Teacher (Classroom) Using the Online Classroom Start ASL Online School Page 1
Table of Contents Introduction... 3 Roles... 3 Student Enrollment... 3 Course Administration... 4 The Administration Block... 5 Reports... 6 Blocks... 6 People... 8 Random Glossary Entry... 9 Remote RSS Feeds... 9 Resources and Activities... 10 Resources... 10 Activities... 10 Assignment... 10 The Assignment... 10 Chat... 11 The Choice tool... 11 Database... 11 The Forum tool... 11 The Glossary tool... 12 The Lesson tool... 12 The Quiz tool... 12 Survey... 12 Wiki... 12 Grading and Feedback... 14 Assignment... 14 Database... 18 Forum... 18 Lesson... 19 Quiz... 21 Resources for Teachers... 21 Start ASL Online School Page 2
Introduction Moodle is a Virtual Learning Environment, which implies that in courses in which Moodle is used, part of the course work has been moved on-line, to support or replace contact teaching. This manual aims to give teachers practical instructions and pedagogical tips about using Moodle in education. Thus the manual will contain information on how to use Moodle in your teaching effort. This manual assumes that you already have a Moodle ID and are familiar with the issues described in the Sign Up and Login Manual. Roles Note that the screen shots used to illustrate the instructions in this manual, and some of the instructions mentioned, are not all from the Start ASL Online School, so the view will differ slightly from your view. However, the main information should remain the same. The features listed in this manual may or may not be a part of your online classroom. Moodle has six default levels of access (but more of these "roles" can be created by the administrator). 1. The Administrator, who has access to all courses and determines the look of the entire site. The admin can also put messages of general interest on the Moodle login page. All Moodle users receive these messages in their e-mail. The admin creates courses and user IDs. 2. The Course creator is a kind of super teacher who has the right to create courses. (Not used in our online classroom) 3. The Teacher (Teacher (Custom)) has full control within his/her course(s) for course building, management and for teaching, but cannot create courses or student IDs. 4. The Non-editing teacher (Teacher (Classroom)) has no editing rights. This means they can teach using the course and its tools, but they cannot change the tools or course materials. 5. The Students can use Moodle for learning purposes only, most of the options open to teachers remain hidden to them. 6. Guest access is limited to seeing, but not touching. (Rarely used in our online classroom) Student Enrollment Any teacher should be capable of adding students to his or her Moodle course(s) by providing them with the enrollment key for the course. You can print, fill out (with course name and enrollment key), and give the Students - How to Enroll PDF to your students. Start ASL Online School Page 3
Course Administration When you enter your course for the first time, you will first see the course page (See picture below). This is the home page of your course (in the breadcrumb navigation bar this page is listed with the short name for the course, as specified in the course Settings). The course page is normally built up of three parallel columns under the navigation bar at the top. The left column contains blocks (See the separate chapter about Blocks) for management of the course, as in participants (People), the Messenger, a block listing the on-line users, a list of Activities used in the course, a Search box, the Administration box and the list of Courses you have access to. The middle column contains the course materials and activity modules. The right column contains a number of blocks often containing the latest News in the course, Upcoming Events, and the Calendar. Sometimes there can be other blocks as well (if another teacher added them before you). These blocks are of use in teaching. Start ASL Online School Page 4
The (Classroom) courses are set up using Separate Groups. This means that you will have your own group and students will be enrolled in your group. You and everyone in your group can only see the work done by your group. The Administration Block An overview of the options in the Administration box: Grades (An overview of student Grades in the course) Reports contains the course Logs functions. Unenroll yourself from the course (Do not do so by accident, for you cannot add yourself again as a teacher, only a teacher in the course or an administrator can do that) Profile (A shortcut to your Profile page where you can Edit your profile, access Blogs, view your Forum messages, etc. Start ASL Online School Page 5
Reports The Reports page is a Logs page. It allows you to check how active a student (or all students) in your group have been in the course. In addition it can give activity reports per activity (type). Note that log pages can become very long, since every single action is logged, so specify your information need by narrowing down the student, or day, or activity (or a combination of those). Reports are not a way of spying on students (your own activities are also logged), but they allow you to take timely action against procrastination and will serve as a deterrent against frivolous claims like I did the assignment, but the computer did not accept it. It also gives you a good idea which parts of your course are used the most. There is an option to follow in real time what goes on in your course with the Live logs from the past hour pop up link. This opens a window that updates every 10 seconds and lists all logs during the past hour. The Activity report gives the number of hits and the last access date for all resources and activities in your course. In a big and active course, this page can get very heavy! The Participation report allows you to check per activity how active users have been in this activity and it allows you at the same time to send selected users a message about their (lacking) participation. Blocks Blocks are the separate squares in the three columns that make up your course page. Here are the available blocks, which may or may not be a part of your course. The People block contains an overview of all Participants in your group (you and students) the students are listed in the order of their last The Latest News block lists the latest threads posted by the teacher in the News forum. (You may choose to hide this, since new message in Start ASL Online School Page 6
