09-sem1 GC114
10-sem2 GC115
Moodle: help notes for students
- To get an email address for someone on the course:
- Go to Left Hand Side menu, top :: "participants"
- Select "User List: More detailed"
- Scroll/search for the person's entry on that page
- Either click on the email
- Or copy and paste the email address into your preferred email agent
- Controlling whether you get email copies of messages posted on a Moodle
forum. In Moodle this is called "subscribing" (unsubscribing doesn't mean you
aren't part of the forum and able to post and read).
- To turn these email copies on or off, go into the forum and click on the
appropriate button.
- To get a single daily digest by email:
- Go to Profile (Left Hand Side menu)
- Edit Profile (a tab)
- Show Advanced (a button)
- Email digest type:: (pick the alternative you want)
Access / enrolment to moodle course pages
If you have a GU login (GUID for staff; regular student account for students),
then you can login to any GU moodle.
If you are registered (on websurf) for a course, and that mechanism is used
for the moodle course, then you should see the course listed already for you
personally, and clicking on it gets you there. I.e. no enrol step required,
although until you have joined it once perhaps your name won't appear on lists.
If not, you can still find the course through the long lists of all courses;
and will probably be asked for a "key" (a simple password for everyone on that
particular moodle course) and after using it once, you'll be enroled.
If staff have to manually enrol you on a course, then you must first login to
the moodle itself, so that you are known to the moodle, and your name can be
found by staff searching for it, in order to enrol you.
Joining as a guest: if the course is set to allow guests in; then you should
be able to enrol without a key.
Student wiki editing in Moodle
- Simple introduction:
The wiki software we are using uses what is called a WYSWYG editor
(those who know what this is and have used them can skip this bit). The
editor can be seen in Figure 1. The editor has buttons that are pretty
much the same as Word. You can find out the function of each by moving
you mouse over the icon. You can control basic formatting, adding bold
text, justifying text etc. Please note that the WYSIWYG editor is only
available if you use Internet Explorer or Firefox as your browser.
There is no WYSIWYG editor available for either Chrome or Safari.
- Paul Bishop on how to edit
a Moodle wiki (slightly longer)
local copy
- Another introduction to editing
Moodle wikis (11 simple pages)
Traps, warnings
Trouble with the wrong browser:
If you are using the wrong browser then the wiki editor won't work properly.
It can look to the student as if vital text is being lost, they can't get the
effect they want, etc. (Actually, it makes you use HTML, and normal students
won't be able to do that well).
First: find out what internet browser you are using e.g. Internet Explorer,
Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, ... If you're like me, you may not have
noticed, just used whatever was on your machine. Get a web page up, then look
carefully at the menu bar etc. to find out which browser it is.
Firefox and probably Internet Explorer work OK. (On university computers e.g.
in the library, you'll get Firefox.) However on Safari (the most usual browser
on Macs) and Google Chrome you won't get the proper wiki editor, just a window
with the raw HTML in. Either change to a computer with Firefox or IE (e.g. by
going into the university and using a cluster machine); or with only a bit of
effort you can probably download and install a free copy of Firefox on your
machine.
Basic WORD-like editing:
In Word you are required to control font size, page breaks etc. because when
the user gets the paper print-out, that's it.
The original idea of web pages was to leave the user and their browser in
control of that, i.e. let the browser have standard font, size etc. settings,
and of course above all window size; and indeed, anyone with any visual
impairment (e.g. anyone over 45 years old) is likely to want to do that.
A good test of whether web authors have inappropriately interfered with the
user's control of layout is to resize the window: normal pages display well
over a huge range of sizes, but badly designed ones like the new university
front pages don't work well as you resize. Moodle wiki pages pass this test.
Perhaps partly because of that, but certainly to make wiki editing simple for
non-computing students, the wiki editor only gives you controls for simple
style (bold, italics), plus you can use the menu (next to "Lang") to put
selected text in various "Headings" styles; but it doesn't give you simple
controls for font family (Times, Arial) and size (12point, 20 point), nor line
spacing. If you care to mess with raw HTML you could do anything eventually
(the icon button that looks like "<>" lets you see that); but I don't recommend
it.
Creating subpages from your main wiki page:
You used to do this by using "CamelCase". I've disabled this (don't ask).
You now do it by editing in a link with square
brackets on your main wiki page (e.g. "[Go to my subpage here]".
When you save in the editor, you'll see a blue questionmark next to the
link;
clicking on that takes you to an editor for inserting content to the subpage;
put some in; return: and there you are.
Getting text to flow round a picture:
Set 'Align = Left' (or 'right') in the box you get when inserting a picture
and copying in its URL. (If you select a picture by clicking on it in the
editor, you can then click on the picture icon and get that box again to make
changes.)
(Re-)Sizing pictures:
When you first insert a picture, it may come up too large to suit the page.
At least if you are using a browser where the Moodle wiki editor works
properly, if you click on the image in the wiki editor, you will see a border
and can use the mouse to drag points round the border to resize the picture.
