Moodle FAQs

Please watch our introductory screencast (no audio) on how to login, manage notifications (forum and assignment notifications) and setup your profile (e.g set profile picture, office hours).

Log into Moodle, then from any page, click your name (top right of the screen) and then select Profile > Edit Profile and complete the sections as appropriate.

• The Description section can be useful for detailing any office hours.
• The User Picture section is where you can upload an image file (which will be cropped an resized to a 100×100 pixel square).

Yes, you can remove assignment emails and restrict forum ones.

• You can change the settings in your profile so that you only get one email per day from forum posts.
  • Click on your name in the top-right hand corner of the screen.
  • Select  Preferences then Forum Preferences and choose from the options listed.
  • To receive no emails then select No Digest from the first dropdown menu

• To change the assignment notification you need to change the message settings
  • Under My profile choose Messages > Messaging and then choose how you want to be notified for Assignments (i.e.have them unticked).

You can change the email destination for Moodle notifications by editing your Preferences > Notification Preferences.

All course events displayed in Moodle (e.g. assignment submission dates) use the UK timezone by default.

This can be confusing if you are studying or working in a different timezone, and errors can occur when converting these times to your local timezone.

Instead, with a small change to your profile settings, it is possible for Moodle to automatically convert and display these to your local timezone:

1. Click on your name in the top right hand corner of the screen and select Profile from the drop down menu.
2. In the User Details section click on Edit profile.
3. Scroll down to the Timezone option. If it needs to be changed click on it and select your nearest location from the list. For UK time it should be set to Server timezone (Europe/London).
4. Save your changes by scrolling to the bottom of the screen and pressing Update profile.

Double check:

Have you selected the correct timezone?   You may wish to double check, since an incorrect timezone may lead to incorrect deadlines being set.

Your profile change will only alter the dates / times provided by the system, and only you will be able to see them in this format.  If you are working in a different timezone, you can double-check you have applied the correct UK timings by reverting to the ‘Server timezone (Europe/London)’ setting.

Moodle Feedback tool is a simple and easy way to create a short feedback survey. You can enable anonymity (but note that student identities are still recorded in the Moodle logs).

Please see the Moodle video guide below or read more about tools for gathering feedback from students.

Yes.  The Moodle calendar is automatically populated with items that have a due date attached.  However, you may want to add your own items so that students have reminders built in, or for activities where the Calendar does not provide the appropriate functionality (for example with recurring Zoom meetings or when you setup an MS Teams meeting through Moodle).

• Navigate to your Moodle course.
• Click Calendar (from underneath the Dashboard link on the left menu).

• Click New Event button on the top right of the calendar.
• Complete the relevant details for your event and click Save.

Note that if you click the ‘Show more’ button you have the option to include ‘repeating’ events.  As ‘recurring’ Zoom meetings only appear as one event in the Moodle calendar you could add the remaining meetings to the calendar using this option (if they are repeated weekly).  Select ‘Repeat this event’ and enter the number of weekly repeats you would like, before saving.

You can view all events across all Moodle courses by visiting Home > Dashboard > Calendar.

Follow the instructions in this resource on using the Moodle Choice activity to set up a booking system.

Go to Participants (now in a block to the left) > Enrol users > (Enter user name to search); Assign role to user.

How to set Default Enrolment Duration:

You can set a Default enrolment duration for participants that are Manual enrolments and/or Self enrolment (Student). The Default enrolment duration does not affect SAMIS enrolled students.

The Default enrolment duration will remove participants once they have reached the allocated enrolment time on the unit. Setting the default enrolment duration may limit the number of manual and self-enrolled participants you will need to manually remove from your unit.

To set the Default enrolment durations:

1. Click on Participant.

2. Then click on the cog for the dropdown menu.

3. From the dropdown menu choose Enrolment methods.

4. Click on the cog in the row you wish to alter the enrolment duration.

5. Choose the Default role you would like to set the enrolment duration for. Then enable the Default enrolment duration and choose the enrolment duration. You can also choose to notify participants when their enrolment time expires. When you are happy with your changes click Save changes.

   

6. Once a student is unenrolled (in this way or any other) you will no longer see any of their assignment submissions. If you want to access those submissions, you can re-enrol the student and as long as the group feature is not in use for the unit, the assignment will reappear.

