Are you setting up or reviewing your courses in Moodle? Here are 5 tried and tested Moodle tips for setting up reports, UI and the gradebook.
Tip 1: Use activities for formative assessment
Put a short and fun activity at the start of your course. This can also act as a type of formative assessment. The activity can be used to kick start the course and engage learners. The activity can also help the trainer to understand the learner’s starting knowledge.
A top Moodle tip is that the activity can be set up to show on a report indicating that the learner has started the course.
In Moodle two easy ways to make this work are:
- A quiz (Moodle quiz or embedded H5P)
- A forum post that asks for a reflection or to discuss a starting point in the knowledge
Tip 2: Use plenty of images in your course
Use images in your course. Images don’t simply illustrate. An image can ‘set the scene’ and create a general feel to the course. A bit like walls in a classroom.
A repeated image reaffirms the student they’re in the right place and are looking at the relevant information.
In Moodle there are many places you can add an image, including:
· in the course image
· below titles in sections and on activities
· inside activities (books, quizzes, H5P can use lots of images)
Tip 3: Use the book activity if your course is text heavy
Does your course have a lot of text?
Are you short on time to convert everything into your planned visual learning interactions?
Use the Moodle book activity and break your content into short, easy to read chapters. The book has a content menu so make sure that headings are simple and descriptive. Most students will go directly to the content relevant to them.
It doesn’t have to be just words, in the book you can add images, video, audio, embed H5P and link to quizzes, forums and other activities.
The book activity is one of the most underrated features on Moodle.
Tip 4: Use ‘activity completion’ to track student progress.
Enable the activity completion settings when you set up activities.
Depending on the activity there are different options for completion, e.g. posted on a forum, attempted a quiz, etc.. Moodle will then recognise when a student has met the designated criteria.
You can access the activity completion report in each course under the ‘reports’ tab. This report is easy to download and share with relevant parties or for further reporting.
Activity completion can also be utilised in other reports in Moodle. Many themes use this feature in theme-specific reports, including front page progress tracking reports. It can also be pulled into a site-wide SQL report if you have the tools to write SQL.
Use activity completion, it will make your reporting life a whole lot easier.
Tip 5: Use categories to organise the gradebook.
Gradebook categories allow you to organise graded activities into their own groups with their own calculation. This helps keep the gradebook clean and easy to both manage and use.
Sound confusing? A good way to start is by putting all the activities you don’t want to count towards the final grade into a category called ‘ungraded’ and change the grade type to ‘none’. These activities will not contribute to the final grade calculation. You can even hide this category so it doesn’t show for students (or certain roles) in the gradebook.
This is particularly useful for H5P activities that may automatically populate the gradebook.
For LMS, Moodle and course support: [email protected], elearnhelp.com
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