Moodle 2.0 Course Conversion Beginner's Guide

By Ian Wild

In Detail

Schools, colleges and universities all over the world are installing Moodle, but many educators aren't making much use of it. With so many features, it can be a hassle to learn - and with teachers under so much pressure day-to-day, they cannot devote much time to recreating all their lessons from scratch.

This book provides the quickest way for teachers and trainers to get up and running with Moodle, by turning their familiar teaching materials into a Moodle e-learning course.

This book shows how to bring your existing notes, worksheets, resources and lesson plans into Moodle quickly and easily. Instead of exploring every feature of Moodle, the book focuses on getting you started immediately - you will be turning your existing materials into Moodle courses right from the start.

The book begins by showing how to turn your teaching schedule into a Moodle course, with the correct number of topics and weeks. You will then see how to convert your resources - documents, slideshows, and worksheets, into Moodle. You will learn how to format them in a way that means students will be able to read them, and along the way plenty of shortcuts to speed up the process.

By the end of Chapter 3, you will already have a Moodle course that contains your learning resources in a presentable way. But the book doesn't end there- you will also see how to use Moodle to accept and assess coursework submissions, discuss work with students, and deliver quizzes, tests, and video.

Throughout the book, the focus is on getting results fast - moving teaching material online so that lessons become more effective for students, and less work for you.

Approach

With clear instructions and plenty of screenshots, this book provides all the support and guidance you will need as you begin to convert your teaching to Moodle. Step-by-step tutorials use real-world examples to show you how to convert to Moodle in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Moodle Course Conversion carefully illustrates how Moodle can be used to teach content and ideas and clearly demonstrates the advantages of doing so.

Who this book is for

This book is for teachers, tutors, and lecturers who already have a large body of teaching material and want to use Moodle to enhance their course, rather than developing brand new ones. You won't need experience with Moodle, but will need teacher-access to a ready-installed Moodle site.

Teachers with some experience of Moodle, who want to focus on incorporating existing course materials will also find this book very useful

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Nov 17, 2011
• ISBN: 9781849514835

Ian Wild

A physicist by profession, Ian's career has always focused primarily on communication and learning. Fifteen years spent in private industry designing communication systems software eventually saw Ian concentrate on the development of accessibility and learning aids for blind, partially sighted, dyslexic, and dyscalculic computer users - whilst also working part-time as a math and science tutor. Teaching only part-time meant not spending as much time with his students as he would have wanted. This and his background in learning and communication technology seeded his interest in virtual learning environments.

Book preview

Table of Contents

Moodle 2.0 Course Conversion Beginner's Guide

Credits

About the Author

About the Reviewers

www.PacktPub.com

Support files, eBooks, discount offers and more

Why Subscribe?

Free Access for Packt account holders

Preface

What this book covers

Who this book is for

Conventions

Time for action – heading

What just happened?

Pop quiz – heading

Have a go hero – heading

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the bonus chapter

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Going Electric

What can Moodle do for me

Advantages for the student

The advantage of open source

Who is this book for

What will we be doing together

Moodle course conversion: Part 1

Moodle course conversion: Part 2

The history of Moodle

Origins

A new learning pedagogy

Growth and support

Pop quiz

Getting logged on

Logging on

Time for action – logging in to Moodle

What just happened?

Telling other users about yourself

Time for action – editing your profile

What just happened?

Have a go hero

Changing your password

Logging off

Doing your job – Your role

Who decides who's teaching on a course

Capabilities

Contexts

Pop quiz – what's my role?

Why am I mentioning all of this

Moodle look and feel

Moodle themes

A Moodle page

Breadcrumb trail

Blocks

Footer

Icons

Summary

2. Setting up your Courses

From curriculum to courses: What counts as a Moodle course

What is a Moodle course

How Moodle organizes its courses

Breaking up is hard to do

Have a go hero – developing key skills

If in doubt, hold a meeting

Let's get started: Setting up the course

Creating your course

Do you need to create your course yourself

What to do if your course has been created for you

Pop quiz

Configuring your course

Time for action – configuring the Backyard Ballistics course

What just happened?

