NMT Moodle 2.2 Instructor's Guide

Transcription

1 NMT Moodle 2.2 Instructor's Guide Abstract John W. Shipman Dylan Etscorn :48 Procedures for instructors using the Moodle courseware system, version 2.2, at New Mexico Tech. This publication is available in Web form 1 and also as a PDF document 2. Please forward any comments to tcc-doc@nmt.edu. Table of Contents 1. Introduction: What is Moodle? How to request Moodle courses and training Connecting to the Moodle site Settings: Configuring your course Structuring your course The Edit course settings page Special procedures for cross-listed courses Cross-listing with different content for different sections Using the course calendar Adding a calendar event Editing a calendar event Deleting a calendar event Adding content to your course Presenting blocks in reverse chronological order Resources Adding a page Adding a link to a file or URL Drag-and-drop uploading of files Adding a label Moving a resource or activity Moodle's file manager (My private files) Uploading a file into your private files area Managing your private files area Roles and access control Managing role assignments Activities Assignment activities Posting an assignment

2 11.2. Grading an assignment Grades Viewing the gradebook Configuring the gradebook Setting up gradebook categories Manually adding a gradebook item Setting up your grade book to use Moodle's Weighted feature Setting up a letter grade scale Hiding and revealing gradebook columns Always show a meaningful overall course grade How to make a course backup Introduction: What is Moodle? The purpose of a courseware system is to help instructors teach courses by providing a flexible, easy-touse Web site for course-related materials and communication. Martin Dougiamas, an educator in Perth, Australia, invented Moodle because he was frustrated by the inflexibility of the WebCT courseware system. First released in 2002, the open-source Moodle product currently serves over 60,000,000 users worldwide. It's entirely up to you whether you use Moodle for your courses. Moodle has a modular structure so you can choose only the parts that fit your teaching style. We recommend the gradebook, calendar, and assignment tools, in particular, to save you and your students time and pain. The gradebook, in particular, has these virtues: Because it is vital to make it easy for students to track their own progress, as soon as you or a grader posts a grade, the student can see it without any more work on your part. The student can always see their overall course average and the individual grades that are used to compute it. Moodle works with the Starfish site 3 to help advisors track student progress, especially in critical early courses like Math 103 and 104. You may, at your discretion, opt in to the Starfish program, and specify what grade average you consider a danger level, and when you have reached the point in your course where grades are significant; Starfish can then look at your gradebook without further action on your part, and flag students with grades below that level. In this document we describe only the most commonly used features, but you will find abundant online documentation, and lively support resources, at the Moodle community site 4. In particular, see the Moodle 2.2 documentation 5 page. 2. How to request Moodle courses and training This address is the primary contact point for our local Moodle administrators: <cms_master@nmt.edu> If you would like to try Moodle out, send mail to the above address and request a Moodle training account. We will put up a site where you can try Moodle's features without associating it with a live course

3 We offer free one-on-one training at your desk and at your convenience. The initial training takes less than an hour and is generally all you'll need for most purposes. Send requests for training to the above . If you would like to use Moodle to teach one or more of your courses, please send a request to the above specifying the course title, department, course number, section, and CRN. You will get a reply back once the course has been created. Once the semester is underway, students enrolled in your course will automatically appear in your Moodle course without any effort on your part, with daily updates up until the course add deadline. Important If your course is cross-listed under multiple departments or course numbers, please specify the CRNs of all the child sections, and the overall course title. Also, see Section 4.3, Special procedures for crosslisted courses (p. 6). 3. Connecting to the Moodle site To work with Moodle, direct your favorite Web browser to this address: Use your regular Tech Computer Center account name and password to log in. Here is an example of the top-level page you will see after you log in. 3

4 Once your course has been created and you have been assigned as its teacher, when you log in you will see links to all your courses on the left side under the heading My courses. Click on a link to enter the course. To log out, click on the Logout link in the extreme top right corner of the page. After you log out, there will be a Login link at that same location. 4. Settings: Configuring your course The first thing you will want to do is to set up general options that control the appearance and structure of your course Structuring your course You'll need to select one of Moodle's two ways of organizing the sequence of material in your course: By topic, if students need to cover material in sequence but without reference to specific dates. Each topic might be a lecture, or a week, or some other unit of instruction. By week, if you have a strict chronological sequence. Decide how you want to organize the material before proceeding to the next section The Edit course settings page Assuming that your course is in the system and you are logged in and connected to the course (see Section 3, Connecting to the Moodle site (p. 3)), you will see a page something like this. 4

