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12 <p>This page is a very quick guide to creating online courses with Moodle. It
13 outlines the main functions that are available, as well as some of the main
14 decisions you'll need to make.</p>
16 <ol>
23 </ol>
25 <blockquote>
26 <p>This document assumes your site administrator has set up Moodle and given
27 you new, blank course to start with. It also assumes you have logged in to
28 your course using your teacher account.</p>
30 <ol>
32 <blockquote>feel free to poke around and change things. It's hard to break anything
33 in a Moodle course, and even if you do it's usually easy to fix it.
34 </blockquote>
36 <blockquote>
38 lets you edit whatever it is next to.</p>
40 icon</strong> will provide you with a <a target="helpwindow" href="../help.php?file=index.html">popup help window</a></p>
45 </blockquote>
46 </li>
48 <blockquote>this
49 should help remind you where you are and prevent getting lost.
50 </blockquote>
51 </li>
52 </ol>
54 </blockquote>
56 <blockquote>
59 (Note that this link, and in fact the whole Administration section is only
60 available to you (and the site administrator). Students will not even see
61 these links).</p>
62 <p>On the Settings page you can change a number of settings about your course,
63 ranging from its name to what day it starts. I won't talk here about all these,
64 as they all have a help icon next to them which explains them all in detail.
65 However, I will talk about the most important of these - the <strong>course
67 <p>The course format that you choose will decide the basic layout of your course,
68 like a template. Moodle version 1.0 has three formats - in future there will
69 probably be many more (please send new ideas to <a href="mailto:martin@moodle.org">martin@moodle.org</a>!)</p>
70 <p>Here are some screenshots of three sample courses in each of these three
71 formats (ignore the different colours, which are set for a whole site by the
72 site administrator):</p>
82 <p>Note that the weekly and topics formats are very similar in structure. The
83 main difference is that each box in the weekly format covers exactly one week,
84 whereas in the topic format each box can cover whatever you like. The social
85 format doesn't use much content at all and is based around just one forum
86 - this is displayed on the main page.</p>
89 </blockquote>
91 <blockquote>
92 <p>You may have existing content that you want to add to your course, such as
93 web pages, audio files, video files, word documents, or flash animations.
94 Any type of file that exists can be uploaded into your course and stored on
95 the server. While your files are on the server you can move, rename, edit
96 or delete them.</p>
98 menu. The Files section looks like this:</p>
101 <p>This interface is only available to teachers - it is not accessible by students.
103 - see the next section).</p>
104 <p>As you can see in the screenshot, files are listed alongside subdirectories.
105 You can create any number of subdirectories to organise your files and move
106 your files from one to the other.</p>
107 <p>Uploading files via the web is currently restricted to one file at a time.
108 If you want to upload a lot of files at once (for example a whole web site),
110 into a single file, upload the zip file and then unzip them again on the server
112 <p>To preview any file you have uploaded just click on its name. Your web browser
113 will take care of either displaying it or downloading it to your computer.</p>
114 <p>HTML and text files can be edited in-place online. Other files will need
115 to be edited on your local computer and uploaded again. if you upload a file
116 with the same name as an existing file it will automatically be overwritten.</p>
117 <p>A final note: if your content resides out on the web then you don't need
118 to upload the files at all - you can link directly to them from inside the
119 course (see the Resources module and the next section).</p>
121 </blockquote>
123 <blockquote>
124 <p>Building a course involves adding course activity modules to the main page
125 in the order that students will be using them. You can shuffle the order any
126 time you like.</p>
128 This toggle switch shows or hides the extra controls that allow you to manipulate
129 your main course page. Note in the first screenshot above (of the Weekly format
130 course) that the editing controls are turned on.</p>
131 <p>To add a new activity, simply go to the week or topic or section of the screen
132 where you want to add it, and select the type of activity from the popup menu.
134 <dl>
136 <dd>An assignment is where you set a task with a due date and a maximum grade.