Choosing an effective description for the course summary

Using the editor

Getting help on Moodle settings

Further documentation

Getting back to the Course settings screen

Course structure and format

Which format should we use: Weekly or topic format

Pop quiz

Breaking your course up into topics

Setting the format for your course

Time for action – setting up the course format

What just happened?

Defining each topic/week

Time for action – defining each week/topic

What just happened

Introducing a course: Summary of General

More settings for topics/weeks

Assigning teaching staff

Time for action – assigning roles

What just happened?

Let in the rabble: Enrolling students on your course

Enrolling with a key

Time for action – specifying a course enrollment key

What just happened?

Have a go hero – enrolling teachers with a password

Other enrollment options

Teachers enroll students manually

Groups and group enrollment

Free-for-all: Letting anybody enroll

Enrolling a cohort

Automatic enrollment from your school's Management Information System (MIS)

Allowing guest access

Summary

3. Adding Documents and Handouts

Uploading files

Time for action – uploading a file

What just happened?

How big is your file

Uploading lots of documents in one go

Time for action – packing files together

What just happened?

Dealing with oversize zip files

Zipping folders

Removing the ZIP file when you have unpacked it

Removing files

Time for action – removing files

What just happened?

Organizing your files

Time for action – creating a Handouts folder

What just happened?

Time for action – putting files where we want them

What just happened?

Dishing out the work

Time for action – giving students individual files

What just happened?

Accessing collections of files

Time for action – displaying a folder

What just happened?

Repositories

Pop quiz

Documents and handouts: Which format

Microsoft Word

Images

Time for action – uploading an image and including it in a summary

What just happened?

Have a go hero – having fun with images

Uploading as-is

Preparing your PowerPoint for Moodle

Time for action – compressing images

What just happened?

Converting into documents

Converting into images

Pop quiz

Converting into web pages

Becoming a cut and paste fiend with a Moodle page

Time for action – creating a web page

What just happened?

Cleanup messy code

Turning large documents into a wiki

Time for action – adding a hidden topic

What just happened?

Time for action – adding a wiki

What just happened?

Time for action – creating a wiki contents page

What just happened?

Time for action – adding a new wiki page

What just happened?

Pop quiz

Summary

4. Sound and Vision—Including Multimedia Content

Linking to other websites

Adding a link to the course main page

Time for action – creating links to websites on the course main page

What just happened?

Turning text into a web link

Time for action – putting links in a Moodle web page

What just happened?

Manually adding links to Moodle web pages

Time for action – making a link out of text

What just happened?

Have a go hero – doing more with your links

Importing videos

Time for action – including a video on your course front page

What Just Happened?

Making Moodle play your videos

Time for action – embedding a video into a Moodle Page

What just happened?

Choosing a video file format

Moodle video troubleshooting

Time for action – getting your videos to play in Moodle

Have a go hero – do more with your videos

Embedding a video from a video sharing website

Including videos from YouTube

Time for action – embedding the YouTube player into your course

What just happened?

Extracting a video from YouTube

Including videos from TeacherTube

Time for action – embedding a video from TeacherTube

What just happened?

Pop quiz

Playing audio

Choosing an audio file format

Letting Moodle handle your sounds

Time for action – embedding an audio clip

What Just happened?

Troubleshooting audio—what if Moodle doesn't embed a player

Embedding audio from an audio sharing website

Have a go hero – start a podcast

More on embedding

Picture shows using Slide.com

Time for action – adding a slide show

What just happened?

Ask the Admin

What happens if you don't enable multimedia plugins

Summary

5. Moodle Makeover

Arranging your resources

Putting your resources in order

Time for action – arranging your resources

What just happened?

Time for action – inserting a label

What just happened?

Hypnotic HTML: Finessing your web pages and descriptions

Finding decorative images

Google image search

Flickr

General clip art libraries

Microsoft Office clip art library

Time for action – grabbing an image from a Word document

What just happened?

Copyright caution

HTML Editor tips and tricks: Smilies and other gimmicks

Smilies

Creating imaginary dialog

Arranging your HTML

Time for action – displaying things side by side

What just happened?

