Moodle Primer Part 1: Creating a Class

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Tutorial

Moodle Primer Part 1: Creating a Class

10/3/2007

By Emmett Dulaney

The People section links to the participants and will allow you to see who has enrolled in the course and what they have done after you have it live. The Activities section will provide quick links to each type of resource you add. (For example, after all the quizzes are in, a Quizzes link appearing beneath here will take you straight to them and allow you to see how many have taken each.) The Search Forums section is self-explanatory, and Administration holds links to items you want to know well:

Turn Editing Off/On is a toggle that allows you to only look at what is there or make changes to it.
Settings takes you to the Settings page and allows you to make changes to attributes of the course, enrollment, etc.
Assign Roles allows you to choose between Guest, Student, and so on. The roles you assign, just as with permissions in operating systems, and such, define what the user can do.
Groups allows you to create different groups. This is handy if you are teaching more than one section of the same course and want to separate out each.
Backup and Restore allow you to save copies of your course and bring them back.
Import gives you the ability to import resources, such as test questions, from other sources. You can import activities or even groups.
Reset is the one choice to be very cautious with. It resets – i.e. clears - the course and this can be disastrous if not the choice you were intending to make.
Reports allows you to look at activity logs.
Questions shows you the questions you have and allows you to import and export.
Scales lets you choose a learning style other than the default and should be avoided unless you are experienced in this area.
Files lets you see files that are uploaded/downloaded.
Grades will show the grades that students have obtained thus far.
Unenroll, as the name implies, removes you from the course (not a good idea).

With editing turned on, as is the case in Fig. 2, you can choose to add resources and activities to each week. A resource can be a label, text page, Web page, link, directory, or IMS content package. While you can use Moodle as an interface within which to compose a text or Web page, that is not its greatest strength; if you're familiar with another text or HTML editor, I would suggest continuing to create those types of elements with those editors.

Fig. 2: The Outline view allows you to begin adding course elements. Click to enlarge image.

An activity can be (among other things) an assignment, chat, database, forum, glossary, lesson, quiz, survey, wiki, or workshop. By default, items appear for the week in the order in which you add them. (You can always move them, but it is always easier if you don't have to.) For that reason, I suggest adding them in the order you want the student to view them. What follows is an example for one week.

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