5 There are four main areas on this page: Across the top of the page is the TCC logo, with your user name and the Logout button in the top right corner. Just below the logo is the bread-crumb trail, a sequence of links that shows where you are in your structure, and allows you to jump up one or more levels by clicking on any of the links. In the example page shown, the bread-crumb trail has three pieces: the word Home takes you back to your main page (outside the current course). The next bread-crumb, My courses, shows that you are viewing courses that you are enrolled in. The last bit, Classes-Training, is the name of the course. The narrow column on the left contains various functional links such as Navigation and Settings. The wide center column is where most significant content will be presented. This area is organized as a sequence of blocks. The first block, the course block, is for displaying content that applies to the course as a whole. The remainder of this area is occupied by one or more topic blocks or week blocks, depending on whether you organize your course by topic or by week. Another narrow column on the right displays various communications tools. To start setting up your course, in the left-hand column under Settings, click the Edit settings link. 5

6 Moodle gives you lots of options for structuring your course. We'll discuss only some of the more common settings. Full name, Short name, Course ID number Please do not edit these fields; their contents follow a standardized format that helps students find your course where multiple courses are listed. In particular, the value of the Course ID number field is a critical link to the mechanism that enrolls your students based on Banner enrollments. Course summary The course summary block is a small built-in editor you can use to write a brief description of the course. Format, Number of weeks/topics If you want to organize your course content by calendar week, select Weekly format. If instead you wish to present the content as a sequence of topics, select Topics format. Then select the number of weeks or the number of topics. Show gradebook to students If you want to use Moodle's grade book to display grades to your students, select Yes. Availability Normally this choice shows This course is available to students. If your content is not ready for the students, select This course is not available to students. Click the Save changes button at the bottom of the page when you are done Special procedures for cross-listed courses If your course is cross-listed in multiple departments or under multiple course numbers, be sure to specify this when the course is first created. To request a cross-listed course, send an to <cms_master@nmt.edu>. Specify these items: The overall course title for the cross-listed set. For each child section, the department, course number, section, and CRN. For example, the course entitled Introduction to Programming is cross-listed as CSE 113 and IT 113. In the fall of 2010, CSE was CRN and IT was CRN For this case, the Moodle administrator will create three courses under Moodle: Each CRN gets its own child section. In Moodle, these are usually invisible to the students registered in them. Students will see what Moodle calls a meta-course or parent course named Introduction to Programming. This is where you put all the content that is shared among the child sections. A meta-course does not have enrollments of its own; anyone enrolled in a child section is automatically a member of the parent meta-course. Initially, the cross-listed course will be set up so none of the students even see the section they are enrolled in. They will see only a link to the parent meta-course, so put your Moodle content here and not in the child sections. However, in some situations you as an instructor might wish to put up different material that pertains only to certain sections. For that case, see Section 4.4, Cross-listing with different content for different sections (p. 7). 6

7 4.4. Cross-listing with different content for different sections By default, when the local Moodle administrator sets up your course as a cross-listed set, the child sections are invisible to the students. Anyone enrolled in one of the child sections sees only the parent metacourse where you as instructor put up content that is shared among all the students in the cross-listed set. Moodle allows you to make a child section visible to students enrolled in that section, which allows you to put up content that pertains only to that section. For example, suppose CSE meets together with CSE under the course title Tagging for Professionals. After the local Moodle administrator sets up this cross-listed set, any student enrolled in either child section sees only the parent meta-course. However, let's suppose that those enrolled at 500 level get additional assignments. In that case, the instructor can make the section visible only to the students enrolled under that number, and put the additional assignments up as content in that section. Here is the procedure for making a child section visible. Procedure 1. Making a metacourse child section visible 1. Login to Moodle and under Navigation click on My courses. You will see a list of all your courses, both child sections and meta-courses. 2. Click on the link to the child section you wish to make visible. 3. On the left-hand side, under Settings, click on Edit settings. 4. Scroll down to the section labeled Availability. Pull down the menu labeled Availability and select This course is available to students. 5. At the bottom of this page, click Save changes. After you have done this, any content that you place into the child section will be visible to the students that have enrolled under that child section's CRN. 5. Using the course calendar Moodle's calendar tool is a great place to post any time-related course information, such as dates of lectures and exams, or homework due dates Adding a calendar event To post a new item on your calendar, follow this procedure. Procedure 2. Adding a calendar item 1. Login and enter a course where you want to add a calendar event. 2. Under Upcoming Events on the right-hand side of the page, click on New event.. 3. Select the type of event by using the drop down menu labeled Type of event. User: This event will be visible only to you. Course: Anyone in the course will see this event on their calendar. 4. In the Event title field, enter a short title for the event. 7

