Last changed 13 Feb 2018 ........... Length about 7,000 words (51,000 bytes).
(Document started on 12 Mar 2010.) This is a WWW document maintained by Steve Draper, installed at http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/moodle.html. You may copy it. How to refer to it.

Web site logical path: [www.psy.gla.ac.uk] [~steve] [this page] [Moodle2]

Moodle index for Steve Draper

By Steve Draper,   Department of Psychology,   University of Glasgow.

This page is mainly my personal notes and links for Moodle; preceded by brief sections on Aropa and Mahara.


Aropa

  • Glasgow's Aropa site aropa.gla.ac.uk
  • John Hamer's home page with papers etc. on Aropa
  •   My short intro

    Mahara

  • Links to Mahara: [http://portfolio.gla.ac.uk/]   GU root   acct. prefs   student doc.
            Student interviews.   Eamonn Butler "podcast"   paper1 or .   course 85CU   course 85CX

    Mahara 1.4 is said to:


    Moodle: my links

  • Moodle2 (single GU site)
  • Moodle GU information pointers   especially the guides

  • Level2a moodle

  • KGrant / writing guide:   Outer page   Short cut into psych exercises

  • University overall index ({ arts, ibls, education, eng, fims, lbss, medicine, physci, vet, crichton, services, src } .moodle.gla.ac.uk)
  • AQM (advanced qual. methods)
  • AAW moodle site
  • MOOCs
  • Sstu pheno ARTMED5003     Sstu Kant ARTMED4010     Sstu Consciousness ARTMED4004     Sstu HATII PhD students
  • JoemCourse (human-centered security) COMPSCI5060   JoemCourse (Enterprise cyber security) COMPSCI5077

  • MEd 2013-14
  • MEd 2012-13   MEd lecture notes, podcasts
  • CHIP moodle   CHIP 2016(-7)
  • CERE moodles     2009-10     2010-11     2011-12     2012-13     2014     2015     2016     2017
  • PosPsy moodles 2009-2010     2010-2011     2011-2012     2012-2013     2014     2015     2016     2017
    Any member of the university (staff or student) can access the first of these courses and its extensive wiki materials as a guest (can read everything, can't edit anything): all you need is your login regular student login (or staff GUID login).
  • DACE:     myhtml   08-sem1 GC127   09-sem2 GC115   09-sem1 GC114   10-sem2 GC115

    Moodle: help notes for students

    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 the GU moodle.

    If you are registered (on MyCampus) 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 enrolled.

    If staff have to manually enrol you on a course, then you must first login to Moodle itself, so that you are known to 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, once you are logged into Moodle. BUT the course has to be set to "be available to students", even though enrolment may be set to "No".

    Student wiki editing in Moodle

    See this document.

    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: 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:

    Naming moodle courses

    Moodle 1: obsolete

    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:

    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.

    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:

    New technique (new wiki style "OUwikis")

    Old technique (old wiki module)
    One technique is to set its Read page flags:

    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 enrolled. 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-enrolled 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 enrolled 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,

    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

    Notes on guest access

    Set the course to let guests in without a key. "Course settings:: Guest access: Allow guests in without the key".
    BUT also: "Availability: This course is available to students".
    Moodle1: Course enrollable: No. and Disable the dates
    Moodle2: Enrollment method by self-enrol set to not allow.?

    Moodle 2

    Resetting courses

    Below are recipes about my special uses of groups and how to set them up from scratch; and saving old moodle versions.

    I think typical resets clean out whole moodles.

    To recycle a moodle, saving most content, then can get rid of last year's enrolled students by: Admin block -- Reset -- Roles (open tab/block) -- Select "student" only -- Reset course btn at foot of page.
    This disenrols all students; and if the block enrols are in place, then they will restore current students over night.

    Stopping moodle forum emails

    Notes on podcasts in moodle2

    See also http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/ipod/#sec5

    Moodle2 keeps trying to impose the moodle player, which doesn't allow skipping forward or back, nor downloading.