You see a picture in the wiki editor, but it doesn't show in the normal
wiki view: This was mainly caused by having CamelCase enabled,
and that is now fixed.
There were 2 other solutions that sometimes work:
This can happen if the URL of the picture is too long.
The fix is to go to
http://tinyurl.com/,
paste in the long URL, and it will generate a short URL for you to use. Use
the short one in the wiki editor, and it may now work correctly.
The other solution is to get a staff member to upload a copy of the picture
into Moodle, then when editing the an/the image, you can use this new internal
listing of the picture instead of an external URL.
A picture just shows up as a '?':
Try the Tinyurl solution below: some characters in a URL in a link or image,
such as the minus sign, don't seem to work properly in the wiki editor.
Converting the real URL to a Tinyurl may fix this.
Trouble uploading pictures.
One problem can be that the size of the picture file exceeds some hidden
Moodle limit: then it just silently doesn't do it.
Another problem is that uploading any file feels clumsy (at least to me)
because it requires 2 stages that are not obvious in the middle of doing it:
in 1 stage you browse for the file and upload it: but still it doesn't appear,
attached to a link on your page. In stage 2 you finally succeed in attaching
the uploaded file to the link on the page.
Trouble with the "enlarge editor" command.
There may? be a problem when editing a wiki using the "Enlarge editor" command
that pops up a new window for the editing. It has been reported that failure
to do "minimize editor" in that window before saving can lose the changes.
(But perhaps this has now been fixed.)
Anyway, a routine that seems to work is: in the editor, open up the
larger text window ("Enlarge Editor"); do the editing; close the text window;
then Save on the page with the small edit window.
Trouble with getting a video embedded on your page.
Basically, can't do this with standard Moodle wiki, but can with the superior
"OU wiki" which GU moodles already have installed. I.e. this is something I
should have fixed when setting the course up (will do in future).
Moodle: help notes for staff setting up moodles
Moodle 'workshops':
a crude facility for reciprocal peer critiquing. Also
here.
At GU, this module seems to be available in the Education does not
appear in the others. It may be there, but you can't use it; and there is
no documentation on how to make it appear.
However those 'workshops' also can be configured to support a different
function: to allow students to see their peers' work on an assignment but only
after they have submitted their own.
name needed
(Thus they can self-assess by peer / social comparison as soon as they have
done the work; and those who don't do the work, cannot benefit from others.)
For my Peer critiquing of each other's group work, I gave them a Word
doc pro-forma to fill in and allocated them a target to critique. Then
created a class-wide forum to use for holding uploaded critiques, readable by
everyone. I created a theme per target: so reviews would be grouped like
that. This isn't private, but submitting the work is just a forum post by
the student, AND every one is archived.
Language exercises
Dougal Campbell
(.)
has a successful and extensive set of interactive exercises for French grammar.
(See this document.
In Moodle these are done by:
- "Add an activity"
- Of type "Quiz"
- And Dougal has used two types of questions in his quizzes,
called (in Moodle):
- "Embedded answers (Cloze)". This allows him to write sentences,
and in place of some words, a menu of alternatives from which the
student must select the right one. Thus a short passage may have a
dozen questions embedded in it, exercising syntax or vocabulary
choices.
- "Short answer". The student is required to type in a few words
into a box in response to a question; and the software has been
pre-programmed to recognise each of the common answers, and give
different feedback on what is right and wrong about it.
These are in 2 courses here:
staff and students can login with their GUIDs, but currently
will need to ask Dougal for the key to complete your access.
French 1 language non-beginners
French 2 20010-2011
AAW
In comparison, in the
AAW moodle site
to create a new exercise, Katie does:
- "Add a new task"
- and chooses one of only 4 formats:
- Free Text. (Feedback is either Katie's proposed solution; and/or
an explanation)
- MCQ
- Select category: they select (drag across) a bit out of a
paragraph; and then a menu appears to select what type of error it is.
- Word click. Pick a word out of a paragraph; then freetext type
in of the corrected word.
Naming moodle courses
Notes on creating wikis/forums for my courses
Use "OU wiki" not "Wiki" (on menu "Add an activity").
A] What I want in my classes is to divide the class into groups; and for each
group to have its own forum that others can't read; and a wiki which others
can read but not edit.
Steps:
- Go to "groups" in main page side menu. And the "groups" tab on that page.
- Repeat for all student groups you want:
- Create group
- give it a name
- add/remove users to insert students.
- Go to "groupings" tab.
- Repeat for each student group you want:
- Create grouping
- give it a name
- add/remove users just by inserting the corresponding group.
- Create a forum for each group on top page.
- Repeat for each of these forums:
- Go into the / each forum.
- Press "Update this forum".
- Name it.
- And you must add a description of it.
- Press "Show advanced", if necessary.
- Group mode: Separate groups
- Grouping: Select the grouping/group for this forum.