8 5. In the Description: area, enter a full description of the event. 6. Using the five pull-down menus labeled Date, select the day, month, year, hour and minute when the event starts. 7. Under Duration, select one of these radiobuttons. If the event has no specific duration, select Without duration. If the event lasts until a specific date or time, select the Until radiobutton and use the adjacent pull-down menus to select the ending date and time. If the event lasts a speficic interval in minutes, select Duration in minutes and enter the number of minutes in the adjacent field. 8. To repeat this event click the checkbox Repeat this event and fill in the text box with the number of weeks to repeat. 9. Click on the Save changes button Editing a calendar event To modify an existing calendar item, follow this procedure. Procedure 3. Modifying a calendar item 1. On the right-hand side of the course page under Upcoming events, click on the Go to calendar... link. 2. If the event is not for the current month, but the event's month is displayed on the right-hand side of the page, click on the month's name, then click on the event. 3. If the month of this event is not displayed in the right-hand column on the page, click on any month name to go to that month's calendar. Near the top of the page you will find the current month name, centered, and links for the previous and following month to the left and right of this title. Click the next-month or previous-month link until you are on the desired month. Then click on the day of the event you want to modify. In the list of events that appears in the middle of the page, click on the 4. Make your changes, then click on Save changes. editing icon Deleting a calendar event To delete a calendar event: Procedure 4. Deleting a calendar item 1. On the right-hand side of the course page under Upcoming events, click on the Go to calendar... link. 2. If the event is listing in the middle of the page, click on the name of the event. If the event's month is displayed on the right-hand side of the page, click on the month's name. If the month of this event is not displayed in the right-hand column on the page, click on any month name to go to that month's calendar. Near the top of the page you will find the current month name, centered, and links for the previous and following month to the left and right of this title. Click the next-month or previous-month link until you are on the desired month. Then click on the day of the event you want to delete. 8

9 3. In the list of the day's events, click on the delete icon. 4. On the Are you sure you want to delete this event? page, click Delete. 6. Adding content to your course Whether your course is organized by week or by topic, the large center column of the course will display a sequence of blocks. The first block is for the entire course, and then each following block is for one week or topic. When you add content, you can add it to any of these blocks. Add content to the first block if it pertains to the entire course; add content to the other blocks if that content pertains to only one week or one topic. To add content, first you must turn on editing. There are two ways to do this: In the top right corner of the page, just under the Logout button, click the button labeled Turn editing on. Under the Settings section in the column on the left-hand side, click on the link Turn editing on. When editing is on, each block shows an summary. edit icon. Click on this icon to create or modify the block's Each block also shows two pull-down menus, labeled Add a resource... and Add an activity... For resources, see Section 7, Resources (p. 11). A Moodle resource is some static content associated with the course, such as a syllabus or lecture notes. For activities, see Section 10, Activities (p. 18). A Moodle activity is a tool that instructors and students use to interact with the course, for tasks such as homework assignments and online quizzes Presenting blocks in reverse chronological order Assuming you use topic block format instead of weekly block format (see Section 4.2, The Edit course settings page (p. 4)), you will see one unnumbered block followed by blocks numbered 1, 2, 3, and so on, something like this: The top, unnumbered block is for material that pertains to the entire course, such as your syllabus. Most instructors use each of the numbered blocks for one unit of material, such as a lecture or a week. If you were to use block 1 for the first unit, block 2 for the second unit, and so on, as the course progresses through the semester, students would have to scroll down further and further to get to the current material. Therefore, we recommend that you hide all the blocks for future units, and then move each block to the top as it becomes the active block. Here is the overall procedure. 9

10 1. Start in the Edit course settings menu: from the course page, on the left side under Settings, click on Edit settings. 2. Under General scroll down a little ways to the pulldown menu labeled Format, and select Topics format if you haven't already. 3. In the next pulldown menu labeled Number of weeks/topics, select 1. Then scroll to the bottom of this page and click Save changes. You will return to the course page. 4. Click the Turn editing on button. This makes a number of icons appear: 5. In the first topic, edit the title of the block by clicking the edit icon just to the right of the block number. Uncheck the box labeled Use default section and enter a title such as Lecture 1 in the textbox labeled Section name. 6. Add resources and activities for the first topic; see Section 7, Resources (p. 11) and Section 10, Activities (p. 18). 7. To add a new block, first go back to the Settings menu and add one to the Number of weeks/topics. Save and return to the course page. You will see the new topic block below the other blocks. Again, click the edit icon and enter a heading for the block, e.g., Lecture Be sure editing is turned on. You will see upward- and downward-pointing arrows on the right side, like this: To move a block up one position, click on the up-arrow; to move a block down one position, click on the down-arrow. 10

