Set up your Moodle Course

Set up your Moodle Course This lesson covers the steps involved in setting up your Moodle course, including adding a course title and welcome, a downl...
Author: Lucy Baker
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Set up your Moodle Course This lesson covers the steps involved in setting up your Moodle course, including adding a course title and welcome, a downloadable file, a forum and an assignment. Course dates and additional details are set on the Course Settings screen -- please see How do I change my course settings for more details.

Empty Course If you are creating the content for your course, it will appear like the course shown here when your course is created. Moodle uses a three column layout, with Blocks in columns 1 and 3 and course Resources and Activities in the middle column. You can move Blocks around, remove them, and add new blocks. Course length and format (weekly or by topic) are set in the Course Settings page. Your course is empty except for the News Forum located in week 0 at the top of the course. The News Forum is used for course announcements and only the instructor can post to the news forum. Anything posted to the News Forum by the instructor will show up in the Latest News block and will also be sent by email to all persons associated with the course (students, instructors, course programmers). You can't use the News Forum for student introductions or course questions since students can't post to it.

Turn Editing on To edit your course, Turn editing on by clicking the button at the upper right of your course home page or by clicking the link under the Administration block.

Editing tools are visible After editing is turned on you will see two menus ( Resources and Activities) in each week or topic in your course, and a group of icons will be visible next to anything in your course which can be edited. The six icons shown next to the News Forum allow you to Set up your Moodle Course - 1

UCR Extension 2009

perform different tasks -- Indent, Move up or down, Edit, Delete, Show/Hide, Group Settings.

Add a course title in week 0 Let's add a course title and welcome message. Click the Edit icon (hand with pencil) at the top of Week 0.

Fill in the form Add your course title and welcome message. Use the editing tools to adjust the font, change the size of the text, add color, center, etc. If you do not see the editing tools, you may need to use a different web browser. Apple's Safari browser isn't completely compatible with Moodle and does not give you access to the editing tools. Save your work by clicking Save and return to course.

Check your work Once you've saved your title and welcome, they should be visible on the course home page. Check to see that everything is the way you want it to be. You can switch to the student view by clicking on the Switch Role to Student option at the upper right of the page.

Add a label Labels in Moodle help you keep your course organized and allow students to find what they need quickly. Moodle's weekly layout is designed to make everything visible to students, so you can put all the resources and activities for that week in your course all in the same place, but when you have lots of resources or activities, labels are helpful to break up a long list. On the Add a resource menu, click Insert a label in the area of the course where you want the label to be -- you can always move it later if necessary.

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Add your label text In this case, I'm adding a Course Materials label to Week 0. I'll put general course materials which aren't part of a specific week here. I prefer to have the label stand out a little bit, so I set it to 12 point bold and then I'll indent the materials I add underneath the label. Click Save and return to course when you are done.

Add a file under the label Let's add a file students can download. This could be a course reading, the syllabus, notes, etc. The same process works for any kind of file. Your only limitations are file size (50 MB) and the ability of your students to open the file. You may want to stick to common file formats such as PDF, RTF that don't require students to have specific applications to open them. Free applications to convert files to PDF are available for Windows.

Describe the file Add a name for your file. The description is optional and is only seen when students access the file through the Resources link. In the course area, the description is not visible.

Upload your file You'll need to upload your file to Moodle to create a link to it. Click Choose or upload a file to get started.

If the file isn't in Moodle Click Upload a file to locate it on your computer. If the file is already in Moodle, you'll see it listed here.

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Browse for your file Click the Browse button and locate the file on your computer.

Find and select your file Double click your file to select it.

Finally, the upload button Click Upload this file to move it to Moodle.

File is uploaded When you see the file listed, it has been uploaded. Click the Choose link to complete the process.

Link is created Moodle will add the link to your file in the Location field.

Save your work Click Save and return to course to finish.

Link to file is added at the bottom of the course area Your link will appear in the course at the bottom of the part of the course where you added it -- in this case, Week 0. I've indented the filename under Course Set up your Moodle Course - 4

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Materials by clicking on the right arrow next to Syllabus template (RTF).

Add an Assignment Most courses have assignments and Moodle offers four types of assignments: Advanced uploading of files has more options and allows more files to be uploaded at the same time. Online text is useful for shorter written assignments and allows the teacher to provide feedback in the text. Upload a single file allows one file to be submitted by the student and review by the teacher. Offline activity is used for work that's not done online but which should be graded in the class. Each of these assignment types creates an entry in the gradebook where you can locate the student work once it is submitted and assign a grade to the student's work.

Upload a single file In this example, we're adding an assignment where students will upload one file, in this case a syllabus for a course they will be teaching. When you set up your assignment, include clear instructions about what kinds of files you will accept.

Grading Every assignment has grading options -- you can choose the number of points for the assignment or use other grading scales. You can also make the assignment available only during a specific time period and choose whether or not to accept late work. If you won't accept late work, include a statement in your course syllabus explaining your policy.

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More details You can allow students to resubmit work, decide whether teachers in the course will receive an email message when student work is submitted, and you can set the maximum size allowed for the files submitted by students. The maximum size is limited to the maximum size set for the course on the Course Settings page, so if your students will be submitting large files, adjust the maximum file size on the Course Settings page. Click Save and return to course to finish setting up your assignment.

Assignment is available in course The assignment will show up in your course at the bottom of the course area where you created it. Use the editing tools to move or indent it.

Add a Forum Forums are a standard part of most online courses. Moodle has four types of forums: A standard forum for general use - for large discussions that you intend to monitor/guide or for social forums that are student led. A single simple discussion - for short/time-limited discussion on a single subject or topic. Each person posts one discussion - a single discussion topic per person allows students a little more freedom than a single discussion forum, but not as much as a standard forum where each student can create as many topics as they wish. Question and Answer forum - a Q and A forum requires students to post once before viewing other students' postings.

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Add a standard forum You'll need a name and an introduction to your forum -provide any directions or questions for students in your introduction.

Grading Set your grading options if you plan to grade student participation. You should let students know in your course syllabus how you'll be grading their forum activity. You can restrict grades to posts made between specific dates if you like. When you have set the options for your forum, click Save and return to course.

Forum appears in course Your forum will be added in the area of the course you were editing.

Check the Gradebook Click on Gradebook in the Administrative block to see that the course activities which have been assigned grades have been added to the gradebook.

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