Getting started with Moodle Student guide

Transcription

1 Getting started with Moodle Student guide This guide will help you to get started using Moodle and generally familiarise yourself with the new interface. Use the guide to learn how to: 1. Log in to Moodle via UEL Direct 2. Add a photo to your profile 3. Identify the main components of the Moodle Home screen 4. Navigate around a course and between different courses 5. Recognise the key components of the basic module template 1. Log in to Moodle To log into Moodle, you first need to log into UEL Direct. To access UEL Direct, navigate to the UEL Homepage ( and select the STUDENTS tab. Follow the UEL Direct link in the Quick Links section. Enter your university Username and Password as directed. Once you have logged into UEL Direct, select Moodle from the Learning Systems widget. This will take you through to the Moodle homepage. If the new widget does not appear on your UEL Direct page, you can apply the widget using the Customise your homepage link at the bottom of your UEL Direct page. This shows the list of items you can add to, or remove from your UEL Direct page. Select the Learning Systems widget by clicking on the relevant tick-box, and then click Save, on the right-hand side. 1

2 2. Identify the main components of the Moodle Home screen Your Moodle Home page will now appear listing all the courses you are enrolled on as well as various boxes called blocks on the left and right. See the example below. Moodle Home link brings you back to this page wherever you are in Moodle List of courses click on any course title to open it Blocks contain links to different features, resources and tools in Moodle 2

3 3. Add a photo to your profile To edit your profile and add a photo/avatar of yourself, click My Profile settings in the Administration block to your left. Expand My profile settings (by clicking the dropdown arrow to the left) and select Edit Profile. On the Edit profile page, scroll down to User Picture and select Add Then follow the prompts to upload a photo/avatar of yourself. The photo will appear when it is uploaded. 3

4 Click at the bottom of the window to save it. Your picture should now appear in the top right corner. If it doesn t, refresh the browser window to update the page (the F5 key on a Windows PC is a shortcut for this). Click My Home to return to the Moodle Home page and course list. The Home button appears in the top left under the UEL Logo or also as a link in the Navigation block. 4

5 4. Navigate around and between courses To enter a course from the Home page, click on the title under My courses. When you open your module, the main content and activities appear in the central column. This is usually divided into a number of sections which can represent the topics or weeks of your module. Each section contains the resources and activities you need, such as documents, presentations, web pages, quizzes, videos, discussions, etc. The first section always contains your module and assessment information, as well as a general discussion forum for news and announcements. Example course home page General topic -contains module and assessment information and news and general forums Topics - your resources and activities are organised here (can also be divided into weeks) In the example above, the contents of all the sections are displayed on the course home page. Alternatively, your tutor may use the collapsed topics format, where topics can be minimised so that you can focus on one topic or week at a time. 5

6 Example of a course home page using collapsed topics General topic this is always expanded Resources and activities click the links to open them Collapsed topic Clicking the blue drop down arrows opens or closes the topic Expanded topic To navigate around a Moodle course, you click on links in the topic list or in a block. This opens the particular resource or feature you have selected, such as a web page or a discussion forum. You can also use the Navigation block on the left to link to different parts of a course, to the Moodle Home page or to another course altogether. This is illustrated below. Click on My courses to view the list of courses you are enrolled on. Click on any course in the list to open it. Click the drop down arrow next to any course to view different parts of that course. Click on any item in the list to jump to that area. If you want to go back to previous screens in Moodle, it s fine to use the browser Back button. There is also a breadcrumb trail at the top which you can use to navigate 6

7 back to previous screens. Note that not all the steps in the breadcrumb trail are live links, however, so you can only go back to certain screens. 5. Recognise the key components of the basic module template For consistency, all your modules in Moodle will contain the same core features so that you know where to find them.these are: Left hand side blocks: o Navigation to move within and between courses o Activities links to lists of different kinds of resources, e.g. forums, files etc. o Administration to edit your profile Right hand side blocks: o Latest news link to posts on the News forum o Recent activity links to the latest activity among participants on the course General topic (at the top of the page) contains: o News forum and General discussion forum o Staff guidance on the module o Links to mid-module and end of module evaluations o Link to a guide on submitting to Turnitin List of topics or weeks o Containing your course materials and links to activities and other resources These core features are shown in the example of a blank module template below: 7

8 8