Section outline

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    Moodle™ Basics

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    Welcome to our introductory skills course for instructors. 

    The goal of this course is to provide instructors like you with an understanding of the basic functionality of your learning management system (LMS).

    Our hope is that you'll be able to confidently begin developing your own course(s) after completing this one. If you'd like to continue growing your LMS knowledge, you can also complete our Advanced Usage of Moodle™ training course. There we introduce additional functions and features you can use to better manage your courses, as well as more advanced settings and tools.

    Each section below represents a learning objective for this course, and contains information for your review, as well as a mastery exercise to help demonstrate your understanding of the topic.

    Some activities and resources in this course have activity completion criterion associated with them. This criteria, if enabled, will be listed as a label beneath the activity or resource name in the course. It will also appear inside that activity or resource. Some course activities have multiple criteria that must be met for it to be marked as complete. 


    This feature is called "completion status" and can be set by you as the instructor to require a specific action, or so that learners may manually check it off as complete themselves. Don't forget to mark your manual items in this course as complete so they're properly tracked!

    If your site administrator has set up badges within this course, and you have successfully completed all required items, you will earn a badge for course completion. This badge will display in your user profile as evidence of your accomplishment.

    This course will remain available for you to review in the future.

    • New to You in Our Latest Update! Book
      Students must
      View

      Did you take an older version of this course? This Book highlights the new features you can expect to see in this version. This upgrade includes:

      • Clearer descriptions for what students need to do to complete an activity
      • Multiple quality of life improvements for Quizzes

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    About Moodle™

    In This Section

    • An introduction to the features available across your site
    • Frequently asked questions
    • Common terms

    • An Introduction to Your Site Book
      Students must
      View
    • Frequently Asked Questions Book
      Students must
      Mark as done

      This FAQ "book" resource contains answers to the many of the most common questions we've received from students.

      If you click on the link above, you can use the Table of Contents to jump to the topic that interests you.

    • Common Terminology Glossary
      Students must
      Mark as done

      This glossary contains several terms that you should be familiar with as an instructor. 

    • About Moodle™ Quiz
      Students must
      Receive a grade

      Complete this quiz to test your understanding of the information contained in the Introduction to Your Site book. 

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    Course Structure + Settings

    In This Section
    • Understand course formats
    • Identify your course administration menu
    • Add blocks to your course for quick access to menu items 
    • View your participants and enrolled users
    • Your Course Structure Lesson
      Students must
      Go through the activity to the end
      This activity type is called a Lesson. This resource will introduce you to the structure of your default course site, important settings and spaces, and commonly used blocks.
    • Settings: Visibility and Start & End Dates Book
      Students must
      View

      This book is organized into chapters that cover how to manage the visibility of your course(s).

    • Course Structure & Settings Quiz
      Students must
      Receive a grade

      Complete this quiz to test your understanding of the information contained in the Course Structure & Settings presentation. 

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    Building & Editing Your Course

    In This Section

    • Make use of summary sections
    • Work with both resources and activities
    • Try the drag-and-drop feature

    • Summary Sections - The Foundation Page
      Students must
      View
      This resource will get you thinking about how to successfully use summary spaces to introduce your content to your learners.
    • Building & Editing Your Course - Go Further Book
      Students must
      View

      This book contains additional ideas for incorporating content and activities into your courses you should consider using. Remember: This course is designed to be an introduction. For more advanced ideas, activities, and resources, please review our Advanced Usage of Moodle™ course.

    • Building & Editing Your Course - Best Features Forum
      Students must
      View
      Make forum posts: 1

      This forum is configured for an asynchronous discussion of the various activity and resources types available to you in your courses.

      You've learned about how to work with files, external audio and video embedding, hyperlinks and more. Create a new discussion in this forum telling us more about how you plan to incorporate these features into your courses.

      Please post at least one feature and its potential use within your courses.

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    Activities & Resources

    In This Section
    • Using The Activity Chooser Page
      Students must
      Mark as done
    • Activity Types - A Brief Introduction Book
      Students must
      View

      This book covers a four commonly used activities you'll find in your course.

    • More about the Lesson Activity Book
      Students must
      View

      The lesson module is one of the more advanced activities to set up, but it is commonly used and has incredible benefits for organizing your instructional content so we go into further detail on it here. 