Getting animated: Add a talking character

HTML blocks: A bit on the side

Time for action – adding a welcome message

What just happened?

Have a go hero – doing more with HTML blocks

Backing up your course

Time for action – backing up your course

What just happened?

Summary

6. Managing Student Work

Converting projects and assignments

Structuring converted projects and assignments online

Adding a new topic to a course

Time for action – adding a topic and hiding it

What just happened?

Which assignment type

Converting a project to Moodle using an Offline assignment

Time for action – adding an Offline activity assignment

What just happened?

Converting a project to Moodle using an Advanced uploading of files assignment

Time for action – adding an Advanced uploading of files assignment

What just happened?

Introducing a student on your course

Enrolling a student

Time for action – enrolling a student on your course

What just happened?

How assignments look to a student

Taking the Student's point of view – Uploading a project file

Time for action – uploading a file to an assignment

What just happened?

Marking assignments

Marking Offline assignments

Time for action – marking an Offline assignment

What just happened?

Handling student submissions

Time for action – providing feedback on student submissions

What just happened?

Confirming that our feedback has been received

Marking student submissions

Specifying custom grades

Time for action – creating a custom grade scale

What just happened?

Time for action – grading using a custom scale

What just happened?

More uses for Moodle assignments

Grading students on core competencies

Configuring outcomes

Time for action – creating a custom grade item in the grader report

What just happened?

Time for action – grading core competencies in assignments

What just happened?

Ask the admin

Summary

7. Communicating Online

Communicating in Moodle

Forums

Adding a forum to your course

Time for action – adding a forum

What just happened?

Subscribing to forums

Time for action – subscribing users to a forum

What just happened?

Moderating a forum

Getting a discussion started

Time for action – starting a discussion

What just happened?

Keeping discussions focused – Managing the discussion

Coping with the rude and unruly

Time for action – rating forum posts

What just happened?

Ensuring discussions are easy to follow

Time for action – splitting a discussion

What just happened?

Types of forum

Forum tips and tricks

Have a go hero – creating a school leavers book

The News forum is not really a forum

Online chat rooms

Adding a chat room to your course

Time for action – adding a Moodle chat

What just happened?

Being understood – Using emoticons

Viewing past chat sessions

Have a go hero – doing more with chats and forums

Letting students know when you are available

Time for action – telling students when we're around

What just happened?

Adding a calendar to your course front page

Time for action – adding the calendar

What just happened?

Have a go hero – calendar events

Chat room tips and tricks

Moodle messaging

Sending a welcome message

Time for action – sending a message to your students

What just happened?

Are you getting the message

Time for action – adding and using the Messages block

What just happened?

Managing your contacts

Time for action – adding a contact

What just happened?

Summary

8. Enhancing your Teaching

Quiz

Using Moodle's built-in question editors

Time for action – adding a question to the question bank

What just happened?

Importing questions

Managing questions

Time for action – categorizing questions

What just happened?

Setting a test

Time for action – adding a quiz to the course

What just happened?

Lesson activity

Structuring Moodle lessons

Why include a lesson

Supporting classroom-based teaching with lessons

Including a lesson in your course

Configuring a lesson

Time for action – configuring a lesson

What just happened?

Adding a content page – A web page with buttons at the bottom

Time for action – adding a content table

What just happened?

Adding a question page

Time for action – inserting a question page

What just happened?

Putting it all together – Linking lesson pages

Time for action – configuring page jumps

What just happened?

Monitoring student progress through a lesson

Planning your Moodle lessons carefully

Workshop – Peer review and assessment

Time for action – adding a workshop

What just happened?

Wiki

What are my wiki options

What can you use a wiki for

Adding a wiki

Time for action – adding a wiki

What just happened?

Editing a wiki page

Creating a new page

Viewing a page's history

Have a go hero – there's more to a wiki than just teaching

Glossary activity

Adding a glossary

Time for action – including a glossary

What just happened?

Time for action – adding a glossary entry

What just happened?

Glossary auto-linking

Glossary block

Have a go hero – allowing students to rate entries

Choice

Time for action – adding a choice activity

What just happened?

A learning journey

Completion tracking

Time for action – enabling completion tracking on an activity

What just happened?

