Moodle hacks, tips, and hints

Peter EvansUSQ, Technology Advocate

Moodle hacks, tips, and hints

Peter EvansUSQ, Digital Learning Advocate

Moodle can be usedin courses

where there are

teachersand

students

resourcesand

activities

teachingand

learning

beginningand

end dates.

Butthere are

many, many morepossibilities

for usingMoodle

I want to share some of the other ways I have used Moodle

• not in a course but rather outside of formal courses• want to start some conversations in which we

explore ways of “bending our Moodles” to achieve our aspirations

• this is possible because we are using an open source product with a active contributing community

• of course, doing this will also improve our use of Moodle within the traditional courses

some of the non-course ways I have used Moodle

• support communities used by staff and students across a university

• support conferences and professional societies• collaborative projects between universities and• to market and sell software

If Moodle doesn’t do it, why not use another piece of software?

• Return on Investment– USQ has a (very) loose three year policy of “pilot >

decide > adopt > use > pilot …” cycle to maximize ROI

• we don’t want to be “Jill of all trades and master of none” constantly looking for the latest software

• when was the last time you went to your ICT section and asked them to run up a new system?– paralysis through analysis and working at the speed of

education

Why push our Moodles?

• teaching is a personal experience and our personality, style, and branding needs to show through– how can we expect students to embrace authentic

learning if we don’t embrace authentic teaching– we need to “keep it real”

• the “one size fits all” promised by late night infomercials has been replaced by “one size fits no-one”

… and why not?

• more effort than it is worth• some are dangerous (different browser, issues with

exporting, work with new version of Moodle)• if students are doing several courses, you might

fragment their experience

• cause problems for our ICT and support departments

Levels of customizing Moodle

• the teacher in a course can:• add activities, resources and blocks• add HTML into pages, labels or blocks• assign course roles• create locally assigned roles• override local permissions

• the administrator of a site can:– use contributed activities, modules, blocks and themes– create roles and assign different capabilities to roles– and other modifications

Reasons for customising Moodle

what do you want to do that you can’t?

what do you want your students to do

but they can’t?

what takes up too much time?

You will notice that “because I can”

is not a good reasonto customise Moodle

Moodle basics

• Moodle sites contain courses• courses contain activities, resources, and

blocks• People are assigned roles in a course• roles define capabilities or permissions• People can assigned to multiple groups within

the course• and there are zillions of contributed modules,

blocks, themes and lots of other stuff

Roles define what you can do in Moodle (your permissions or capabilities)

• e.g. guest, student, non editing teacher, teacher, site admin

• Scope of the role:– global roles– roles in a course– the teacher can establish locally assigned roles in

activities, resources and blocks e.g. this student … is a teacher … in this forum

• teachers can also create local permission overrides

Problem: the “Moodle scroll of death”

Solutions: to the “Moodle scroll of death”

• teachers can:– teach students what the blue buttons mean– create your own front page in HTML & link to things– create menus that show only a given week– create menus that scroll to a given week

What do those blue buttons mean?

create your front page as you want using“Insert a label” and linked HTML

Navigation bars in Moodle

A menu with links to sections

http://snipurl.com/usqdigitaltools

A solution: the accordian course format

• site administrators can:– use something like the accordian course format &

theme• http://chameleon-theme.unodo.de/course/view.php?id=

7

Problem: storing important messages in the course (for students, teachers and examiners)

• are they in email (and which one), MSN messenger, Skype or Moodle messages

• what if there is an appeal after the casual lecturer is “let go”?

• where can I see the payment and activation code if it was send to a customer 12 months?

Possible solutions

• Moodle messages– have you ever tried to search, or store or organise them?– or once you have read it how to you get reminded

• perhaps a contributed module (dialogue or email) but each have problems

A solution: auto-create a group for each person & establish support forum (separate groups)

• establish a group for each user (auto-create group)• rename the group based on the username• establish a forum using

separate groups

A separate forum for each person

Problem: Getting people into a community

• allow guests in (but this means they don’t leave footprints)

• allow people to self enrol (but how do they find it)– http://usqstudydesk.usq.edu.au/course/enrol.php?id=14

723– or scroll through a thousand courses

• enrol them in the course (not suitable for self communities)