11 7. Resources A Moodle resource is a functional tool that you can add to your structure. There are several kinds of resources: A page created within Moodle offers you a wide range of formatting options. You can use the builtin WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor, or create HTML directly if you prefer. See Section 7.1, Adding a page (p. 11). You can link to a file (such as a PDF, Power Point, or image). See Section 7.2, Adding a link to a file or URL (p. 11). If your browser supports it, you can also drag and drop content onto your course page. See Section 7.3, Drag-and-drop uploading of files (p. 12). If you have lots of files, you can organize them in folders. You can link to a URL (web page). See Section 7.2, Adding a link to a file or URL (p. 11). A label is a simple heading you can use to separate other kinds of content. See Section 7.4, Adding a label (p. 14). Once you have added a resource to a block, you can move it to a different block; see Section 7.5, Moving a resource or activity (p. 14) Adding a page Procedure 5. Adding a page 1. Make sure editing is on (see Section 6, Adding content to your course (p. 9)), and determine where you want to add the page. Add it to the top block if it pertains to the entire course; add it to a week or topic block if it pertains only to that block. 2. Pull down the Add a resource... menu for the relevant block, and select Page. 3. In the Name field, enter a short descriptive name for the page you are creating. This name will appear as a link in the content block, so keep it short and descriptive. 4. In the Description field, enter a description for the page you are creating. Check the box Display description on course if you want to display the description on the main course page. If you leave this box unchecked, the description will show only when viewing the page. 5. Enter the bulk of the page in the large area labeled Page content. If you prefer to compose directly in HTML, click the HTML button. 6. When you have finished composing your page, click on either Save and display to see what you have created, or click on Save and return to course when you are satisfied Adding a link to a file or URL Some of your course content may be represented as a file such as a PDF, a presentation such as a.ppt (PowerPoint) file, image, or a URL. 11

12 Warning Before posting files that have a proprietary format (such as MS Word or Excel spreadsheet), consider that a few students out there may run one of those other operating systems and might not be able to see some types of files. For spreadsheets and documents, PDF is probably the best choice for universal access, since the Acrobat Reader is free for downloading. To add a link to an item of content such as this, first insure editing is turned on (see Section 6, Adding content to your course (p. 9)). Procedure 6. Link to a file 1. Locate the block where you want to add the content. If it pertains to the course in general, add it to the first block, otherwise add it to the relevant week or topic block. 2. In the relevant block, click its Add a resource... pull-down menu, and select File. 3. In the Name field, enter a short descriptive name so the student will know what they are asking for. 4. Enter a description of the content in the Description editing area. 5. Under Content, click the button labeled Add... You will need to use Moodle's file browser to move a copy of the file into Moodle; see Section 8, Moodle's file manager (My private files) (p. 15). Select a previously uploaded file from Private files or upload a new file from Upload a file. 6. Click on Save and return to course. You will see a link to the file you just added. To delete a file link, click on the Procedure 7. Link to a URL next to its content link. 1. In the relevant block, click its Add a resource... pull-down menu, and select URL. 2. In the Name field, enter a short descriptive name so the student will know what they are asking for. 3. Enter a description of the content in the Description editing area. 4. Under Content, type in the URL. 5. Click on Save and return to course. To delete a URL link, click on the next to its content link Drag-and-drop uploading of files You may be able to add files to your course page by simply dragging and dropping file icons from outside your browser. Once you are on your course page and you have clicked Turn editing on, you will see a block on the right side entitled Drag and drop upload. If this block displays the message Your browser does not support drag and drop upload of files, you will need to use a different browser to allow this feature. 12

13 If you see the message AJAX course editing must be enabled for drag and brop upload to work, go through How to enable AJAX course editing (p. 13). If you see the message Drag and drop files, text or links from your desktop onto course sections to upload them, you can use this feature. See: How to drag and drop a file onto your course page (p. 13). How to drag and drop text onto your course page (p. 13). How to drag and drop a hyperlink onto your course page (p. 13). Procedure 8. How to enable AJAX course editing 1. Go to your Moodle start page, which is the Home link in the bread-crumb trail. 2. On the left side under Settings, open My profile settings and click on Edit profile. 3. In the pull-down menu labeled AJAX and Javascript, select Yes: use advanced web features. Procedure 9. How to drag and drop a file onto your course page 1. Go to your course page and turn on editing with the Turn editing on button. 2. From a file browser such as the MacOS Finder, the Windows My Computer icon, or a Linux desktop, click on a file's icon and drag and drop it onto one of the sections on your course page. A box with a dashed outline will appear to show you where it will appear. 3. If you wish, you can move the file's icon around later using the procedure described in Section 7.5, Moving a resource or activity (p. 14). You can also change the name of the file or add a description by using the edit icon. 4. When the student clicks on the file's icon, they will see a page that says Click name to view the file. Procedure 10. How to drag and drop text onto your course page 1. Go to your course page and turn on editing with the Turn editing on button. 2. Highlight the desired text in another window, then drag it onto one of the sections in the middle of your course page. A box with a dashed outline will appear to show you where it will appear. 3. You will see a popup window entitled What do you want to call this link? Enter a title for the page you are creating, then click OK. 4. If you wish, you may click on the edit icon to change the page's title or content, or add a description. You may also move the link around using the procedure described in Section 7.5, Moving a resource or activity (p. 14). 5. When the student clicks on the file's icon, they will see a page whose title is the text you entered in the previous step. The text you dropped will appear on the body of this page. Procedure 11. How to drag and drop a hyperlink onto your course page 1. Go to your course page and turn on editing with the Turn editing on button. 2. From another window that contains a hyperlink, drag the hyperlink and drop it onto one of the sections in the middle of your course page. A box with a dashed outline will appear to show you where it will appear. 3. You will see a popup window entitled What do you want to call this link? Enter a title for the page you are creating, then click OK. 13