Automatic activity completion

More on course completion

Conditional activities

Time for action – configuring conditional activities

What just happened?

Have a go hero – only allowing access to resources and activities when learners have agreed with the rules

Ask the admin

Allowing teachers access to questions outside of their courses

Configuring glossary auto-linking

Configuring completion tracking

Configuring conditional activities

Summary

9. Putting it All Together

Blended learning with Moodle

Why blended learning

Structuring your course – Modifying the course settings

Time for action – new course quick configuration

What just happened?

Introducing your course

Pop quiz – using labels

Using multimedia sharing services

Arranging activities

Time for action – converting a crossword to Moodle

What just happened?

Converting to fully online courses

Managing groups of students

Creating Groups

Time for action – creating student groups

What just happened?

Adding students to groups

Time for action – manually adding students to a group

What just happened?

Time for action – specifying a group enrollment key

What just happened?

Collaborating in groups

Time for action – group work in a forum

What just happened?

Handing out group-specific work

Time for action – create groupings

What just happened?

Checking student progress

Monitoring student participation

Using the Moodle gradebook

Time for action – configuring the gradebook

What just happened?

Have a go hero – including custom outcomes

Backup and Restore

Backing up your course

Time for action – back up your course

What just happened?

Restoring a course

Time for action – restore a course

What just happened?

Summary

10. Pop Quiz Answers

Chapter 1, Going Electric

Chapter 2, Setting up your Courses

Chapter 3, Adding Documents and Handouts

Index

Moodle 2.0 Course Conversion Beginner's Guide

---

Moodle 2.0 Course Conversion Beginner's Guide

Copyright © 2011 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First edition: December 2008

Second edition: November 2011

Production Reference: 1081111

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-84951-482-8

www.packtpub.com

Cover Image by Asher Wishkerman (<[e-mail]>)

Credits

Author

Ian Wild

Reviewers

Sharon E. Betts

Hans de Zwart

Acquisition Editor

David Barnes

Development Editors

Hyacintha D'Souza

Neha Mallik

Technical Editors

Joyslita D'Souza

Ajay Shanker

Project Coordinator

Michelle Quadros

Proofreader

Joanna McMahon

Indexer

Rekha Nair

Graphics

Nilesh Mohite

Production Coordinator

Arvindkumar Gupta

Cover Work

Arvindkumar Gupta

About the Author

Ian Wild is a recognized authority on online learning, especially with Moodle. Fifteen years spent in private industry – primarily as a communications technology researcher – saw Ian ultimately specializing in the design and development of access and learning aids for blind, visually impaired, dyslexic, and dyscalculic computer users – whilst also working part time as a math and science tutor. Teaching only part time meant not spending as much time with his students as he would have wished. This, coupled with his background in communication technologies, seeded his long-time interest in virtual learning environments.

Ian is one of the founding partners of Heavy Horse Limited (http://www.heavy-horse.co.uk), a technology company that regularly advises clients throughout England and Wales on e-learning platform development and deployment.

Ian is the author of Moodle 1.9 Math, also from Packt Publishing. He was also the Technical Reviewer of Moodle 1.9 Multimedia, and Science Teaching with Moodle 2.0.

I do hope you find this book as helpful to you as it was a pleasure for me to write. I must make special mention of friends, colleagues, and my family for their patience as I worked on this second edition. Your help and support has been invaluable. I thank you all.

About the Reviewers

Sharon E. Betts is a major influence in using technology for learning with educational experiences in and out of the classroom for over 30 years. She has taught and consulted in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Sharon is passionate about, and promotes the use of, open source and web-based tools in the educational environment. She is a Web 2.0 pioneer and carries the torch at every opportunity. She is firm in her belief that we can't let fear and negatives hold us back.

Sharon has presented face-to-face and virtually, both nationally and internationally and is well known for her forays into the cutting edge of educational technology. Sharon is one of the founding members of the summer FOSSED (Free and Open Source Systems in Education) Conference held in Bethel, Maine. She sits on the board of the Open1to1.org group.

Sharon presently holds the position of Educational Technology Coordinator in Maine School Administrative District #52, Greene, Leeds, and Turner, Maine U.S.