    To get round this:

    Notes on file updating: And adding an audio recording in Moodle

    Intro: Things like audio recordings, PDFs etc. are files that can be stored in Moodle. Unlike in Moodle1, these can be overwritten with new versions and links still work provided the same filename is used.

    Creating a file "resource" on the Moodle page, for end-users: To add a file, whether podcast (audio recording) or word doc, whatever, you:
    Add a resource -- file:

    The file now stored in Moodle is always available via a direct URL, even when it is not the selected one of several for that "file resource" and within a "topic" that is all hidden (from students), (but that file resource itself cannot be hidden). So you can create one file resource; store lots of files in it; hide all direct Moodle access to them, and still refer to them from outside.

    The URL is of this form: "http://moodle2.gla.ac.uk/pluginfile.php/362546/mod_resource/content/1/CHIP8.14.ppt.pdf"     The last bit is 'name1' i.e. original filename; and the rest is the same for all files in that resource. The "/1/" may be the version number of that file name1 in that resource.

    Overwriting, re-naming, switching versions: You can drop multiple files into that area, either at once or later.
    You can set which the end-user gets by clicking on the file's icon and then clicking "set main file".
    If you re-upload a file of the same name (same name2), then it will ask whether you want to overwrite the existing one, or rename the new one.

    Thus you can update installed files by going to the on-page resource that uses it; Edit -- Edit settings -- Content (the drag and drop area) -- and re-up-load a new version with the same name; or indeed with a new name, but setting it to be the "main file".

    Re-using pre-uploaded files from another "resource": In the Content (drag and drop area):

    Notes on guest access

    Stop self-enrol Under "Admin, users, enrolment methods"; add method "Guest access"; turn it on (click on eye-icon). Help.

    It is unclear how I can find out what guests can do (controlled by system admin). How to give them read-only access.
    But it seems that it is set so that when I enable guest access, anyone can get directly in without course login (as opposed to Moodle general login).

    Restricting access to a moodle page

    Access to a whole moodle course is done by enrollment, done by course codes. But individual items / activities / resources and also "topics" (page sections) have, on their "Edit settings" admin page, a tab about "restrict access". This allows you to restrict a section by group or grouping; or date, or anything in their profile. So the page (single moodle) for all PGT/honours options is accessible by all PGT, all Hons L3, and L4; but they have set up on that page groups for each course codes, and each item/section/topic has a restrict access specified by groups.

    Notes on Moodle 2 and my course

    Creating groups and wikis in my courses

    A] This is a note on my method for the Moodle part of group creation.
    Can use jigsaw SS for this. Or at least for small group size, do it in a simpler SS with rand nmb; and categories of students. Freeze in resulting group nmb. In first class, shuffle the groups so that all who attend get to be in a group with other attenders. Then afterwards reassign others as necessary.

    B] This is a note on my method for the (Moodle) enrollment of students into groups.

    C] This is a note on my method for the Moodle part of group creation.

    Managing groups

    Enrollment. Moodle 2

    Some extra notes on controlling enrollment. See the Moodle help on this.

    Unenrolment  

  • To unenrol last years' students, delete! the "UofG enrolment database" method. [pause]. Then reinstall it [longer pause]. If the course ID number has the course codes in it,then all the right students will be re-enrolled instantly (well, during the longer pause).
  • To unenroll manually enroled users, manually unenrol them (X mini-icon when looking at each one on the list of users).

    Enrollment notes   If a course is "hidden", then users can't login into it, nor guests.

    If an enrolment module (e.g. "UofG Enrollment database") is disabled (the 'eye' mini-icon, then those users can no longer enter the course, until it is re-en-abled. (This can include the course owner!)

    New googleDocs approach

    Have students create their "wiki" pages in googledocs, then upload them to Moodle.

    New method for student sharing work across the course

    I got them to create their "pages" in GoogleDocs and upload them as PDF. I:--
  • Created on the top page a file resource per group, for their groupwork file to go in. This allows convenient uploading; keeping multiple versions if required; has a descriptive direct link from the top course page; and the title (link-text) of that link can be even more easily edited without even going into the resource.