You can switch roles to “Student View” (instructions) which will simulate you being a student enrolled on your existing courses.. Note that this student will be in the default group.

Check course visibility, check Participants/Users to see if the user is present (especially if teaching multiple cohorts together in single course) and check the SAMIS User mapping (note this relies on correct and up to date enrollments on SAMIS).  Students are enrolled by SAMIS into their respective Moodle course three weeks before the start of Semester 1 and 2.

Yes, externals can access Moodle. First uou will need to put in a Request for Temporary Account (WAA account) from DD&T.

When staff and students work in Moodle the technology logs their interactions.  This information is then made available in various report functions:

• for staff so that they can understand student behaviour and analyse how students are working with the online content
• for students so that they can keep track of their progress

Find out more about Using Reporting Tools to Explore Online Activity

As outlined in the Bath Blend, consistency and scaffolding are key ingredients to allowing students to effectively engage with content. To achieve this you could consider using the Bath Blend Baseline Moodle template to structure your course and also follow these simple tips to improve an existing course (name sections appropriately, use descriptions and labels, change course format setting).

• Set expectations early.
• Communicate frequently and clearly.
  • Use the announcement forum to broadcast information
  • Other forums support students asking questions to you and to peers
• Consider using Moodle’s Video feature to introduce new topics etc (max 2 mins in length)

• Give learning interventions clear descriptions outlining expectations (e.g. duration, dates etc.)
• Consider to what extent you’ll use synchronous communication you want to have: this could be a set time for Forum discussions in Moodle, or a chat/video based Meeting with Teams.
• Consider timed release of activities (read the Restrict Access by Date instructions)

1. Online Moodle Grading – see overview video and our Moodle course instructions

• Works in the browser to allow annotation/inline commenting on scripts.
• To support maths, other symbols, calculation, diagrams etc, it is easiest to mark up the script (e.g. insert a C1 comment for calculation comment 1, S1 for style/grammatical comments etc) and then attach a supporting file with all the comments summarised (you can also use annotation tools but works best on touch screens and can be tricky).

2. Moodle Offline Grading- see video and our Moodle course instructions

• Download all scripts to your local machine (if you select Download in folders, each student’s work will be downloaded into a folder for each student).
• In terms of feedback, you can edit/markup their submission (using a more powerful pdf editor than Moodle’s annotation tools).
• Supplementary files placed in the students folder will also be uploaded as feedback to them (this can also support scripted assessment of programming projects).

3. Rubrics and Marking Guides see video and Moodle course instructions

• Rubrics allow you to assess against a set of performance indicators (and award a fixed mark for each one, i.e. comment 4 must map to 4 and not a range of marks) – selecting the performance indicator can feedback to students on generic positive points and areas to improve (there is also space for free comments too).
• Marking guides, have a number of criteria (similar to rubrics), but allow a free comment for each (and any marks up to maximum for that criteria to be awarded).
• Both approaches support standardisation of marking and also give a clear structure for the feedback.

4. Mix and Match + other strategies

• These approaches aren’t exclusive to one another. For example the coded marking  (e.g. C1-type comments etc) could be used for online/offline/marking guides (one could also distribute a general version of the coded marking feedback sheet to all students separately on Moodle).
• There are also lots of other genetic feedback strategies one can use inside Moodle. For example: feedforward/student engagement with feedback  – e.g. instead of detailed feedback on whole piece, ask for student to redraft/correct/identify small number of highlighted issues: Moodle allows for resubmission and you provide detail comments on the selected improved parts.
• The suitability of these strategies will be dependent on the context of the assessment (formative/summative), the assessment aims and also the nature of the submission.

Please see our quick Blackboard Ally quick start video below or use the Blackboard Ally help page.

No, the Ally score for individual activities is only visible to teachers enrolled on the Moodle course. The only way students interact with Blackboard Ally directly is via being able to download Alternative Formats.

It is possible to turn off the alternative format download for individual content items (see the Blackboard Ally instructions). For students, the Alternative Format button will still be visible next to the activity, but will say “Alternative Formats for this file have been disabled”.

Use different activities like Wikis to create content together, Forums and Comments to exchange ideas, Database to collectively gather resources, Glossary to create shared understanding of concepts … and more!

You can group students in any of these activities to promote collaboration.