login (not alphabetically). There are shortcuts to the Teachers and Students page where you can add or remove them. There is also an option to send a message to selected users from the Participants page. If the Online Users block is added to the course, the People block can be removed. Messenger activates the Messenger tool for your course. When you click the messages link, or when a message is sent to you, a pop-up window will appear on top of any Moodle page you are viewing. It also sends copies of the messages to your e-mail (with a certain delay). Online Users lists the users that are logged in to the course at a given moment, which can be useful for students when they wish to Chat or use the Messenger. Online users also contains a link to the participants page in the People block, so if you add Online Users to the course, the People block can be removed. The Activities block contains a list of all the different activity tools used in the course, which is limited to Forums and Resources in an empty course. Once your course is built the list will be longer and clicking the link of, for example, Assignments will give you a list of all assignments in the course with their due dates and with direct links to the submitted work for each assignment. The Search block is a simple search engine that allows users to search for words in the forum messages (titles and message texts). If you do not have many forums, this block can be hidden or removed. The Administration block is most important to the teacher. In the student view the Administration block only shows the Edit profile, Grades and the Change password links. The Courses block lists all the courses you have access to. The courses that are available to students are listed in blue and the ones closed to students are listed in grey. the News forum are already highlighted on the course page and on the user s main page.) The Upcoming Events block is linked to the Calendar and lists upcoming deadlines as well as other Calendar entries. This is more relevant for the Teacher (Custom) classrooms. The Calendar gives a concise overview of the activities of the month. The Recent Activity block lists changes to the course since your last login. This is where to look to see if students have handed in their work or posted new messages in forums, journals, dialogues, etc. This block should come last since it can become very long in an active course! More blocks: Blog Menu is useful if blogs are used as part of the course activities. It creates short cuts to different blog functions. Blog Tags allows the teacher to manage blog keywords (for easier searching) Course Description adds the summary you wrote in the course Settings as a text block to the column. This often takes up a lot of space and serves little purpose. HTML allows you to add one (or more!) blocks of text (made with the Moodle HTML editor, so may contain Start ASL Online School Page 7
links, pics, etc.). Random Glossary Entry will open a block in which random words from the glossary are displayed, so that students can "learn a new word every day". Remote RSS feeds allows you to choose from a number of news feeds from sites like the BBC. Clickable news headlines from the selected site(s) will be displayed in the block (The number of available sites may increase). Tags is a block that lists tags from the blogs and personal profile pages. In the Teacher (Classroom) online classrooms, the standard blocks are fixed. In Teacher (Custom) classrooms, teachers may add or remove blocks. Here are more detailed descriptions of some blocks: People The People block lists the course participants on the participants page. This will show only the participants in your group. The participants page also allows the sending of a message to more than one course user. Start ASL Online School Page 8
Note that the participants page can also be accessed via the Online Users block! Random Glossary Entry This block links directly to a selected glossary in the course, normally, but not necessarily, the main glossary. It displays randomly chosen entries from that glossary, thus introducing new vocabulary to the users on a regular basis (in case of a traditional glossary) or, for example, displaying a quote or formula for them to consider. Remote RSS Feeds This adds a block to your course that can display clickable news headlines from a variety of online sources. Thus, users of your course can have access to current news in their field of study all the time. The Start ASL Updates are already added to this block. Start ASL Online School Page 9
Resources and Activities The News forum is an integral part of all Moodle courses. It cannot be deleted, only hidden. This general news and announcements forum should be used by the teacher to post messages of interest about the course, such as start and end announcements, timetable matters and general feedback on assignments and tests. The News forum is not suitable for discussions, because all course users are automatically subscribed to this forum, which means that everybody will receive copies of the messages in this forum in their e-mail whether they like it or not. Hence, the default setting for any new course only allows the teacher to post messages in this News forum. Resources There are different resource types that can be part of your course. There are seven resource type. 1. A Label is running text in the topic or week (so this text will display directly on the course page, not as a link). 2. A Text page is just that, a page of text relevant to the class. 3. A web page is an HTML page with text, video, or a lesson, etc. 4. A link to a file or web site is a link either to an uploaded file in the course Files folder (with the option to download them), or to an external Internet page. 5. A Directory displays a subfolder from the course Files to your students. The students can open and download the files in that subfolder, but they cannot edit or upload files in the folder. Activities Assignment The Assignment The assignment is one of the most basic evaluation tools in the Moodle environment. An assignment sets the students a task. Typically, an assignment requires students to carry out a task (write a text on-line, or write off-line and upload it, or another off-line task) for the teacher to scrutinize and comment on. The Off-line activity is meant for activities outside of Moodle, for example, an in-class presentation. The Online text type requires the students to write their task in Moodle (using the Moodle editor, not MS Word). The Upload a single file type is good for documents that require a specific lay out, like business letters or memos (since students will be better able to recreate the lay out with their word processor than with the Moodle editor) or for other file types like presentation slides or spreadsheet files. Start ASL Online School Page 10