137 Students will be able to upload one file to satisify the requirements. The
138 date they upload their file is recorded. Afterwards, you will have a single
139 page on which you can view each file (and how late or early it is), and then
140 record a grade and a comment. Half an hour after you grade any particular
141 student, Moodle will automatically email that student a notification.
142 <br />
143 <br /></dd>
145 <dd>A choice activity is very simple - you ask a question and specify a choice
146 of responses. Students can make their choice, and you have a report screen
147 where you can see the results. I use it to gather research consent from
148 my students, but you could use it for quick polls or class votes.
149 <br />
150 <br /></dd>
152 <dd>This module is by far the most important - it is here that discussion
153 takes place. When you add a new forum, you will be presented with a choice of
154 different types - a simple single-topic discussion, a free-for-all general
155 forum, or a one-discussion-thread-per-user.
156 <br />
157 <br /></dd>
159 <dd>Resources are the content of your course. Each resource can be any file
160 you have uploaded or can point to using a URL. You can also maintain simple
161 text-based pages by typing them directly into a form.
162 <br />
163 <br /></dd>
165 <dd>This module allows you to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple
166 choice, true-false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept
167 in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between
168 courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically
169 marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct
170 answers. This module includes grading facilities.
171 <br />
172 <br /></dd>
174 <dd>The survey module provides a number of predefined survey instruments that
175 are useful in evaluating and understanding your class. Currently they include
176 the COLLES and the ATTLS instruments. They can be given to students early
177 in the course as a diagnostic tool and at the end of the course as an evaluation
178 tool (I use one every week in my courses).</dd>
179 </dl>
180 <br />
181 <p>After adding your activities you can move them up and down in your course
182 layout by clicking on the little arrow icons (<img src="../pix/t/up.gif" width="9" height="10" />
184 can also delete them using the cross icon <img src="../pix/t/delete.gif" width="10" height="10" />,
185 and re-edit them using the edit icon <img src="../pix/t/edit.gif" width="10" height="11" />.</p>
187 </blockquote>
189 <blockquote>
190 <p>There are some big plans to extend this document into a more comprehensive
191 tutorial. Until then here are a few ideas:</p>
192 <ol>
193 <li>Subscribe yourself to all the forums so you keep in touch with your class
194 activity. </li>
195 <li>Encourage all the students fill out their user profile (including photos)
196 and read them all - this will help provide some context to their later writings
197 and help you to respond in ways that are tailored to their own needs.</li>
199 (under Administration). This is especially useful when team teaching.</li>
201 to get access to complete, raw logs. In there you'll see a link to a popup
202 window that updates every sixty seconds and shows the last hour of activity.
203 This is useful to keep open on your desktop all day so you can feel in touch
204 with what's going on in the course.</li>
206 in the list of all people, or from any user profile page). These provide
207 a great way to see what any particular person has been up to in the course.</li>
208 <li>Respond quickly to students. Don't leave it for later - do it right away.
209 Not only is it easy to become overwhelmed with the volume that can be generated,
210 but it's a crucial part of building and maintaining a community feel in
211 your course.</li>
212 </ol>
214 </blockquote>
216 <blockquote>
217 <p>If you have any particular problems with your site, you should contact your
218 local site administrator.</p>
219 <p>If you have some great ideas for improvements to Moodle, or even some good
221 and join us in the course called "<a href="http://moodle.org/course/view.php?id=5" target="_top" >Using
223 <p>If you want to contribute to coding new modules, or writing documentation,
224 or papers, contact me: <a href="http://moodle.org/user/view.php?id=1&course=1" target="_top">Martin
225 Dougiamas</a> or browse the "bug tracker" site for Moodle, at <a href="http://moodle.org/bugs/" target="_top">moodle.org/bugs</a></p>
226 <p>Finally, remember to use the help icons - here is an <a target="helpwindow" href="../help.php?file=index.html">index of all the help files in Moodle</a>.</p>
228 <hr />
230 </blockquote>
233 martin Exp $</font></p>
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