and Cheating . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Printing and sharing questions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Using the textbook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Working with friends . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Have someone else take the test . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 142

Chapter 9: Assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Assignment Types: . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Adding an Assignment activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 144
Assignment capabilities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Managing Assignment Submissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 150
Grading Assignment Submissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Filtering submissions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Quick grading . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Effective assignment practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Creative Assignment Practices . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 152
Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 156

Chapter 10: Workshop . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Workshop phases . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
Setup phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Submission phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Assessment phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Grading evaluation phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158
Closed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Adding a new workshop activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
Using Workshop Activity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Setup Phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Submission phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162
Assessment phase . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164





































































Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 26

Figure 3-11 Editing the Course Settings

* Hidden sections: When you hide an upcoming topic section to prevent your

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 27

students from jumping ahead, you can choose to display the title as a collapsed
section or simply hide the topic altogether. Displaying the collapsed sections
gives your students a road map of the upcoming topics or weeks, so it’s probably
a good idea to leave this on the default setting.
* Course Layout: You can change the course layout to display whole course on a
single page or else to split it into several pages.
– Appearance:
* Force Language: If you want to take your course in a specific language you can
force it here. If you do so, your students cannot change languages within the
course. For example for language teaching course like German, French etc.
* News items to show: Use this setting to determine the number of course news
items displayed on the course page.
* Show gradebook to students: This setting allows you to select whether students
can see the gradebook. If set to No, it doesn’t stop instructors from recording
grades, but simply prevents the students from seeing them.
* Show activity reports: This setting allows students to view their activity history
in your course. This is useful if you want students to reflect on their level of
participation.
– Files and Uploads:
* Maximum upload size: This setting limits the size of files you or your students
upload to the course. Your system administrator sets the maximum size for
the system, but you can choose to make the limit smaller than the system
maximum. You can also further limit the size of files that your students upload
as assignment submissions and for other activities. (We’ll cover them as they
come up later in the book.)
– Guest access:
* Allow Guest access: This setting determines whether a user can access the course
as a guest, without being required to enroll.
* Password: A password allows guest access to the course to be restricted to only
those who know the password. Guests will be required to supply the password
each time they access the course.
– Groups:
* Group Mode: Here you can define the group mode at the course level by a
pull down menu. “No groups”, “Separate groups” and “Visible groups” are the
choices. The selected setting will be the default group mode for all activities
defined within that course. The group setting can affect what users see in the
Participants list and who they can interact with in activities.
* Force Group Mode: If the group mode is “forced” at a course-level, then this
particular group mode will be applied to every activity in that course. This will
override any activities that may have a special group setting.
* Default grouping: If groupings are enabled, a default grouping for course
activities and resources may be set. Groupings are used in case if you want to
make an activity (such as an assignment or a quiz) visible to only one set of users
within a course, you need first to put the users into a group and then put them
into a grouping. A single grouping can house one group or several groups. We
will discuss about Groupings in the later chapter.

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 28

– Role Renaming: You can rename the roles used in your course. For example, you
may wish to rename the Teacher role as “Facilitator”, “Tutor” or “Guide”. These new
role names will appear within the course. For example on the participants and the
override permissions pages.

• Once you’ve made all your selections, click the “Save changes” button.

Enrolling Students in the course

To select the Enrollment options for your course, click and expand the Users tree under the course
administration tree in the Administration Block. Then, click on “Enrolled users”. It will show the
list of the participants enrolled in your course including their details like First Name, Surname,
Email address, Last access, Assigned Roles within the course, and the Enrollment method.

Figure 3-12 Enrolling Users in course

To enroll users to your course:

• Click “Enroll users” in the top right side as shown in the image.
• In the pop up window, first choose the role to be assigned from the drop down menu. Let’s

say that you want to assign Student role to your users.

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 29

• To limit the Enrollment duration for some specified time, expand the Enrollment tree and
set the Enrollment duration.Click on the Names of the users to Enroll them as a Student
in your course.

• After finishing click “Finish enrolling users”.

Editing Mode (“Turn Editing On” Button)

Now you are having your own course in preferred format and settings along with your students,
we’ll look at how to add content.

To start the process, you’ll first need to turn editing on which will allow you to add resources and
activities to your course. At the top right of the page of any course you are teaching, you’ll see a
button labeled, surprisingly enough, “Turn editing on.” Clicking on this button will present you
with a new array of options. You can also switch on the editing mode from the Administration
Block under Course Administration tree.

Figure 3-13 Blank Weekly Course with Editing Mode turned On

Starting at the top of the screen, let’s look at what turning editing on enables you to do. At the
top of each section, you’ll see an icon of a gear like . When you click it, you are presented with
a Summary text area. You can use this to change the default section name and summarize each
topic or weekly section in your course. You should keep the summary to a sentence or two for
each block to avoid making the main page too long. Click “Save changes” button when you’ve
added your summary. You can go back and change it later by clicking the gear icon again.

You will find the following icons as mentioned in the table in a single course section.