Chat Chat is a synchronous communication tool allowing users of a course to communicate in real time. A Chat tool can be useful for organizing on-line meetings, but for teaching purposes it is not so suitable. The Moodle Chat tool is easy to use, but can be slow if used with large numbers of users. Users with slow connections may be thrown out of the chat when their connection cannot update the chat window fast enough. The Choice tool The choice tool creates a question with multiple answers, which you can use to obtain quick feedback from your students, like in a poll (for example, to get an idea about the most suitable dates for a test). The teacher will have access to the result, which displays students per answer column. You can allow students to view the results too and you can decide whether or not it is necessary to protect the privacy of the posters. The Choice tool is not a graded activity (like a quiz), make sure that your students know that (so they won t feel too inhibited to answer). Database The Database module is a very versatile tool for creating activities that involve students uploading information, or files, in a structured way. For instance, a picture database can be created in which students upload their works which can be commented upon by their peers and graded by the teacher. One element that must be understood is approval (before a teacher approves an entry it cannot be seen or commented on by other users than the student and the teacher). If you wish student entries to be confidential until they are ready, you need to turn approval on. Any comments added to an entry before approval will also become visible once the entry has been approved (i.e. before approving an entry, you may want to delete any private comments)! The Forum tool In Moodle the Forum is the central tool and it can be used in many ways, from simple communication of information by the teacher (as on a bulletin board) to graded discussion exercises. The Forum uses the Moodle text editor to create messages, which implies that messages can contain much more than just text. Forums are thus very flexible and open to creative use. New Forum messages are always listed in the Recent Activity block, copies will be sent to the e-mail of the users if they are subscribed to the Forum. Unread messages are also listed behind Forum names on the course page and behind threads in a Forum, while unread messages in a thread are highlighted, provided that you have allowed it in the settings and that the user has selected this (default) option in their profile! There are different forum types that may be used: Start ASL Online School Page 11
The Single discussion forum type has only one thread, so students can only post replies. This will avoid fragmentation of a discussion into many short threads. The opposite is the Each person one discussion type, where every student can/must start their own thread (they cannot start multiple threads, but they can reply in multiple threads). In the Question & Answer type users can post questions and answers to questions, but they cannot see the questions and answers of other users until they have added their own contribution. The Glossary tool A glossary, in its basic form, adds a word list to your course, which students can use for quick reference/explanations about difficult or field related terms. The glossary should not turn into a full dictionary (students have better dictionary resources at their disposal than we could ever offer them in a course!), but limit itself to terms specific to the subject. In language courses the choice of terms can be somewhat wider. The Lesson tool The lesson tool is a way to create interactive study material. A typical lesson consists of several pages of study material, created with the Moodle text editor, so it can be rich in multimedia. The pages are interlinked by questions of different types, as in the quiz tool. Thus a simple maze can be created in which a student studies the initial text/sound/video piece and then is presented with a question to test his understanding of the text. If the answer is correct, the student will get that feedback and move to the next part, if the answer is incorrect the student will get feedback about his incorrect answer and return to the initial text, or to a page with extra information about the subject to try again. The Quiz tool Quizzes are timed on-line quizzes that are automatically graded. The results can be displayed in different statistical ways. Survey The Survey tool offers five different academic surveys with which one can assess the learning experience of students. These surveys are not graded activities and the questions are preset. Wiki A Wiki is a very useful group work tool (although it can also be used for individual tasks). It allows users of a Moodle course to work together (in groups, or as a class) creating documents. The documents are created using the Moodle HTML editor, which makes it easy to include various mark up (lay out, colors, links, special characters, etc.) The Wiki code makes it possible to link pages to each other. Thus high quality interactive page clusters can be created (e.g. a Start ASL Online School Page 12
paper or a project report can be written and edited on-line). Students can add pictures and attachments to pages too. Start ASL Online School Page 13