14 4. If you wish, you may click on the edit icon to change the link title or URL, or add a description. You may also move the link around using the procedure described in Section 7.5, Moving a resource or activity (p. 14). 5. When the student clicks on the link, they will see a page with the name and description and the text Click URL to open resource Adding a label To add a label (heading) to a block, first insure editing is turned on (see Section 6, Adding content to your course (p. 9)). Procedure 12. Adding a block label 1. Find the block where you want to add the label, click its Add a resource... pull-down menu, and select Label. 2. Under the heading Label text you will find the usual editing tool. Enter the heading here. 3. The Visible pull-down menu normally displays the choice Show. Select Hide to make the label invisible to students. 4. When you are finished creating the label, click Save and display to see what you have created, or click Save and return to course to add more content. To remove a label, click the next to the label's name Moving a resource or activity If you have set up a resource or activity in a block, and wish to move it to a different position, follow this procedure In the course page, click the Turn editing on button. You will see a double-arrow icon next to the name of the resource or activity: Suppose you are moving something called Quiz 1. Click the double-arrow icon in that item. You will see a page with a number of small rectangular boxes with dashed borders, like this: 14

15 Each of these dashed boxes represents someplace you may put your resource or activity. In the picture above, you would click on the first one to place Quiz 1 before the News forum link in the course block; the second box would place it just under the forum link; and so forth. 8. Moodle's file manager (My private files) For security and performance reasons, you can move files into the Moodle server. You must do this to add files to course content. There are several ways to get into the Private files area. When you are adding course files (see Section 7.2, Adding a link to a file or URL (p. 11)), the Add... button brings up the Private files area. From the Navigation menu on the left side of the page, click on the My home link. You will see a section called My private files on the right side of the page. Click on the Manage my private files button. Under the Navigation section, click on the My profile link. This opens up several sub-choices including a My private files link Uploading a file into your private files area To move a file into your Private files area from your computer or from any accessible file system, follow this procedure. Procedure 13. Uploading a file into Moodle 1. When you enter the Private files area, the page shows files and folders you have already imported into Moodle, if any. To move a file into Moodle, click the button labeled Add This brings up the File picker window. Click on Upload a file. 3. Click on the Browse... or Choose File button (depending on your browser), navigate to the file that you wish to upload, and then click the Open button. 15

16 4. This takes you back to the File picker window. You can rename the file by filling in the Save as: box. If you wish, you may also enter the author's name in the Author: field. You may wish to use the Choose license: pull-down menu to specify the type of license on the file: All Rights Reserved, Public Domain, and several types of Creative Commons licenses. 5. Click on Upload this file window when finished Managing your private files area If you have a lot of files to manage, you can organize your Moodle private file area into folders, subfolders, sub-subfolders, and so forth. To open your private files area, under Navigation on the left side of the page, click on My Home. Then click on the Manage my private files button on the right side of the page. To create a folder, click the Create folder button. Name this folder and click on the OK button. To move down to a sub-folder, click its name in the list found in the middle of the page. To move up from a sub-folder, use the bread-crumbs right above the Add, Create folder, and Download all buttons. To move a file to a different folder, click the icon and select Move... and then double click the name of the folder that you want to move the file to. Click the Move button. To delete files, click the icon and select Delete... Confirm the deletion by clicking the Yes button. To make your files into a Zip archive, click on the Download all button. If you want all of your files zipped, you must click the button at the top level. If you are in a sub-folder when you click the Download all button, only the contents of that folder and other sub-folders will be zipped. Then edit the name of the archive you are creating in the save file dialog window. Click the Save button. 9. Roles and access control What users can or can't do in a given Moodle course depends on their role in that course. Here are the roles that you may assign in your course. Non-editing teacher Someone with this role can only grade assignments. They can see (but cannot change) manually added grade items (items added directly to the grade book) created with the procedure described in Section 12.4, Manually adding a gradebook item (p. 22). Grader Someone with this role can only grade assignments, but they cannot even see manually added grade items (items added directly to the grade book). 16

