University of Illinois Moodle Guide: Navigating Online Learning

The University of Illinois utilizes Moodle as a learning management system, offering a centralized access point for course materials and activities. This guide provides essential information for navigating Moodle, particularly in situations where traditional face-to-face instruction is not possible.

Accessing Moodle Content

Moodle is integrated with Canvas, providing a seamless experience for students. A link within your Canvas course site will grant access to the Moodle course content. Once clicked, the Moodle content will be embedded within your Canvas course.

Key Considerations for Navigation

Due to the embedded nature of Moodle content within Canvas, it's important to be aware of certain limitations:

Direct Linking: Each activity clicked within the embedded site will have the same URL. Therefore, direct links to specific activities cannot be sent or received.
Canvas Calendar: Individual assignments and quizzes will not appear in the Canvas Calendar since all course content is accessed through a single link.

Utilizing Moodle Features

Moodle offers a variety of tools and activities to facilitate online learning. Here are some key features and how to effectively use them:

Communication Tools

Forums: The Forum activity is an easy way to add discussions to your Moodle course when you can’t meet face to face with your students.
- For whole-class discussions on open-ended topics, the Single, Simple Discussion forum type is recommended.
- If you want students to provide their answer to a framing question first before seeing what other students have said, and then be able to join into a larger conversation, then you will want to use the Question and Answer forum type.
- Consider adding a discussion Forum activity using the Standard forum for general use forum type to create an informal “Student Lounge” or “Virtual Cafe” space; a place where students can talk about the course, ask and answer questions, and share resources and information with each other and the instructor.
Chat: The Chat activity in Moodle allows instructors to create a text-based chat room for real-time interaction with and among students.
Announcements: Communicate with your students through the Inbox or Announcements in Canvas or through forums in your Moodle site.

Content Sharing and Presentation Tools

VoiceThread: VoiceThread allows you to set up slide shows including diverse kinds of media, where you can add comments through web cam, plain audio, or text, and also add annotations to your slides as you comment. VoiceThread can be used as online lectures that your students can access anytime, or for asynchronous conversations among your class. This is integrated into Moodle as an activity. Firefox or Chrome are recommended when working with VoiceThread. You can also set up a VoiceThread activity where everyone in the class can share VT presentations.
YouTube: Record a video right on your smartphone, laptop, or tablet and upload it directly to the video-sharing platform. YouTube makes it easy to Add Subtitles and Closed Captions. If you use Google Slides, you can provide real-time captioning as you narrate your presentation while sharing your screen via Zoom. The TLTC recommends that instructors upload course-related content, such as recorded Zoom lectures, to YouTube as unlisted. To share the recording with your students, provide the YouTube URL using the URL resource or embed the video in your Moodle course.
Kaltura/Illinois Media Space: If you plan to upload a video you own or created to your course, we recommend using the Mashup tool to add a video via Kaltura/Illinois Media Space.

Assignment Submission and Grading

Assignment Activity: Moodle has a feature to collect assignments digitally, provide students feedback, and share student grades (using the Moodle Gradebook). The two most common ways to collect work from students through Moodle is by using the Moodle Assignment activity or the Turnitin Assignment activity. You can collect more than just documents using the basic Assignment activity in Moodle. Set up your assignment as a text submission instead of a file upload, and students can provide links to videos of themselves doing performances or other activities. Moodle will automatically embed the videos from linked YouTube or Vimeo pages into the assignment submissions, so you can view the videos from within the Moodle grading interface.
Turnitin Assignment Activity: Moodle has a feature to collect assignments digitally, provide students feedback, and share student grades (using the Moodle Gradebook). The two most common ways to collect work from students through Moodle is by using the Moodle Assignment activity or the Turnitin Assignment activity.
VoiceThread Activity (Assignment Mode): You can also set up VoiceThread activities in assignment mode. There are two formats available. You can share one of your VT presentations, and assign students to make one or more comments on the VT. Or you can set up the assignment for students to create and share their own VT presentation.
Moodle Gradebook: Moodle allows you to communicate individual grades and total grades with students. This is facilitated by the Moodle Gradebook. Students will only ever see their own grades and not the grades of anyone else in the course. You should refer to the Moodle gradebook for an accurate snapshot of your grade at any point during the course. As a precaution, we recommend that you backup your grades outside of the Moodle gradebook environment. You can use a spreadsheet (e.g.
Quiz Activity: Moodle offers a robust Quiz activity that allows you to create a variety of questions (multiple choice, short answer, matching, etc.), populate questions in your Question Bank, and then assemble questions in your Question Bank into a Quiz. Check out Moodle’s Building a Quiz step-by-step guide to get started. Be sure to develop quizzes usable for ALL of your students. Quiz questions containing images or tables and graphs should be described for those with low/no vision.