Grading and Feedback Assignment The Assignment tool is most suitable for traditional individual homework tasks that will require the students to carry out a learning task and hand in a document, or file that embodies the result of their effort. These assignments are a useful way to motivate students to work with the knowledge provided in the internal or external resources in the course. They offer an excellent opportunity to assess a student's skills. Feedback The Files uploaded by students are signaled in the Recent Activity block on the course page. They will lead to the Assignment page where there is a link to the uploaded files. Giving feedback Clicking the submissions link will give you an overview of all students with their files (if they uploaded any). Start ASL Online School Page 14
The file uploaded by the student can be accessed by clicking the Grade button. Which will display the grading page for the student in a pop-up window (Displayed is the single file upload assignment type): In an assignment featuring file upload, the student file can be opened by clicking on it, or it can be downloaded to the teacher's PC by right-clicking on the link and selecting Save target/link as (See picture below). Start ASL Online School Page 15
The teacher can write the feedback in the feedback window while checking the assignment online, or he can check the student file off-line and write feedback in a separate document and paste the comments into the Feedback window later. Many teachers prefer to download the work of their students and work with it off-line, and, in case of Word or PowerPoint documents, adding their corrections and comments to the student file itself (using bolding or underlining, etc.). In that case, the use of an Advanced file upload assignment type is advisable. The teacher can then upload the corrected files (called Response files) via the grading window, while only adding a short comment in the feedback box. Note, that you have to upload the response file first and then write the comment (because uploading the file reload the window). Also if you only upload the response file and do not give a comment, the file will not be visible to the student, since Moodle will consider that you have not finished giving feedback. Start ASL Online School Page 16
Once you click Save changes (or Save and show next), the feedback is saved. If you gave a grade, the grade is registered in the grade book and the upload option for the student (if any) disappears (unless you allowed resubmitting in the assignment settings). The overview page of the above Advance upload assignment could then look something like this: Start ASL Online School Page 17
The Quickgrade option This is a way to quickly give grades and (copied and pasted) feedback to all students on a page and save the lot in one go. If the feedback is repetitive, or if no detailed feedback is required for the assignment, this option will save time (Note that uploaded files can be seen in the Last Modified column, so it is not necessary to go the Grade window at all.). At the bottom of the overview page is a checkbox called Allow quick grading. If you select this box and click the Save Preferences button, the quickgrade view will activate. It looks like this: At the bottom of the grading page is a button (Save all my feedback) with which all grades and feedback can be saved at once. Database In order for a teacher to grade entries in a database, Ratings must have been turned on in the settings and a suitable Grading scale must have been selected. If the teacher wishes to provide written or spoken feedback, Comments must also have been activated in the database settings. Note that comments are visible to everyone who has access to the entry. Forum To grade forum submissions, you would use ratings. Start ASL Online School Page 18
Lesson Being self-graded a lesson can lighten the workload of the teacher, by decreasing the need for assignments (which normally take up a lot of time). However, the lesson can also be made into a quiz containing open writing questions, in which case it does require teacher intervention. Grading essay questions If a lesson contains essay questions, there will be a Grade Essays tab displayed at the top of the lesson in teacher view, which leads to a page listing all students and the essay questions they answered. Grading the questions is a matter of clicking the individual questions and giving comments and a grade: Start ASL Online School Page 19
It is a matter of clicking your way to the questions and giving feedback and a grade. Note that mailing the result to the student is the easiest way for the student to get hold of your feedback! Start ASL Online School Page 20
Quiz The quiz tool is, with the assignment, one of the most traditional activities in Moodle. It meets the needs of teachers who wish to move classroom-based paper exams onto the net and it tries to meet that need as fully as possible. However, we are not bound by the traditional use of quizzes. We can discern three main uses for the quiz tool: 1. The traditional exam with limited availability, in which the student gets only one attempt; a time limit and perhaps a password are used and the amount of questions is generally large and varied (most likely to contain essay questions). These quizzes typically contribute heavily to a student's final grade. 2. The support quiz, a quiz which tests knowledge of a part of the study material (i.e. not the whole course). With this type of quiz students can "self-diagnose" gaps in their knowledge, remedy them and (hopefully) take the quiz again for a better result. The availability of this type of quiz is much wider and they allow more than one attempt, so that students can learn from their errors and improve themselves. These quizzes provide students with points (much like assignments) and teachers with indications of the students' skills without the teacher having to invest too much time in correction and feedback (the latter ought to be included in the quiz). 3. The self-test quiz, a quiz with unlimited availability and unlimited attempts that allows students to test themselves. They can be used by students to warm up their previously acquired knowledge. Normally, these quizzes are ungraded, but they do supply feedback to the students and they can give teachers (if present) an indication of the students' knowledge. You can check quiz grades via the Results tab in the Quiz or via the Grades section in the Administration block. Resources for Teachers These are a few sites where you can get material or information on-line: Moodle tutorials: http://www.moodletutorials.org/ is a site where you can find video tutorials in the use of various Moodle tools. Start ASL Online School Page 21