Can’t find the answer here? The Moodle Support Hub provides comprehensive advice on using Moodle and has a set of basic FAQs or contact tel@bath.ac.uk for help.
Profile setup
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. Yes, you can remove assignment emails and restrict forum ones.
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).
Orientation, Structure and Navigation
The Essential Unit Information Area is a new tabbed area, which appears at the top of the Moodle page, before the main content. The tabs provide staff with a consistent layout to help them present key unit information to students. Please read the Moodle Essential Unit Information Area – Quick Guide for more details. From the week commencing the 3rd August 2020, we will be updating the Moodle theme and adding the Essential Unit Information block to SAMIS coded courses. The TEL team will work through this manually so please bear with us. You can specify a later date (if there is teaching/resits happening at the moment) using the following form. Bath Blend Baseline Templates for Moodle (which consist of sections and some key course activities and resources) can only be applied to blank Moodle courses and you can request this through the following form. You can import content from your previous course to this fresh Moodle course. Please note, the Essential Unit Information block and new Moodle theme will be applied to all SAMIS linked courses from the 3rd August 2020 (please use the same form to request a deferral of this action). Please read our Essential Unit Information setup, which details what content to place under the different headings and how to edit it. Three things are all arriving over August 2020: the new Moodle theme, Essential Unit Information block and Moodle template (please do bear with us, as we are applying the changes manually). The following three sections explain what these are and when they will be applied What is it? The Moodle theme upgrade improves the user interface, navigation, better mobile performance, and gives a fresh look to Moodle (take a look at this demo course with the only new theme turned on). This does not effect content in Moodle courses (other than those that make heavy use of blocks on the side and custom HTML bootstrap elements). When do I get it? For SAMIS courses, the new Moodle theme will be applied with the Essential Unit Information Area from 3rd August (to specify a later date, use the following form). For non-SAMIS coded courses it will be applied in due course (note the old theme will not work beyond August 2021). What is it? The Essential Unit Information Area is a new tabbed area, which appears at the top of the Moodle page, before the main content. The tabs provide staff with a consistent layout to help them present key unit information to students. It relies on the new Moodle theme to work. When do I get it? For SAMIS courses, the Essential Unit Information Area will be applied at the same time as the new theme to courses from 3rd August (to specify a later date, use the following form). For non-SAMIS coded courses, it can be added manually or not at all). What is it? The Bath Blend Baseline Templates for Moodle templates (which consist of sections and some key course activities and resources) can only be applied to blank Moodle courses. It also includes the new Moodle theme and the Essential Unit Information. You can request a template through the following form. You can also import content from your previous course to this fresh Moodle course. When do I get it? You will need to request a Moodle template through the following form.
Moodle theme upgrade
Essential unit information area
Moodle templates
Communication
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). 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. You can add the Moodle calendar to your list of calendars in your Outlook calendar through the use of a Moodle generated URL. Note this will pull through events across all the Moodle courses you are enrolled in, it can’t be limited to just one course. The newly named calendar becomes an option in your list of calendars which you can toggle on/off. Please note that Microsoft report that it can take 24 hours for Outlook to update subscribed calendars. It is also possible to use the generated calendar link to add a calendar to a Gmail calendar.
Generate a link to the Moodle Calendar
Import the calendar into Outlook
Moodle Forum
Watch the video below for instructions on how to setup a Forum and what the different settings do or read Our Best Practice Tips for Forums.
Managing users & student data
Go to Participants (now in a block to the left) > Enrol users > (Enter user name to search); Assign role to user. 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: Find out more about Using Reporting Tools to Explore Online Activity
Managing resources
Yes. Deleted Activities are moved to the recycle bin for 7 days, after which time they are permanently deleted. Go to the Course Settings Cog > Recycle bin and select the item(s) you wish to restore. Please note, the recycle bin is only available if there if you have deleted contents in the last 7 days. It may take up to 30 minutes for the activity to appear in the recycle bin. There are two ways to move an activity from one Moodle course to another: Moodle has a 50MB upload limit to keep the platform working smoothly for everyone. If you are trying to upload video content (or a Powerpoint with a voice over), then you should instead upload the content to Panopto (guidance). It is also possible for staff to share content with students via their University of Bath OneDrive Account. Please contact tel@bath.ac.uk if these solutions don’t work for you. To show or hide a whole Moodle course, edit Course Settings and under General > Course Visibility: Show/Hide. Note: hiding a course will stop students being able to access the course completely. Staff role (teacher, non-editing teacher, director of studies will still have full course access). Based on the new Moodle theme, this shows where to find the show/hide options for your course. Please read the Moodle course management guide, which will detail dates for when students are automatically (SAMIS) enrolled and removed from a course, and also guidance around resetting a course to remove student previous student assignments and quiz attempts.
Pedagogical Support
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). 4. Mix and Match + other strategies
1. Online Moodle Grading – see overview video and our Moodle course instructions
2. Moodle Offline Grading- see video and our Moodle course instructions
3. Rubrics and Marking Guides see video and Moodle course instructions
Managing groups
This is a quick guide to using groups in Moodle. We encourage you to view it before reading the more detailed guidance below. At the top of your Moodle course, go to the settings cog and select “More”. Select the “Users” tab and then “Groups” You first need to create empty groups and then allocate students to those groups. You can do this manually as shown in the video below or by getting students to self-enrol via the Group Choice activity. You can create empty groups either manually or automatically following some structure/naming convention (e.g. Workshop Group {1,2,3…}): please see the video below: The easiest way to populate large number students to groups, is to get them to allocate themselves to groups using the Group Choice Activity. The Teacher can specify the group membership via a separate document, and ask the students to enrol themselves into these groups (you may wish to review/amend the Group Choices to make sure it is correct). There are plugins that promise .csv import of group memberships, but this is not supported on our current version of Moodle. This answer assumes you have students correctly setup in Groups (e.g. tutor groups) from Moodle course 1 and want to copy those groups to a different Moodle course 2. If you need help on enrolling students from SAMIS to a Moodle course, read these instructions instead. To do this we will use the Backup and Restore feature in Moodle (note: Moodle’s import feature does not work with Group Members). This will copy ALL enrollments, groups and groups members from Moodle Course 1 to Moodle Course 2. Remember: this procedure will copy ALL enrolments from Moodle Course 1 to Moodle Course 2, including any manual enrolments. It is the responsibility of the user to clear up any additional enrolments in Moodle course 2 following Import.WARNINGS
Backup Instructions
Restore Instructions
Accessibility and Inclusivity
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”.
Technical Questions
Unfortunately, at this time we are focusing on existing solutions that we can support. Plug-ins require a code review from our external hosts so they don’t impact the stability of Moodle for everyone. Please contact tel@bath.ac.uk to discuss alternative options. Read the Accessible maths with Moodle Guidance for using the text editor of LaTeX markup. The way in which the Re:View (Panopto) block works changed in Sept 2018 and scheduled recordings are stored and viewed from the Re:View portal. If you haven’t scheduled lecture recordings or they haven’t taken place yet, then you will need to use the Moodle block. Please see guidance on our Panopto FAQs on What is the Moodle Block? and Adding the Moodle Block.
Activities
Moodle Quiz
Please see our dedicated page on Moodle Quiz Settings Setup and FAQ.
Moodle Assignment
Please see our dedicated page on Moodle Assignment Settings Setup and FAQ and our Assignment Submission FAQs for Students