Synchronous Interaction

Zoom: Zoom is a video web conferencing application where many individuals can join the same meeting and share audio and video. It also allows for screen sharing and presentation mode. Migration of Zoom accounts to Single sign-on (SSO) has been completed by Campus Technology Services (CTS). From there you can Join or Host a meeting or Sign in to Zoom through the “Sign in” option using your purchase.edu credentials. We recommend that you schedule and start Zoom sessions in your Moodle courses using the Zoom integration available in Moodle. Directions for Hosting a meeting as an Instructor A free Zoom account will allow you to hold a live Zoom session for up to 40 minutes so be sure to contact CTS for an institutional Zoom account to run longer sessions. Directions for Joining a Meeting as a Participant Students do not need to download their own free Zoom account, though some might want to have the application available on their own computer/device. If you are using Zoom sessions to hold synchronous online classes, then one of the students can share their screen with the presentation, while all of them can use their computer microphones or their phones to speak to the class. It would be a good idea for everyone to do a technology check in advance of the presentation sessions. Additionally, we ask that you ensure any presentation files, like PowerPoint (.ppt, .pptx) are uploaded in your Moodle course before of the presentation so that applicable students are able to follow along without barriers as much as possible.
Collaborate Ultra: In addition to Zoom, campus has access to Collaborate Ultra (until June 2020). You can add both Zoom and Collaborate Ultra as Tool links in your navigation menu.

Important Considerations for Instructors

Accessibility: Be sure to develop quizzes usable for ALL of your students. Quiz questions containing images or tables and graphs should be described for those with low/no vision.
External Links: External links within your Moodle content should be set to open in a new window, otherwise they will open within the Canvas shell and create a window within a window.
Activity Restrictions: You should only add activity restrictions (like the open/close dates and overrides) in Moodle, not in Canvas.
External Tools: If you are using single activity LTIs, all external tools (Zoom, Turnitin, textbook publisher integrations, etc.) should be added to your Canvas site, not your Moodle site. If you are using an entire course LTI, the following external tools are currently available in Moodle: Zoom, Turnitin, iClicker Cloud, ProctorU, Pearson, and McGraw Hill. For ProctorU to function properly, it must be set to open in a new tab.
Publishing: Activities and modules need to be published in Canvas for students to access them. To publish, click the circle with the slash through it next to a module or activity.
Auto-linking: Moodle's auto-linking feature is turned off by default, but can be enabled by going to More > Filters in your Moodle site.
LTI limitations: If you are using an entire course LTI, you cannot directly link to pages in the embedded site, as every page will have the same Canvas link.
Grades from face-to-face course: If you need to add grades that were previously tracked elsewhere for your face-to-face course, we recommend that you add a single column and enter all of the previous points as one score in that column. If you have weighted grades, you can add multiple manual columns and set the weighted percentages for each.
Backups: Backup copies of your teaching materials prior to the start of the semester, in the event you are unable to access the files on the Purchase College network.
Syllabus: Remind students to download/save and print a copy of the syllabus.

Additional Resources

ATLAS IT Services: If any of the links below do not answer your question, ATLAS IT Services is an excellent place to turn to in addition to Moodle Docs.
Training and Support Pages: Additional online tutorials and dates for training workshops can be found on the Training and Support pages.
Moodle Foundations Certificate mini-course: You can also self-enroll (no enrollment key necessary) to access the Moodle Foundations Certificate mini-course.
Moodle Docs: If any of the links below do not answer your question, ATLAS IT Services is an excellent place to turn to in addition to Moodle Docs. Check out Moodle’s Building a Quiz step-by-step guide to get started.

Read also: History of the Block 'M'

Read also: Legacy of Fordham University

tags: #university #of #illinois #moodle #guide