Icon Function

Edit Settings. This icon is used to edit the settings of the particular item
like editing the settings of a label.
Drag and Drop Icon - Move any item in a different section/week or
change the order of the sections in the course layout.
The highlight icon allows you to highlight a section as current.
Open Eye Icon. Used to show a section or week or any single activity.
Closed Eye Icon. Used to show a section or week or any single activity.
Pencil Icon - Used to change the Title of a file as displayed on the course
page.

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 30

Icon Function

Drop down menu to reveal the below mentioned icons.

Move right or left. You can move blocks to the left- or right-hand
columns. You can also use this to indent items in the middle column.
Groups Icon - the groups icon allows you to change between no groups
or separate/visible groups
Duplicate Icon- the duplicate icon allows you to copy an activity or
resource. It’s done directly on the course page.
Roles icon - allows you to assign roles locally in the item.
Delete icon - will permanently delete something from the course.

Table 3-1 Icons used in Moodle

You can use these icons throughout your moodle site to customize the activities according to
your requirements.

Figure 3-14 Edit Menu of an activity

In addition to the icons for manipulating blocks and activities, each section in the middle column
has a link “Add an activity or resource” to add tools for adding resource content such as web pages
and links to web sites and activities such as forums, quizzes, lessons, and assignments.

If you like the native separate activity and resource drop down menu like in Moodle 1.9 then
you can switch Off the activity chooser from the course administration tree by clicking “Activity
Chooser Off”.

By adding the resources available in the Moodle you can create content directly within Moodle
or link to content you’ve uploaded. We’ll describe each of these tools briefly now, and cover
them in depth in the next chapter:

• Book: The first tool, “Book” creates a Book resource on your course page which can be
used for creating a multi-page resource with Chapters and subchapters.

• File: A picture, a pdf document, a spreadsheet, a sound file, a video file. You can also
directly drag and drop the files onto the course home page to add them as a resource.

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 31

Figure 3-15 “Add an activity or resource” menu

• Folder: For helping organize files and one folder may contain other folders.
• IMS Content Package: Add static material from other sources in the standard IMS content

package format.
• Label: Can be a few displayed words or an image used to separate resources and activities

in a topic section, or can be a lengthy description or instructions.
• Page: The student sees a single, scrollable screen that a teacher creates with the robust

HTML editor.
• URL: You can send the student to any place they can reach on their web browser, for

example Wikipedia.

All the resources are known as the Static activities in Moodle as they are for sharing the
information with the student in a single direction whereas the activities allows you to add
interactive tools to your course.

An activity is a general name for a group of features in a Moodle course. Usually an activity
is something that a student will do that interacts with other students and or the teacher. There
are 14 different types of activities in the standard Moodle. The bulk of this book is dedicated to
describing how each of these tools works and how to apply them in your course.

Table 3-2 explains each tool very briefly. We’ll learn more about these tools as they come up later
in the book.

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 32

Activity Type Description
Assignments
Enable teachers to grade and give comments on uploaded files
Chat and assignments created on and off line.
Choice Allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion.
A teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple
Database responses.
Enables participants to create, maintain and search a bank of
External Tool record entries.
Allows participants to interact with LTI compliant learning
Feedback resources and activities on other web sites.
Forum For creating and conducting surveys to collect feedback.
Glossary Allows participants to have asynchronous discussions.
Enables participants to create and maintain a list of definitions,
Lesson like a dictionary.
Quiz For delivering content in flexible ways.
Allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, which may be
SCORM automatically marked and feedback and/or to correct answers
Survey shown.
Enables SCORM packages to be included as course content.
Wiki For gathering data from students to help teachers learn about
Workshop their class and reflect on their own teaching.
A collection of web pages that anyone can add to or edit.
Enables peer assessment.

Table 3-2 Activity types in Moodle

Adding content to the course:

By now, you’re probably wondering, “When the heck do I get to add stuff to my course?” We’ve
provided a lot of background so you’ll understand some of the available options. But, now it’s
the time to start building your course.

Let’s start with a news item to announce to everyone that your online materials are coming soon.
The Site News is a special type of forum (for a full description of forums, see Chapter 6). It is
automatically created when the course is first generated.

Everyone in the course can read the postings and the news is automatically emailed to them.
It’s a good tool for making general announcements and sending reminders to students about
upcoming assignments.

Chapter 3: Moodle Basics 33

Figure 3-16 Add a new discussion topic

To add a news item:

• Click the “News Forum” link near the top of your course page.

• Click the “Add a new topic” button. You’ll see the page to add a new topic, as shown in
Figure 3-16.

• Enter the subject of the announcement and the message to your class.

• If you want to attach any files also then you can attach with the post.

• By default all Moodle notifications are sent out after a specified time configured by your
Site Administrator. So, if you need to send the News urgently before that time has elapsed
then you can check the box “Mail Now” to send it immediately.

• Click the “Post to Forum” button. You will be returned to the News Forum page.

• Click on your course name in the navigation bar at the top to return to your course page.