Moodle Monday - hodge-podge of tips

As you begin editing your courses for Summer or Fall here are a few design and management tips.

Use the  course page as a springboard for content.  Use books and webpages for content.  
Keep the front page of your course simple so it is easily navigable for students.  Use webpages or books for content or instructions. 

Use Labels to divide/annotate your course activities and resources.  
This will help guide students through your course.   Labels can be used to mark sections, types of resources, or to annotate what students should be doing with the resources.

Don't be afraid of white space.
Often labels are difficulty to space due to the nature of Moodle's layout.  Adding hard returns before and after your text in a label will add space before and after the text on your front page. 
Ex. ( ∏ = hard return)
∏
LABEL
∏

Make the links to files self documenting.  Ex.  Course Syllabus - Adobe PDF - 130KB
Documenting files tells students what the file is, what software they will need to open it, and the size they will be downloading.   Setting an example may also help students to remember to label their files when uploading assignments.   A related strategy, when giving assignments create a document with the directions on the document and instruct students to use that downloaded file for their assignment  (think of it as a digital handout/worksheet).   If you self document the file, for example  Response Questions 3 - NAME - ENG 001,  instruct students to download the file and use 'Save As' to change the word NAME to their name before uploading the completed assignment. 

Use the Reports to keep  track of what students are doing. 
The report tool in Moodle can show you what resources students have accessed and when they have accessed it.   Use it to document student attendance and as feedback to what resources your students are taking advantage of.   Fields for which you can sort information include: Student, Date, Activity, and Action.  With this you can discover if an individual student accessed an activity and when it was accessed. 

Use images to enhance your course.
Adding images to your course helps students navigate the sections of your course.  Using carefully selected images could also help promote thinking about content.   *be sure to use copyright free images.

Sources:
http://www.slideshare.net/michelledmoore/teaching-with-moodle-best-practices-for-course-design-i-moot-11
http://docs.moodle.org/22/en/Teaching_Do%27s#Do_encourage_students_to_be_security-conscious

Moodle Monday - Keep a Style Sheet

This weeks Moodle Monday is a practical one.  When designing your course keep a style sheet to remember what font, size, color and style you use for the variety of labels, titles and headings you use to organize content on your page.  Keep a notepad or word document open to record what styles you use so you can recall them later.

Using different font styles for headings and titles is an powerful way to help organize your course for your online students.  Simply using Bold or a color helps students navigate your course, find resources by type, and even recall information later. 

Some suggestions are:

• Use size and font to differentiate, they are more accessible than color alone. 
• indicate keyword or terms by making them bold.  Avoid underlining and the colors blue and red  or purple as they are used to indicate hyperlinks.  Or highlight the words using the highlight option in Moodle. 
• Use the styles.  Moodle has styles for headings, use them to quickly format text. 
• All Capitals is a simple way to indicate a section or type or resource. 

Moodle Monday - ION Resource

Today's Moodle Monday is a resource of activities from the Illinois Online Network (ION).
http://www.ion.uillinois.edu/resources/otai/

On this page you will find a plethora of activities with examples to use in your online or enhanced courses.    Explore the site for ideas to engage and motivate your learners.

Some examples:
Hypothetical Discussions -  students are posed a hypothetical situation to analyze
KWL - Ask students what they Know/What to Know/ and have Learned
Wikis - Group collaboration on a document

Upcoming Events Block - Moodle Monday

The Upcoming Events block will show your students any upcoming events you have in your calender.   This is one simple way to help your students be organized and manage their work load in an online course.

To turn the block on: turn course editing on, go to the add blocks block, select 'upcoming events'.

Adjust the settings:  The default for this block is to show the next 20 upcoming events.  This may be too long a list or too many events for a user to focus on to be helpful.   To change this setting go to your calender settings.  (click on calendar in your course menu or click "go to calendar' in the Upcoming Events block)  Once you are there click on preferences.  On this screen you can adjust the maximum upcoming events.   We suggest five to seven events.

The upcoming events block showing the next five events.

Click on the Preferences to adjust settings for the upcoming events block.

Change this setting to five or seven.

Finishing Strong - the last 8 weeks

Coming back from a break in the middle of the semester it is sometimes hard to switch gears into school mode again, so much more so for our learners.   Reminding students of your course objectives can help them focus their learning and motivate them to stongly finish the semester.  Having a short discussion with students about what they have learned and what they are expecting to learn can help you focus your instructional time.

A few ideas to help your students jump back into the class and finish the last eight weeks well are:

1.  If you started your semester with an Syllabus quiz, give the quiz again, or modify it slightly to focus on the last half of the semester. 
2. Show a PowerPoint slideshow as students enter the room with course objectives and upcoming due dates. 
3. Take a few minutes at the start of your next class to review objectives. 
4. Remind students of the successes they have accomplished so far, then discuss your expectations for the rest of the semester.  
5. Use a discussion forum as a litmus test to gain an understanding of how well students are meeting your objectives by asking broad content questions.  
6. Have a class discussion asking broad questions about content already covered can help you understand what they have learned.   Questions related to future objectives will help you plan for the last half of your semester. Which may save you class time.
7. Create a concept web of content covered so far.

Moodle Monday - HTML block

Need to Create a custom block of content in Moodle?   The HTML block will let you post any content in the block and a custom title. There are many instructional possibilities for this tool.  They include:

• posting weekly objectives to focus students on what they are expected to be learning that week
• open ended, higher level thinking questions about your content
• pre-lecture questions, help students focus on what you will be lecturing on in class that week
• related content from resources other than the textbook such as news articles, journals, youtube videos, or podcasts
• examples of work pulled from your students.   For example, in an English class you could post the best written sentence of the week.
• Test questions - prepare your students for an upcoming quiz or test by posting a question of the  day. 

Begin by adding the HTML block.
1.  turn on editing
2.  choose the HTML block
3.  it should now appear at the bottom of the right column.

Next click the edit button on the HTML block. In the new screen
1.  add a title
2.  add your content
3.  click save

The block has been created.  Move the block to any position you want to in the left or right column.  Here the block is placed at the top and right column.

Invite attendees to an Event in Google Calendar

We often receive emails for invitations to events for meetings, programs, or other activities on campus.   Instead of sending an email, send a Calendar invitation.   Attendees will receive an email and be able to accept, decline, or mark maybe.  The benefits are two-fold.   Attendees who choose to accept the invitation automatically have the event added to their Google Calendar.   The creator of the event will be able to see who has accepted the invitation. (so will all attendees unless you change the default settings)  This saves time for both parties. 

To learn how to do this, see the attached tutorial.   Tutorial
Learn more about Google Calender and other Google apps, see the IT department's website. http://www.svcc.edu/employees/it/index.html