- Force everyone to be subscribed? — Yes, initially
- Read tracking on this forum? — yes
- Create one (and ONLY one) overall wiki on top page.
Use "OU wiki" not "Wiki" (on menu "Add an activity").
- Go into the wiki.
- Press "Update this wiki".
- Name it. (Add description of it.)
- Press "Show advanced", if necessary.
- Wiki auto-linking options Disable CamelCase linking [tick]
- Group mode: Visible groups
- Grouping: None
And it just instantly creates N sub-wikis, one per group.
- Now (to make the group wikis more visible to students), create a link
from top page to each (sub-)wiki.
- Go to top page; turn editing on.
- Click on (go into) top level wiki
- Use "Other wikis: Choose .." menu to go to the first group wiki.
- Copy the URL of this page
- Go back to top page
- Add a resource → Link to a file or website → paste in URL of
the group wiki.
- Repeat for every group.
B] To let other students edit each others' group wikis: no obvious way to do that.
But the suggestion is to use the 'Locally Assigned Roles' feature in Wiki,
to make all the students 'Staff' inside the wiki.
- Do NOT go to Administration: Assign roles. That is where you would
naturally go, but don't. That would assign students a staff role in the whole
course, not just in the wiki.
- Go into a student wiki page
- Press "Update this wiki"
- Press the tab "Locally assigned roles"
- N.B. "Locally assigned roles" is also a tab, but with a quite different
meaning, elsewhere: in "Admin: Assign roles"
- Press "staff" in the list of roles
- Hopefully, you will see the list of potential users including students on
the course, and can select them to "Add"
- I don't know if you have to repeat this in each wiki or if once does it.
C] To freeze a wiki page i.e. prevent any more student edits of it (e.g. after a
classwork deadline has passed), yet leave it readable by (all) students, one
technique is to set its Read page flags:
- Go into any student wiki page
- Use the dropdown menu "Administration" and select "Set page flags"
This shows the flags for all the pages (and students) in that wiki.
- Tick ("check") the checkbox "RO" (for "read only").
- This mechanism lets you control access to each wiki page separately.
(Unlike other mechanisms which seem to apply to the whole wiki or all wikis in
the course.)
D] Eric Yao has the problem of wanting to give wiki pages to a subset of students
on that wiki course; let them see each other pages; but to lock out other
students who don't have any wiki page.
E] I want to have it so that students must submit an assignment and then but only
then can see all the other students' submissions. There is an obscure way to
do it with "workshops" (the RPC mech.). See above.
Issues for staff setting up moodle courses
It talks of permissions, but nowhere for staff to change them.
No way for students to upload files/images, at least in the wiki: just paste
in a URL pointing to one stored elsewhere.
"Students can upload documents in the assignment, database and the forum
activity, as long as you (as tutor) have set the activities to allow for this."
Notes on enroling students on a moodle course
If for a moodle course, the "course ID number" in "edit course settings" (which
you get to by "Admin"-"settings") is the course code, then students are
automatically enroled. What actually happens is that when (but only when) the
student logs into that moodle, then the connection is made between that
student and their registered courses, and the latter appear in the personal
"my courses" list for that student. So it is completely smooth and effortless
for the student. And if they are deleted from the course, they will be
silently re-enroled again when/if they login again to that moodle.
For the staff member the only drawback is that they don't appear in menus as
members of the course until they've logged in the first time.
If that isn't working, or the student isn't yet enroled in MyCampus for the
course, then when and only when they login to the moodle, then staff can add
them to the course (Admin:: Assign roles:: Student role:: Add:: search).
To get round the "when and only when" you can get LTC moodle staff to add a
(short) list of students to a specified moodle; so you can get on with your
admin task of enroling them.
How to enrol someone apart from that. Searching for their matric; or staff
name. What if staff not on that moodle.
Warning about deleting a student from ?groups; !roles.
Notes on read/write permissions
I'm used to Unix view of file permisions, where an object (a file) you set
separately: read, write, (and execute) permissions, for each of: the owner, a
group, everyone.
The "Set page flags" inside a wiki work quite like that AND affect each wiki
page separately.
In a wiki setup,
- groupmode = 'visible groups' means everyone can read, only the designated
group (and staff) can write.
- groupmode = 'separate groups' means only the designated group (and staff)
can read or write.
- groupmode = 'no groups' means everyone can read and write. ??
HOWEVER: if there are separate wikis, then 'visible groups" means other
students on the course can NOT read (or write) the wikis.
In forums ....
Notes on undos
Students in wikis; revert
Staff and enrol/groups
xx
xx
xx
xx
ToDo still
Write in section names doc above.
Write doc on moodle failing to delete/replace uploads.
Instrs on how to create groups, wikis, forums
Ptr to SLH doc for students, wiki-users.
Check/edit whether workshops generally available now.
Web site logical path:
[www.psy.gla.ac.uk]
[~steve]
[this page]
[Top of this page]