• make it a meta course– but they can’t unenroll or others can’t enroll

A solution: a meta “invitation” course

Students enrolled in child courses

“Enrol” link that the student can click to join

the community

the meta invitation course

the community

Problem: providing FAQs that people use and reply to and grow

• we don’t want people to start new threads for an existing issue

• we want the answer to the issue at the start of the thread

• we want people to expand on the issue if relevant

A controlled FAQ

A solution: a forum where students can’t start new threads

• to prevent students from creating new threads and • force students to read the FAQ and related

messages before posting their question

Problem: we want students to be more actively involved and take on mentoring roles

• some students would be brilliant forum moderators• these are graduate qualities and skills• showing leadership, teamwork and communication

Solution: locally assigned roles

• use Locally assigned roles to make some people teachers in a single activity

• and if you have a friendly administrator they might setup different roles

An example: Digital learning mentors

• extra privileges:– are automatically Presenters in Wimba sessions– can see additional resources e.g. DLM handbook– are moderators in the forums (edit, delete, move and

split)

• they are also announced to the community• they are thanked by the community

and if you have a friendly administrator

• you might ask them to setup different roles • (but this will have impact on upgrades and some

modules)

Problem: wanting a way for students to organise their own meetings and register

• setup a choice activity for each meeting– no

• you could setup a form for each meeting– no

A solution: advertise the meetings in forum posts and register using the RATE menu

• Administration > Grades > Scales > View and setup a scale with these options– I will attend– I hope to attend– I would like to attend

if there was another time

• set up a booking forum and use the scale to rate items

and people will book in if the session are useful

Problem: wanting people to interact and form support networks

• we know that if people do this they are more likely to succeed

• they need to be in control of deciding who to buddy with and how to communicate

• some of these connections will be short term while others will be longer

A solution: Moodle friends list & messages

go to Moodle Messages (side block or via your profile

the contacts tab will show when the person is online and can start chatting

A solution: free visitor logs or presence indicators you can embed in a label or block

• http://clustrmap.com/ – automatically adds visitor location

• http://whos.amung.us/maps/ – also shows who is currently online

Install the Moodle

Google map module

(requires admin)

(you control if you are shown on the map – clicking a pin shows your profile and messages)

Problem: want a large community with small subgroups

• we want to be part of large communities– wisdom of the crowd– safely in numbers (in case there are sharks)

• but we want to work in trusting groups– small groups were we can build up higher levels of trust

A solution: using Moodle groups

• Moodle groups provide a VERY powerful way of segmenting a course into overlapping groups

• groups apply to most but not all Moodle activities and resources

• a person can belong to several groups• if the course uses groups, you decide if they can see

each other or are oblivious to each other

a(nother) problem: Moodle group formation

• but Moodle only allows the teacher allocates people to groups

• but we would like more natural methods– people are invited to join the group and they accept– people apply to join the group and the group accepts them

• or ask your admin to install the group formation activity

Possible solution: a group formation forum

• establish a group formation forum to allow people to advertise groups and allow people to join the groups

• teacher establishes the Moodle group• setup forums as

– separate groups– visible groups

Wiki group type, group mode and grouping (very expert friendly)

A problem: Need to check discussion in separate course

• a problem for lecturers that teach into two courses• imagine how much of a problem it is for student

who are doing 4 courses

A potential solution: the MyMoodle page

• ask your administrator if you can use MyMoodle• shows all activity in all courses on one page• if not then do it anyway by giving them a link to

http://??????.??????.edu/my• suggest they add blocks to the page to do the things

you want e.g. see online people in any course or the unanswered discussions block

A solution: create a link to allow students to use the MyMoodle font page

Problem: we want to encourage people to do more in Moodle

• we want to encourage people to move from being– tourists to– casual visitors to– regular members to – valued mentors

A solution: let guests in and show them that they can do more if they register

• use override permissions to show them some things and show them some things they can’t use

• e.g. a forum that is only visible to registered users

Problem: how to make it easy for people pay to access a course to resources

• and a Moodle solution thanks to uncle Martin

• use the PayPal enrolment system

• set a course duration

• send people a message before the end of the course

In summary

• Moodle may not do everything• and to paraphrase FDR … “Moodle might

sometimes be a son of a bitch but it is OUR son of a bitch”– http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DNcR_4qqvs8

• lets embrace the power and openness of Moodle (and always keep a backup)

Places you can learn about using Moodle your way

• the net … do a search for “Moodle & anything”• http://moodle.org

– the using Moodle forums

• conference like this• I will publish this at:

– The UniMoodle site at http://snipurl.com/unimoodle – the Moodle hints, tips and hacks course at

http://eMarkingAssistant.com/community

Questions, comments and networking