17 Advising Center This role was created for use by the Advising Center at the Center for Student Success (CSS). If you assign this role to someone, they can see the entire gradebook but cannot change grades or change anything else in the course. Important It is entirely up to you as course instructor whether you grant this access to the CSS. The intent is that, especially for critical early courses such as Math 103 and 104, the Advising Center can use the gradebook to detect and intervene with underperforming students much earlier than midterms. If you elect to grant this role, grant it only to the Moodle account name (Elaine DeBrine-Howell) Managing role assignments Note Use this procedure to grant or revoke roles to other Moodle users. This procedure works only for classes that are not cross-listed. If your course is a meta-course (crosslisted), you must enter one of the (normally hidden) child sections and add the role there. If you need help with this, send mail to <cms_master@nmt.edu>. Procedure 14. Assigning a role 1. From the course page, under Settings on the left-hand side, click on Users and then Enrolled users. This brings up a list of users that are enrolled in the course. 2. Click one of the Enrol users buttons on the right side of the page. 3. Select the appropriate role using the drop down list labeled Assign roles at the top of the page. 4. Use the Search box at the bottom of the page to refine the list of users. Once you find the user you are looking for, click the Enrol button to the right of their name. 17

18 Warning Role assignments take effect immediately. There is no Save changes step. 5. Click on the Finish enrolling users button when done. Procedure 15. Revoking a role 1. From the course page, under Settings on the left-hand side, click on Users and then Enrolled users. This brings up a list of users that are enrolled in the course. 2. Find the user that you want to remove from the course and click the to the far right of the user's name. 3. Confirm the removal by clicking on the Continue button. Warning This only works for roles that have been added manually. Enrollments that are done from the TCC enrollment scripts cannot be manually removed. Please cms_master@nmt.edu to request this type of role enrollment to be removed. Please include the name of student and the course (i.e. chem121-01). 10. Activities Moodle's activities are tools that you and your students use to interact with the course. There are many, but here are the common ones; see the online help for instructions on the use of most of these tools. Assignments For posting homework assignments. Depending on options you choose, you may wish to allow the student to upload their submissions as one or more files. See Section 11, Assignment activities (p. 19). For outside homework, or quizzes and exams that don't use Moodle's online quiz feature, there are two ways to get that grade into the gradebook. If you want to give your graders the ability to post that grade, use an Assignments activity of type Offline activity. If you don't want your graders to be able to post or even see a grade, use the procedure described in Section 12.4, Manually adding a gradebook item (p. 22). For details about the kinds of graders and their access rights, see Section 9, Roles and access control (p. 16). Chat Creates an online chat room for course members. 18

19 Choice A simple poll containing one multiple-choice question. Forum The forum activity is a full-featured bulletin board with threading. Glossary If your course involves a lot of technical jargon, you may want to create a glossary for the course. Lesson With the lesson tool, you can create arbitrarily complex computer-assisted instruction scenarios. Quiz You can construct online tests with various types of questions: multiple-choice, short answer, computational, or essay questions. Wiki If you like, you can set up a Wiki, a sort of interactive encyclopedia, for course members. Once you have added an activity to a block, you can move it to a different block; see Section 7.5, Moving a resource or activity (p. 14). 11. Assignment activities Use Moodle's assignment activity to post and grade homework assignments Posting an assignment Moodle gives you four choices for posting homework assignments, depending on how you want to receive student submissions. When you create an assignment, a column for its grade automatically appears in the gradebook. To add an assignment activity, insure that editing is turned on (see Section 6, Adding content to your course (p. 9)), and decide in which weekly block or topic block you want to attach the assignment. Procedure 16. Posting a new assignment 1. In the relevant block, click the Add an activity... pull-down menu. 2. Under the Assignments section of this menu, select one of these four choices for receiving submissions: Advanced uploading of files Students may upload any number of files as their homework submission. Online text Students can enter their homework submissions directly into a text area on a web page. Upload a single file Students must upload one file as their homework submission. Offline activity Use this choice if the submission is not in the form of a computer file. You can post the assignment online, but students are not allowed to post submissions. 3. You are now on the Adding a new Assignment page. In the Assignment name field, enter a brief title for the assignment. 4. Under Description, enter a general discussion of the assignment. You must enter something here. 19

20 5. Under Grade, select the maximum number of points from 1 to 100, or select No grade. 6. To limit the period when the assignment is visible, select the starting date and time of visibility using the Available from menus. If you want the assignment to be visible immediately, uncheck the Enable checkbox to the right of these menus. This works the opposite way that Moodle 1.9 does. 7. To limit the period when you will accept assignments, select the ending date and time from the Due date menus. If you don't wish to cut off submissions, uncheck the Enable checkbox to the right of these menus. 8. Under Prevent late submissions, select No to allow submissions past the due date, or select Yes if you do not wish to accept late submissions. 9. Select either Save and display to review the assignment, or select Save and return to course when you are satisfied with the assignment Grading an assignment To grade submitted assignments, follow this procedure. Procedure 17. Grading an assigment 1. Go to the course page. 2. To look at a specific assignment from the courses page, click on Grades from the Settings section on the left side of the page. This brings up the Grader report. Click on the wish to grade. icon next to the item you 3. If the assignment type required a file submission or online text, you will see them at the top of the page under Submission. Each file will also be tagged with either Draft or Revert to draft if the student submitted it for marking. If you want the student to be able to resubmit the assigment again, click this button. Online text submissions will have a link to allow you to open it up in a popup window. Use the drop down menu under Grades to assign a grade. If this is an offline assignment you will have only the option of assigning a grade and providing feedback. 4. The checkbox labeled Send notification s is unchecked by default. If you want to send s to students when you grade their work, check this checkbox. 5. To grade multiple items at once click on the Turn editing on button on the top right of the Grader report page. 6. This places text boxes next to each of the items in the grade book. Grade the appropriate items. Then click on Update. Click Turn editing off when you are finished. When you return to the table of assignments, you will see a link for each assigment in the Submitted column. It might read something like No attemps have been made on this assignment. If you need to revise the grade or feedback, click this link, and go through the Submissions page again. 12. Grades Moodle's gradebook facility is a good way to simplify the process of computing grades and reporting them to students. Each student can see only their own grades, and only those grades you want them to see. The gradebook is sort of a specialized spreadsheet. 20