  • Prep:
  • Rollout:

  • These resources let anyone click and display the file.
  • I had to give all students "staff" role, so they are allowed to upload. They keep a copy of the doc in their GoogleDocs for safety.
  • I set their enrolment module to have "staff" as the default role. However this didn't seem to change their roles (?would it on their next login? or would I have to unenrol all the individuals to get it to re-enrol them? But this would destroy the groups, and I'd have to redo them?).
  • So I set 'staff' role manually for each student.
  • In their enrolment method, I set it to change their role (back to student) at the coursework deadline. This should prevent any more writing; leave reading OK. THIS DIDN'T WORK: it did nothing.
  • Don't seem able to restrict uploading/updating a file resource to just some course members.

    So:

  • File resources seems best to use: fastest, direct open top-level access to all files by all.
    In creating a mass of instances of this, consider setting time limit in there; use aliases not copies of the demo file.
  • Try using "General" at top of course, to set a time limit at the coursework deadline. Students should then find it impossible to see anything until I get round to changing their roles, and opening "General" again.
    Otherwise, should create the course as having topics; one has all the wikis in; and set deadline on that topic. This would be best.
  • Hiding the enrolment block for the students will shut them out from logging in by one action: but can't program it for deadline time in advance.
  • Unenrolling them all would work, and preserve their file-resources probably; it may lose their forum contributions?; but re-enrolling them later would lose their group enrols, unless I had set this up by file somehow to make auto-group-enrol easy. Otherwise, this would be good: set (re-)enrol to give them student role only.
  • Future: create new course; set enrol to do staff role for them; no need for wiki, but do want groups; look into SS upload for this??

  • To see relevant updates to monitor student incoming work:
    Admin -- Reports -- Logs -- (not All actions but) Updates -- Set (not All days) [pick a day a few days before]
    Actually want both (have to look separately) "Updates" for the wiki-files; and "Create" for forum posts.
  • To see who is currently in the course: Participants (not Users) -- Sort by col. "last access".

  • Saving their files for printing etc. after deadline: Manually download each in turn: simply click from top level on each in turn; and simply download from its PDF popup window, and can rename the file with group nmb then; and save to a special folder as desired.

    Freezing wikis. Moodle 2 (old)

    1) Manual method:
    Go into the wiki     → Admin → Wiki Admin → Permissions → Restrict access → { the capabilities e.g. "Save wiki pages" } → Click PLUS sign if role "student" not there → Click PLUS or CROSS sign to prohibit/allow that permission

    2) Block by an automatic setting:
    Go into the wiki     → Wiki Admin → Edit Settings → open tab "Restrict access" → Add restriction → set time and date to close.

    3) ?Hide enrolment block for students: prevent them logging in?

    Seeing students / participants. Moodle 2

  • As student or staff: Navigation → ... Participants → select a group OR select part of alphabet. Shows their email addresses.
  • In the forum, can post a msg and have it seen by rest of group w/o seeing them listed there explicitly.
  • As admin/staff: Settings → Users → Enrolled users → (menu) Enrollment methods ... This shows one long list, and also group enrolment and last access of each participant.

  • Guest access. The course has an admin setting for this, that will/not let in other GUID users. But non-GUID people cannot get into the Moodle server at all. Unless you have a GUID created for them each year specially. (Request into ITdesk; forwarded to Moodle team; must be re-done annually.)

    Video plugins

    Jason says there's a new moodle plugin for videos, called 'Medial'.

    xx

    ToDo still

    ADD PTR TO PDF OF MY HELP FOR EDITING
    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.
    key acadstaff
    

    Strategic lacks in Moodle

    1) Moodle as currently used by most GU staff does not preserve courses from previous years. This throws away information (or hides it in old dumps) that would be of use to some staff and students.

    2) Work flow views. What we should provide perhaps in all courses, and should be available in Moodle, is a workflow view: so a student can see at a glance what their next required action (e.g. assignment deadline) is and when it must be done by. This should be available not only per course, but for all the courses a student is enrolled on as a unified workflow / priority to-do list. Moodle has the information but makes it hard to find for students.

    Web site logical path: [www.psy.gla.ac.uk] [~steve] [this page]
    [Top of this page]