    • Review - Activities & Resources Choice
      Students must
      View
      Make a choice

      Let's complete a quick check for understanding using the Choice activity type you reviewed earlier. Are the resource videos, screenshots, and text provided to you in this meeting your training needs? Submit your answer here, and we'll use it to guide our decision making as we revise and enhance this course in the future.

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    Creating Assignments

    In This Section

    • An introduction to the function of assignments, and ways to use them  
    • Options for providing feedback to learners
    • How to create overrides for learners with accommodations, and how to apply them when needed
    • All About Assignments Book
      Students must
      View

      This book covers the basics of creating and using the Assignment activity. In our Advanced Usage of Moodle™ course you'll learn more about grading methods, including the use of rubrics for assessing and providing feedback on learner work. 

    • Granting Assignment Extensions Page
      Students must
      View
    • Example Assignment
      Students must
      Make a submission

      This is a generic Assignment built using the most frequently used settings. Learners are asked to submit an assignment by uploading one or more files.

      Practice from the learner perspective by submitting a sample document. Please do not include sensitive or protected information in the document you submit. 

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    Quizzes

    In This Section

    • How to design and build quizzes with a variety of question types
    • The Question Bank and how it can be used to build quizzes
    • Importing a Question Bank with the XML file type
    • Creating Question Bank categories and sub categories 

    • All about the Quiz Module & Question Bank Lesson
      Students must
      Go through the activity to the end

      This lesson module will introduce you to testing within Moodle using the Quiz module. 


    • Quiz about Quizzes
      Students must
      Receive a grade

      Let's practice taking a Quiz from the learner's perspective. This Quiz includes questions about building a Quiz and using the Question Bank.

    • Quiz Sample - Core Question Types
      Students must
      Mark as done

      This quiz contains a sampling of several basic question types so you can see how they display to a learner.

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    Course Communication Tools

    In This Section

    • Mastering Communication Within Your Course Lesson
      Students must
      Go through the activity to the end

      This lesson will cover different methods for communicating with learners in your course. 

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    An Introduction to the Moodle Gradebook

    In This Section

    • Where and how to access and update grades in your course
    • How gradebook items are created
    • Picking an aggregation method (way of calculating grades) for your course
    • Organize your grades into categories

    • An Introduction to Grading Lesson
      Students must
      Go through the activity to the end

      This lesson covers how to get started with your course gradebook. 

    • Gradebook Discussion Forum
      Students must
      Make forum posts: 1

      You're welcome to post a discussion thread here if you have questions related to the gradebook. These training courses are not always monitored or moderated by an instructor, so you may receive peer feedback first. Please be mindful to not post anything that might violate data privacy laws. 

      For more immediate support, please contact your site administrators. 

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    Open LMS Mobile App

    Objectives for this section:

    • Features of the Open LMS mobile app, and how to download it
    • Considerations for offline use when creating activities and resources

    • The Open LMS mobile app is available for free from Google Play and the Apple Store. You can install the app directly from your mobile device by searching for 'Open LMS' with author/owner 'PeopleFluent, Inc.'. You should be installing what looks like the image here.

       Open LMS Mobile App

    • With the mobile app, you can learn wherever you are, whenever you want, with these app features:

      • Easily access course content
      • Connect with course participants
      • Keep up to date - receive instant notifications
      • Submit assignments
      • Track your progress
      • Complete activities anywhere, anytime... and more!

    • We can encourage participants to download and use the Open LMS mobile app by pointing them to the download link in the footer of the site. Users can also download the app through a link that appears on their profiles. Visible links to download Moodle Mobile app empower users to access their site anytime, any place through their mobile devices.

      The following links will open in a new window.

    • Learn more about the Open LMS mobile app URL
      Students must
      Mark as done

      Review this resource for more information on downloading and getting started with the Open LMS mobile app. 

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    Conclusion

    Congratulations!

    You have successfully completed the Moodle Basics training course for instructors. If your site administrator has set up badges within this course, and you have successfully completed all required items, you will earn a badge. This badge will display in your user profile as evidence of your success.

    • Quick Reference "How to" Guide for Moodle™ File
      Students must
      Mark as done

      Here is a great resource to keep handy if you need a reminder of the steps required to perform basic tasks in Moodle.

    • Learn Moodle 3.11 - YouTube Playlist URL
      Students must
      Mark as done

      This YouTube playlist provided by Moodle.org offers additional how-to videos for version 3.11. This link opens in a new window.