21 The gradebook mechanism is quite flexible. The computation of the current course average for each student depends on a system of categories. You will typically use Moodle's Weighted mean of grades feature that computes the overall numeric course grade as a function of the averages in each category. For example, suppose you have a system that weights homework assignments as 70% of the grade and exams as 30%. Suppose a student has an 80% homework average and a 70% exam average. The course grade would then be (80 0.7) + (70 0.3) or 77. In your role as teacher, you can bring up the gradebook by clicking on the Grades link on the left side under Settings (you may have to scroll down, it's one of the last links over there). You are now on the Grader report page. In the main table, there is a row for each student, and columns for their names, individual grades, and course total. The Grader report pull-down menu at the top left has a number of choices. View Grader report takes you to the grader report page. See Section 12.1, Viewing the gradebook (p. 21). View User report displays the grades in the form that students will see them. On the right is a pulldown menu labeled Select all or one user: use this select grades for a specific students or for all students in your course. For the Categories and items group, see Section 12.3, Setting up gradebook categories (p. 22). For the Letters group, see Section 12.6, Setting up a letter grade scale (p. 23). For the Settings group, see Section 12.2, Configuring the gradebook (p. 21). We recommend that you start by setting up your grade categories (Section 12.3, Setting up gradebook categories (p. 22)) and include all the graded items, assigning them to the appropriate categories. Of course this can be done later Viewing the gradebook In the Grader report view, there is a row for each student, and a summary row at the bottom. The first column shows student names. You can sort the rows of this table by first or last name by clicking on the words Firstname and Surname in the heading. Click the word a second time to change from ascending to descending order. Each of the remaining columns in the table displays grades for some activity that is graded, such as an assignment or quiz. The last column shows the course total. If you need to revise an assignment grade, click on the activity name at the top of the column, which will take you to the assignment page; see Section 11.2, Grading an assignment (p. 20) Configuring the gradebook To set overall options for the gradebook, click on the Grades link under Settings. Then, in the Grader report pull-down menu, under the Settings group, select Course. If you want the course grade column to appear first instead of last, under General settings, in the Aggregation position pull-down menu, select First. In the Grade item settings section, use the Grade display type pull-down to select how grades are displayed. For example, the choice Percentage (real) displays each grade as a percentage, with the realnumber equivalent after it in parentheses. (These numbers are different only if you use a number other than 100 as a maximum.) 21

22 You may also use the Overall decimal points pull-down to select the number of digits you would like to display after the decimal point, any value from 0 to 5. In the Overview report section, the Show rank pull-down controls whether the student can see their rank relative to the other students in the course. The User report section controls the display of the report the student sees. Choices are the same as in the overview report Setting up gradebook categories By default, all grades are uncategorized. You will need to create one or more categories so that you can set up the computation of the current numeric course grade. Procedure 18. Creating a new category 1. From the course page, under Settings, click Grades. 2. From the Grader report pull-down menu, in the Categories and items group, select Simple view. 3. Click the Add category button at the bottom of the page. 4. You are now on the New category page. Under Category Name, enter the name in the Category name field. Then choose a value from the Aggregation pull-down menu. The default choice is Simple weighted mean of grades, but there are several other choices. 5. There are many other choices here, but for most cases you can just click on Save changes. To use the weight feature for your categories, the top level category (the same name as the course) must have its Aggregation pull-down menu set to Weighted mean of grades. This adds a new column Weight where you can set the weight of each category or individual grade item Manually adding a gradebook item Note Follow this procedure to add a column to the gradebook for exams and other graded items that are not assignments. Your teaching assistants and graders who have the Non-editing teacher role cannot enter grades of this type. If you want TAs and graders to enter a grade, make it an assignment of the Offline activity type; see Section 11, Assignment activities (p. 19). Procedure 19. Manually adding a grade item to the gradebook 1. From the course page click under Settings click on Grades. 2. From the Grader report pull-down menu at the top left, under Categories and items, select Simple view. 3. Click the Add grade item at the bottom of this page. 4. You are now on the New grade item page. In the Item name field, enter a unique name. If have have already created categories, use the pull-down menu to select the category to place this item. (You can always do this later.) 22

