Why might I use Moodle?

You might find Moodle useful to:

  • Organize and deliver digital content to students in your course (e.g., web links, resources, syllabi, short readings, simulations).
  • Capitalize on learning opportunities outside of class time. For example:
    • Encourage student review of class materials/content covered in class (e.g., PowerPoint presentations, lecture notes, short quizzes)
    • Record your lectures and have them automatically posted to Moodle for your students to review
    • Student preparation for the next class session
    • Continue class discussions outside of the classroom
  • Encourage peer interaction and discussion.
    • Threaded discussion using Forums
    • Group collaboration using Wiki assignments
    • Development of a class glossary
    • Peer assessment activities using Workshop or Turnitin Peermark.
  • Manage class logistics.
    • Use the News forum to make important class announcements.
    • Use the Calendar to note events, due dates, etc.
    • Use Quickmail to email individuals or the entire class.
    • Use the assessment features to accept assignments or give quizzes.
    • Use the grading features to post grades privately.
    • Use Choice assignments to allow students to pick research topics.

Logging into Moodle

  1. In a web browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox), go to moodle.kenyon.edu:
  2. Enter your Kenyon College username and password in the login box on the right side of the page. This is the same username and password you use for your Kenyon College email account.

If you get a login error, try logging in again to be sure you didn't make a mistake typing in your username or password.

Accessing Your Moodle Course Pages

Once you are logged in, click the MyCourses tab at the top of the screen.  If you are enrolled in any Moodle courses, you will see a section in the center of the page called Course overview. In this box you will find a link to each of your current, ongoing, and future courses. 
Note: The section will be empty if you are not enrolled in any Moodle courses.

If you should be enrolled in a Moodle course but do not see it in the list, contact the Helpline (x5700).

Your Profile

Your profile is your identity on Moodle. The first and last name and picture listed in your profile will identify you throughout Moodle. Other Moodle users in your courses can view your profile.

To edit your profile

To view your profile, click on the drop-down arrow next to your picture or user icon at the top of the screen, or anywhere else that your name appears in Moodle. To edit your profile, click Profile  and click the Edit profile link in the User Details block on the left side of the screen. 

To edit your settings

There are several settings that are accessible from your profile that will help make your use of Moodle more productive.

  • Forum auto-subscribe: If you select yes for this it will mean that when you post a message to a forum, you will be subscribed to that forum and receive email copies of all messages for that forum.
  • Forum tracking: This is a useful option to enable. If enabled it will highlight unread forum messages so you can easily see what is new.
  • User Picture: You can change your user icon with the “New Picture” field by browsing for a small picture.

Adding Users To Your Moodle Course Page

Users are automatically added/dropped based on information in Banner. Banner-based enrollments use the Teacher and Student roles. To prevent conflicts with the Banner-based enrollments, for manual enrollments use the Student (Not Enrolled in Banner) and Guest Teacher roles.

  1. Go to the Moodle page for your course.
  2. Click on the Participants tab at the top of the screen.
  3. Click the Enroll Users button in the upper left corner of the page. A small popup window will appear with a list of users who can be enrolled. 
  4. Use the Search box in the popup window to find the user you’d like to enroll. 
  5. Use the drop-down menu at the top of the popup window to choose the role you’d like to give to this user on this Moodle page.
    • The default role is Student (Not Enrolled in Banner). The Student (Not Enrolled in Banner) role will give the user the ability to view the resources and participate in the activities on your Moodle page.
    • The Guest Teacher role will give the user full editing rights to your Moodle page. The user will be able to add, delete, and change any item on the page and add and remove users from the page. 
  6. Click the Enroll button to the right of the user’s name to add her to your Moodle page. When the Enroll button disappears, the user has access to your Moodle page.
  7. When you are done enrolling users, click the Finish Enrolling Users button at the bottom of the popup window. 

Removing Users From Your Moodle Course Page

  1. Go to the Moodle page for your course.
  2. Click on the Participants tab at the top of the screen.. 
  3. Find the name of the user you’d like to remove from your page. In the Enrolment Methods column on the far right, click the trashcan icon to remove the user.  
  4. You will be asked if you really want to unenroll the user. Click the Continue button to remove the user. 

When the user's name no longer appears on the Enrolled Users screen, she no longer has access to your Moodle page. 