Visit Sharon's webpages at http://sharonbetts.info.

Hans de Zwart was not an American journalist and author who wrote Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (1971) and Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72 (1973).

He has not been credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of reporting where reporters involve themselves in the action to such a degree that they become central figures of their stories. He is not known for his unrepentant lifelong use of alcohol, LSD, mescaline, and cocaine (among other substances); his love of firearms; his inveterate hatred of Richard Nixon; and his iconoclastic contempt for authoritarianism.

He does think Rhonda is the best thing that ever happened to him and he does write about learning technology at http://hdez.nl/blog.

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Preface

Schools, colleges, and universities all over the world are installing Moodle, but many educators aren't making much use of it. With so many features, it can be a hassle to learn—and with teachers under so much pressure day-to-day, they cannot devote much time to recreating all their lessons from scratch.

This book provides the quickest way for teachers and trainers to get up and running with Moodle, by turning their familiar teaching materials into a Moodle e-learning course.

This book shows how to bring your existing notes, worksheets, resources, and lesson plans into Moodle quickly and easily. Instead of exploring every feature of Moodle, the book focuses on getting you started immediately—you will be turning your existing materials into Moodle courses right from the start.

The book begins by showing how to turn your teaching schedule into a Moodle course, with the correct number of topics and weeks. You will then see how to convert your resources—documents, slideshows, and worksheets, into Moodle. You will learn how to format them in a way that means students will be able to read them, and use plenty of shortcuts along the way to speed up the process.

By the end of Chapter 3, Adding Documents and Handouts, you will already have a Moodle course that contains your learning resources in a presentable way. But the book doesn't end there—you will also see how to use Moodle to accept and assess coursework submissions, discuss work with students, and deliver quizzes, tests, and video.

Throughout the book, the focus is on getting results fast—moving teaching material online so that lessons become more effective for students, and less work for you.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, Going Electric, covers why Moodle was created and how it was developed, how to log on and log out of Moodle, exploring the Moodle interface and learning some Moodle terminology, and configuring your user profiles.

Chapter 2, Setting up your Courses, covers configuring your Moodle course.

Chapter 3, Adding Documents and Handouts, covers getting your content online and ready to let your students start working with it.

Chapter 4, Sound and Vision—Including Multimedia Content, covers how to make your courses more engaging and entertaining with sound, video, and multimedia.

Chapter 5, Moodle Makeover, will take a look at tips and techniques that'll take your courses from looking good to looking great.

Chapter 6, Managing Student Work, covers managing student work online.

Chapter 7, Communicating Online, covers how to discuss work with students online.

Chapter 8, Enhancing your Teaching, covers how to enhance your teaching using other Moodle activities, such as quizzes and wikis.

Chapter 9, Putting it All Together, brings everything together and looks at possible ways of structuring a course that has been converted to Moodle.

Who this book is for

This book is for teachers, tutors, and lecturers who already have a large body of teaching material and want to use Moodle to enhance their course, rather than developing brand new ones. You won't need experience with Moodle, but will need teacher-access to a ready-installed Moodle site.

Teachers with some experience of Moodle, who want to focus on incorporating existing course materials will also find this book very useful.

Conventions

In this book, you will find several headings appearing frequently.

To give clear instructions of how to complete a procedure or task, we use:

Time for action – heading

Action 1

Action 2

Action 3

Instructions often need some extra explanation so that they make sense, so they are followed with:

What just happened?

This heading explains the working of tasks or instructions that you have just completed.

You will also find some other learning aids in the book, including:

Pop quiz – heading

These are short multiple choice questions intended to help you test your own understanding.

Have a go hero – heading

These set practical challenges and give you ideas for experimenting with what you have learned.

You will also find a number of styles of text that distinguish between different kinds of information. Here are some examples of these styles, and an explanation of their meaning.

Code words in text are shown as follows: I'm going to specify MCC-BC.

New terms and important words are shown in bold. Words that you see on the screen, in menus or dialog boxes for example, appear in the text like this: Scroll down to the bottom of the page and press the Save changes button.

Note

Warnings or important notes appear in