23 5. Click Save changes. This takes you back to the Simple view page. 6. From the Simple view pull-down menu, under View, select Grader report. 7. In the column for this item, enter the grades for each student. 8. Be sure to click Update when you are done. If you leave the page by any other route, any grades you have entered will be discarded Setting up your grade book to use Moodle's Weighted feature This procedure describes how to set up the grade book to allow each category (i.e. quizzes, homework, etc) to carry a certain weight of the overall grade. The advantage of setting up your grade book like this versus using a formula is that the student will be able to see their current grade based on what has been graded to date, without your having to shuffle around items as they are graded. Procedure 20. Setting up a grading formula 1. From your course page, under Settings on the left, click the Grades link. 2. From the Grader report pull-down menu, under Categories and items, select Simple view. 3. Under the Aggregation column use the pull-down menu that is next to the course name (the first one), and select Weighted mean of grades. This adds a new column, Weight. From here you can assign the weight of each category or individual item. This is expressed as a percentage. 4. Click on the Save changes button when you are finished Setting up a letter grade scale You can define a letter grade scale so that each numeric course grade will be converted automatically to a letter grade. Follow this procedure. 1. From the course page, click on the Grades link on the left side under Settings. 2. From the Grader report pull-down menu, under Letters, select Edit. 3. Click the Override site defaults checkbox. 4. You will see a sequence of pairs of fields, one for the letter and one for the lower boundary of that letter. Initially you will see grades A, A-, B+, B, B-, C+, C, C-, D+, D, and F, but of course you may use any set you like. 23

24 5. To change the lower bound for a grade, use the pull-down menu labeled Letter grade boundary and select the new value. Grades exactly equal to the boundary will fall into the higher category. For example, if 77% is the lower bound for C+, an average of 77% will be called C+, not C. If you don't want to use a particular grade, set the pull-down menu for that grade to Unused. 6. When you have everything set up, click Save changes. 7. Next you will need to add a letter-grade column to the gradebook. From the Edit pull-down menu (assuming you are still on the Edit grade letters page), under Categories and items, select Simple view. 8. To add a letter grade for the entire course, click the Edit icon in the Actions column for the course. 9. You are now in the Edit category page. In the Category total section, click the Show Advanced button. 10. In the Grade display type pull-down menu, select one of the choices that starts with Letter. The Letter choice shows only a letter grade for the course. The Letter (percentage) choice shows both a letter grade and a percentage based on 100%. The Letter (real) shows the numerical average, in case you are using a basis other than 100%. 11. Click Save changes. You may use a similar procedure to attach a letter grade to any other column. Note If the changes you have made don't show up immediately, go into the Grader report (from the course page, Settings: Grades Choose an action View: Grader report), click on Turn editing on, click on Update, and then click on Turn editing off. 24

25 12.7. Hiding and revealing gradebook columns Although you as the instructor will always see every graded item as a column in the gradebook, you can hide that column from the students until grades are set. 1. From the course page, on the left side under Settings, click Grades. 2. In the Grader report pull-down menu in the top left corner, under Categories and items, select Simple view. 3. In the Actions column of this table are a number of icons. Click on the open-eye icon to hide the column. Click on the closed-eye icon when you are ready to reveal that grade to the students Always show a meaningful overall course grade Students need to know how they are doing in your course, even early on in the semester. We recommend that you set up your gradebook so that the Course total column can tell them how roughly they are doing as the course progresses. Accordingly, we recommend that you follow these hints. Set up the gradebook early: see Section 12.2, Configuring the gradebook (p. 21), Section 12.3, Setting up gradebook categories (p. 22), and Section 12.5, Setting up your grade book to use Moodle's Weighted feature (p. 23). 13. How to make a course backup At any time, you can build a.zip file containing some or all of the items in your course. Although the TCC makes regular backups of the Moodle server, it is a good idea to keep your own backups, just in case Speare Hall gets hit by a large meteor. If you are about to make major changes to your course, back it up first just to be safe. After a course is completely wrapped up, make an archival backup in case there is ever any question about events in the course, and just for safety's sake. Procedure 21. Making a course backup 1. Click on the course link. 2. On the left side, under Settings, click the Backup link. This brings up the Course backup page. 3. Select which features of the course you want to backup using the checkboxes. 4. At the bottom of this page, click the Next button. 5. On the next page select items you want to back up. You most likely will have all these checked. 6. At the bottom of this page, click Next. 7. On this page select a name for the file, review the settings and then click on the Perform backup button at the bottom. 8. The next page will tell you if the backup was successful or not. Click the Continue button. 9. If you want to download this file, click on the Download link on this page. 25