Emailing Students and Instructors in a Course

  1. From the course Moodle page, click on the Compose New Email link in the Quickmail block.
  2. All potential recipients will appear in a box on the right. Click on the name of a user and click the Add button to add her to the recipients list.
    1. Use the Role Filter drop-down menu in the upper right corner to select all users who have a specific role.
    2. Use the Potential Sections box to select one group at a time. (This is only relevant if you have created groups within your Moodle page.)
  3. Compose your message, add attachments if desired, and click the Send Email button.

Editing A Course Page

To start creating or editing your course, click on the Edit mode toggle in the top right. When editing is turned on, you will see icons to the right and left of each item. You may see different icons depending on your course’s Moodle theme.

  • Move: Click and drag this icon to move items around on your page.
  • Rename: Change the resource/activity name.

At the far right of each item, the word Edit will appear. Click on this word to view a drop down menu with options to Edit settings, Move right (or Move left), Hide (or Show), Duplicate, Assign roles and Delete.

Moodle Help

If you encounter an option or term in Moodle that is unfamiliar, you can find out more about it by using Moodle’s in-line help files. A question mark in a circle () indicates that there is a help file available on that topic. Click the question mark to access more information.

Adding Resources and Activities to Your Moodle Page

To add items to your Moodle page, click the Edit mode toggle in the upper right corner of the page. You will now see an “Add an activity or resource” link in each section of the center column of your page. 

Types of Resources: 

  • Book: A multi-page, linear resource an instructor can create for students.
  • File: Any file on your computer that you’d like to put on your Moodle page, including Word, PDF, audio, video, and image files.
  • Folder: A folder on your Moodle page that contains multiple files.
  • Label: This option allows you to put text, images, or web links directly on your Moodle page.
  • Page: This option allows you to create a sub-page off of your Moodle page with text, images, or web links on it.
  • URL: A link to another web page.

Types of Activities: 

  • Assignments: Allows students to submit assignments through Moodle. Can be used to give grades and feedback.
  • Attendance: Enables taking attendance during class. Faculty can create multiple sessions and can modify statuses ("present", "absent", "late", "excused", etc.) to suit their needs.
  • Chat: A live instant messaging session
  • Choice: A one-question survey. Can be used to allow users to sign up for appointment slots.
  • Database: Allows for creating a collaborative collection of web links, books, book reviews, journal references, photos, posters, websites, creative work. Also allows for peer comment and review. 
  • Forum: A message board for threaded, asynchronous, online discussions.
  • Glossary: A collaborative collection of terms and definitions.
  • Lesson: Enables self-directed learning, simulations/decision-making exercises, revision questions through flexibly organized content and practice activities. Can be linear or sellf-directed based on student responses.
  • Questionnaire: An ungraded survey tool.
  • Quiz: A graded, online test. Supports a variety of question types, including essay.
  • Turnitin Assignment: Links an activity in Moodle to an assignment in Turnitin. Allows faculty to assess and provide feedback for student written work.
  • Wiki: Allows individual or collaboration on group lecture notes, study guides, online texts, storytelling, journal or examination notes. 
  • Workshop: Collection, review, and peer assessment of students' work. 

When adding any type of resource or activity (except for a Label), the Name field is what will appear on your Moodle course page to link to that file/activity.

At the bottom of every resource/activity page, you must click either Save and Return to Course or Save and Display to save your new activity.

Adding a File to your Moodle page

There are two ways to add files to your course page:

Method #1: Simply drag and drop a file from your computer onto your Moodle page.  

Method #2: Use the “Add a resource or activity” link.

  1. Go to the course that you wish to upload a file to.
  2. Click the Edit mode toggle in the upper right corner of the screen.
  3. Click the Add an activity or resource option, which opens a new pop-up window.
  4. In the “Add an activity or resource” window, select File (located under the “Resources” section) and then click [Add].
  5. In the “Adding a new File” screen, you can choose a file one of two ways:

    Browsing Your Computer 
    1. Add a name and description for your file. You can choose to display (or not) the description on your course page. 
    2. Click the [Add] button, select the [Upload a file] option, and click [Choose File] to select the file from your computer.
    3. Fill in the “Save as” information, which will appear on your course screen and choose a license for the file.
    4. Click [Upload this file].

      Drag and Drop
    1. Under the “Content” section of the “Adding a new File” screen is an area with a blue arrow that allows drag-and-drop uploading.
    2. From your computer desktop, browse to the file that you wish to upload.
    3. Click on the file you wish to upload and drag it to the “Content” section.  You can also use Ctrl + Click to select and drag multiple files at once.
  6. You can then tweak the appearance and access settings, if you choose to.
  7. Still on the “Adding a New File” page, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click [Save and Return to Course].

