• Overview
  ...a rough guide to e-learning, for staff
• News and Updates

• Using the Course Materials Repository
• Using Online Coursework Submission
• Using the Plagiarism Detection Service
• Using Moodle
• Using WebCT
• Using Perception
• Using a Personal Response System

• SENDA
• Supporting Online Learning
• IPR and Copyright Guidance
• E-Learning Network (Mailing List)
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• Learning and Teaching

Moodle

Adding activities to your Moodle course

As well as adding course content to Moodle, you can also add a variety of interactive activities that enable your students to interact with you, each other, or the learning environment.

To add an activity to your course, you use the "Add an activity…" drop-down menu in the content blocks of your course.

When an activity has been added to a course, it can be moved, hidden or deleted, in the same way as a resource.

The following gives you a brief description of each of the activities currently available in Moodle. The guides below are PDF files. You will need the free Adobe Reader to view them.

• Assignment - this allows the teacher to specify a task that requires students to prepare digital content (any format) and submit it by uploading it to the server. Typical assignments include essays, projects, reports, etc. This tool includes grading facilities.

  IMPORTANT: It is strongly recommended that you only use the Assignment tool in Moodle for formative assessment. If you want your students to submit summative coursework online, please consider using the Online Coursework Submission facility. Please contact the Learning Technology Team for more details.

• Chat - this is a synchronous communication tool that allows course participants to communicate in real time.
• Choice - this type of activity is very simple - the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. It can be useful, for example, as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to vote on a direction for the course; or to gather research consent.
  • Using the choice activity in Moodle

• Database - this tool allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited, including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things.
• Forum - this can be used in many ways, from simple communication of information by the teacher (as on a bulletin board) right through to graded discussion exercises. Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in a variety for formats, and can include attachments.
  • Using forums in Moodle

• Glossary - this allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary. The entries can be searched or browsed in many different formats. The glossary also allows teachers to export entries from one glossary to another (the main one) within the same course.
  • Using glossaries in Moodle

• Lesson This consists of a series of web pages displayed in a given order, where the next page displayed depends upon the student’s answer to a question.
• Quiz - this allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple-choice, true / false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers. This tool includes grading facilities.
  • Creating quizzes in Moodle

  IMPORTANT: It is strongly recommended that you only use the Quiz tool in Moodle for formative assessment. If you wish to use online quizzes for summative purposes, please consider using Questionmark Perception. Please contact the Learning Technology Team for more details.

• SCORM / AICC - this is a package is a bundle of web content packaged in a way that follows the SCORM or the AICC standard for learning objects. These packages can include web pages, graphics, Javascript programs, Flash presentations and anything else that works in web browsers. The Package module allows you to easily upload any standard SCORM or AICC package and make it part of your course.
• Survey - this offers you five different surveys with which you can assess the learning experience of your students. These surveys are not graded activities and the questions are preset.
  • Using surveys in Moodle

• Wiki - this is a very useful group work facility. It allows users of a course to work together (in groups or as a class) creating documents. The documents are created using the HTML editor and the Wiki code makes it possible to link pages to each other.
• Workshop- this enables the teacher to create a peer assessment activity with a huge array of options. It allows participants to assess each other's projects, as well as exemplar projects, in a number of ways. It also coordinates the collection and distribution of these assessments in a variety of ways.