Moodle Teacher Guide
What is Moodle?
Moodle is the ‘brand name’ for Virtual Learnin Environment (VLE). A VLE is a piece of software which runs on a computer (on the university network and over the internet) in order to provide a webbased environment for the creation of resources, learning activities and webpages. The VLE enables online interaction between staff and students in various ways including:
- the creation and delivery of webbased resources, activities;
- interaction between staff and students (locally or remotely);
- management of the learning process;
- tracking of activity to further enable learning and feedbak.
How can you use Moodle?
In Moodle there is learning spaces called "courses". Each course has its own set of resources and activities, called "modules" in Moodle and can be customised ir terms of organisation and appearance. Only entolled students or teachers have access to courses, you can also time-limit access to courses.Once course is set up, you can fill it with activities and text, including audio and video.
Moodle works particularly well when combined with face-to-face learning – also known as blended learning. Here are some examples of what you can do:
- Enhance your teaching with online supplementary activities, both remedial and extension.
- Provide students with links to websites relevant to a course.
- Upload a series of learning activities created in some authoring software, such as Hot Potatoes.
- Ask students to reflect on their learning through a blog or a journal.
- Work in teams to co-author a document using a wiki.
- Set up a list of things for students to do before coming to a lesson.
More information available at Jeff Stanford's "What is Moodle?" and http://moodle.org/
- How to log-in?
- The Moodle Homepage
- Main menu
- The Course category box
- The Calendar
- The Course area
- Link to Uploaded File or Website
- How to send a message to all the students on course
- User profile
- See also
How to log-in
Go to the ISM Online Learning website at http://elearning.ism.lt, find the "Login box" witch is located at the top right of the Moodle home page, enter your ISM User Name and Password and click "Login".
The Moodle Homepage
Having logged in you will be taken to the Moodle Home page. The Moodle Home page is split into a number of different areas; these are explained below.
Main menu
The "Main Menu" box contains studies documentation, references, applications and regularly updated new that is important to all students.
The Course category box
The course category box is visible when you login into Moodle. This area contains a list of your's courses.
The Calendar
The Calendar allows you to post significant Course events (viewable only to course members) and User events (personal events, viewable only by you). 
If you add closing dates to an Assignment, Forum or Quiz activity within your course, these events will show up on the Calendar automaticaly. You can use previous or future month on Calendar by clicking the left/right arrows next to the current month's name.
Steps to adding a Calendar event:
Link to Uploaded File or Website
You can upload resources (such as web pages, audio files, video files, Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, PDF files or flash animations) to the course file area and then publish the files for access by Students. Files which have been uploaded to the Moodle server can be moved, renamed, edited or deleted if desired.
Resources can be added to the course using the "Link to a file or website"
facility of one of the "Add a resource…" dropdown lists
If you add closing dates to an Assignment, Forum or Quiz activity within your course, these events will show up on the Calendar automaticaly. You can use previous or future month on Calendar by clicking the left/right arrows next to the current month's name.
Today's date is allways outlined in black. Other events are color coded based on what the event is (color key under Calendar). You can hide or show various categories of events by clockin on the color key.
Steps to adding a Calendar event:
- Click month on Calendar;
- In Calendar view click "New Event" button;
- From New Event page select:
- User event (visible only for you);
- Course event (for students within course).
back to Content
Course content area
If this is the first time you are entering a new course created for you by an administrator, it will be mostly blank. Course templates have block areas on the left and right sides, with course content activities being added in the middle of the screen.
Course content area
If this is the first time you are entering a new course created for you by an administrator, it will be mostly blank. Course templates have block areas on the left and right sides, with course content activities being added in the middle of the screen.
To reveal Moodle's features for adding content and arranging side blocks in your course, click the “Turn editing on” button located in the top right corner of the screen. This action will reveal features for adding activities and resources in the content area of the course, and allow you to work with side blocks.
Link to Uploaded File or Website
You can upload resources (such as web pages, audio files, video files, Word documents, Powerpoint presentations, PDF files or flash animations) to the course file area and then publish the files for access by Students. Files which have been uploaded to the Moodle server can be moved, renamed, edited or deleted if desired.
Resources can be added to the course using the "Link to a file or website"
facility of one of the "Add a resource…" dropdown lists
The Link to a file or website page will now open. Use the Link to a file or website page to add a name for the link and a description of the resource.
The "Choose or upload a file button": If you are uploading a file that you have created or obtained from another source you should not enter anything into the Location box but click on this button instead. When you do the file store window will open
Press "Make a folder" button and create a folder.
The Upload a file window will open and from here you can Browse for a file. When you have chosen the file, click "Upload this file" button to upload a copy of the file into the course file area.
Next you need to make the link between the link name you entered at the start of this process and the file that you have just uploaded. To do this click on the word "Choose" that is located to the right of the file name under the Action heading.
You will now see the Link to file or web site page again but this time the path to the chosen document will be in the Location box. Please ignore the Window, Parameters options and press Save changes button.
How to send a message to all the students on course
To send a message to all students in a Moodle course use a forum. The News forum is provided in all Moodle courses by default, and could be used for this. Make sure that in the topic settings, the option "Subscription" is set at "Force everyone to be subscribed". This means that students will receive an e-mail copy of any posts in the forum.
How to send a message to all the students on course
To send a message to all students in a Moodle course use a forum. The News forum is provided in all Moodle courses by default, and could be used for this. Make sure that in the topic settings, the option "Subscription" is set at "Force everyone to be subscribed". This means that students will receive an e-mail copy of any posts in the forum.User profile
Majority of user information is automatically obtained from other university systems but you may find that you need to add a small amount of information before you continue. When the first time you log in to Moodle you should check the following information to see if it's present.Required information
- First name, surname, e-mail address;
- City;
- Description box.
NOTE: If the information is already presented in these fields DO NOT CHANGE IT.
Optional information
Optional information
- Image of yourself or an avatar to your profile;
- List of interests;
- Contact information: cell phone number, ICQ id etc.
Last modified: Monday, 21 September 2009, 02:15 PM