Link to Website

  1. From your course page, turn Edit mode on.
  2. In the topic section in which you want to add the link, click on [Add a resource or activity] link, select URL, and click [Add].
  3. Name your file.
  4. Copy the address of the web page to which you want to link and paste it into the External URL box, or simply type in the web address.
  5. Click the Save and return to course button.

Insert a Label

A Label allows you to have text and images that appear directly on your Moodle course page. To insert a Label, turn Edit mode on, then click the Add a resource or activity link and choose Label. Type the text you want to appear on your course page into the text box. Use the buttons above the text box to format the text.

You can add images and links to your Labels by using the image button (a picture of a mountain) and the link button (a chain) just above the large text box.

Forum

This online message board allows instructors and students to post messages and respond to other people’s messages.

To insert a Forum, turn Edit mode on, then click the Add a resource or activity link and choose Forum. Provide a name for the forum and select a type (standard, one simple discussion, individuals post their own discussion, question and answer), and select anonymity settings.

Subscribing to a forum: The forum subscription option controls whether people get email copies of every forum post. No matter what this option is set to, everyone can still read the posts on your Moodle page; this only controls whether they also get email copies. By default, forums do not send people email, so you can almost always leave this setting as-is.

When finished, click [Save and return to course].

Assignment

The Assignment is a tool for allowing students to submit written work through the course’s Moodle page. An Assignment can be used to allow students to submit one or more files, type text directly into Moodle, or a combination of both.

New in Moodle 2: There is now a new Assignment type that combines all of the functionality of the four separate Assignment types that were available in previous versions of Moodle. This Assignment type replaces the old Assignment types.

To insert an assignment, turn Edit mode on, then click the Add a resource or activity link and choose Assignment. Provide a name for the assignment, add any additional files, and set submission and due dates. Choose the type of submissions you'd like to accept and edit any other pertinent settings. When finished, click [Save and return to course].

Instructors can create Quiz assessments within their Moodle course pages. Moodle supports many question types, including essay, short answer, multiple choice, matching, true/false, and several mathematical/scientific question formats. Moodle has a built-in LaTEX filter for including formulas in questions and answers. 

Glossary

A tool for entering a set of terms and definitions, or questions and answers, or other information. Instructors may choose to allow students to make Glossary entries, and can approve all student entries before they appear in the glossary.

Customizing Your Course Page

Course Settings

In the Administration block, click Course Administration > Edit Settings to access your Moodle page’s settings. From here, you can control:

  • Full Name: The name of your course as it appears in Moodle.
  • Format: Choose how you want to use the “sections” in the center of your course page. The most commonly-used formats are Topics and Weeks.
  • Number of weeks/topics: How many numbered sections show up in the center column of your course page.
  • Show Grades: Controls whether students can see their own grades in the Moodle gradebook. Moodle never allows students to see other students’ grades.
  • Theme: The color scheme used on your course page.
  • Force Language: If you wish, you may choose to switch your course page’s language. This feature is very useful for higher-level language courses!

Blocks

Blocks are the boxes that appear in the side columns of your Moodle course page. Instructors can choose which blocks appear on their course pages.

To move blocks around the page, turn Edit mode on, then click on the block’s header and drag it to the desired location.

To remove a block from your page, turn Edit mode on and click the X icon.

To add blocks to your page, turn Edit mode on and use the Blocks block which appears at the bottom of the left column to choose a new block to add to your page. The Add drop-down menu lists all of the available blocks. Some useful blocks are:

  • Activities: Shows all of the activity types that are being used in the course. Clicking on one activity type will bring the user to a list of those activities in the course.
  • Calendar: Set up a calendar for your course. Activity due dates will automatically appear on the course calendar.
  • HTML: Shows text (or images, or links) entered by the Instructor. Similar to a label, but appears in a block.
  • Latest News: Shows the most recent posts in the News Forum.
  • People: Links to a roster of who is in your class. From here you can view the students' profiles.
  • Quickmail: Allows instructors and students to send emails to members of their class from within Moodle.
  • Random Glossary Entry: If you’ve set up a course Glossary, this will display a random entry each time a user visits the course.
  • Recent Activity: Shows changes to the course, including creation of new resources and activities, forum postings, and assignment submissions.
  • Upcoming Events: Shows upcoming events or activity due dates that you have added to your course’s calendar.