getting started as a student online · section provides quick links to other key student resources...

CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Prepared by Adam Barbary for Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice – updated 14 February 2016 of 11

Getting started as a student online Federation University (FedUni) has a suite of online learning tools to assist you with your study. In order to make the most of your time at FedUni, we suggest that you follow the guide below to configure and familiarise yourself with a couple of these tools. Once you have accepted your offer through ‘my Student Centre’, and you can log onto computers at the University, we suggest that you do the following:

Getting started as a student online .............................................................................................. 1 1 – Logging onto Moodle using your Student ID ................................................................................... 2

To logon to Moodle ................................................................................................................................ 2 Navigating Moodle ................................................................................................................................. 3 Layout and Blocks ................................................................................................................................. 4

2 – Your Student Profile in Moodle ........................................................................................................ 4 To edit your profile ................................................................................................................................. 4

3 – Using Forums ................................................................................................................................... 5 Posting .................................................................................................................................................. 5 Viewing .................................................................................................................................................. 6 Replying ................................................................................................................................................ 6 Subscription ........................................................................................................................................... 6

4 – Submitting Assignments ................................................................................................................. 6 5 – Browser compatibility (& Mobile devices) ..................................................................................... 8

Browsers ............................................................................................................................................... 8 Mobile Devices ...................................................................................................................................... 8

6 – Completion Tracking (& the Completion Progress bar) ............................................................... 9 7 – Turnitin .............................................................................................................................................. 9

Reports .................................................................................................................................................. 9 Accepted formats................................................................................................................................... 9

8 – Redirect your student email ........................................................................................................... 10 9 – Know where to find help ................................................................................................................. 11

CRICOS Provider No. 00103D Prepared by Kellie Macneil and Adam Barbary for Centre for Learning Innovation and Professional Practice – updated 24 March 2018 Page

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1 – Logging onto Moodle using your Student ID

To logon to Moodle 1. From the top of the Federation University website, hover your curser over students, locate the Login

category and choose Moodle.

2. Enter your Student Username and Password in the fields provided.

3. Click the Log In button.


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Navigating Moodle

Across the top of Moodle screen you will notice a Dark blue bar that has several menus. These menus are grouped to assist with navigation. The menus are Study Help, Student Services, Library and Log into.

1. Study Help contains links to various support services to assist with your study. The Online tutoring service (Studiosity) is particularly helpful. Please feel free to make use of these services, they are provided free of charge to all FedUni students.

2. Student services contain links to more holistic services. Support for counselling, careers and equity.

3. Federation University Library offers a vast array of student support services and isn’t just for borrowing books. Please take the time to familiarise yourself with these services. Please contact the library directly for additional information.

4. The ‘Login to’ section provides quick links to other key student resources such as Office 365, My Student Centre and Mahara ePortfolios.

5. The Course Menu contains a list of your current enrolled courses. This sits just below the Menu bar to the left of the screen.

Note: The online courses that appear in the course menu are dependent on what courses you are enrolled in and whether the lecturer in charge of those courses has made them available. Always contact your lecturer first.


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Layout and Blocks Located on the right-hand side of your Moodle course are blocks. Blocks contain various tools and information links. Blocks include Navigation, Study Help, and Administration. The Administration block is context sensitive and contains different functions depending on what you are doing. Eg. If you are in a forum, it has subscription controls.

2 – Your Student Profile in Moodle Your profile in Moodle contains a default image that will appear with every forum post that you make. It is important that edit this profile to include an appropriate photo of yourself, and also change a couple of settings to manage your emails.

To edit your profile

1. Locate and hover your mouse pointer over your name on the blue navigation bar, top right, select Preferences, then finally click on User. You will then have a list of options to choose from. Click Edit profile.

2. Your profile page will look something like this. You may only change your first name.


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Note: Your First name, Surname and Email address have been taken from ‘my Student Centre’. If these are not correct here you should have them changed in ‘my Student Centre’ first. You may only edit your First name.

3. Click the User picture heading to reveal your current picture. Drag a picture of yourself into the

New picture box. This image will appear in your profile and against all your forum posts.

4. After you have made any necessary changes and click Update profile. You will be returned to the Preferences page.

Note: You will need to enter something in the mandatory fields to be able to save your changes and leave the profile window. Mandatory fields are shown with a red asterisk next to them.

5. Click on Forum preferences. You can change the Email digest type field to control the number of

emails you receive from Moodle forums. You can also select whether you require forum tracking. This is highly recommended as it identifies which forums in your course have new, unread posts.

6. When you have finished adjusting your preferences, click Save changes

3 – Using Forums

Posting 1. Click on the forum link: eg.

2. Click the Add new discussion topic button to start a new thread.

3. Fill in the Subject, and then provide detail in the Message box.

4. Check your spelling and grammar then click Post to forum. You have 30min to correct your post before Moodle automatically emails it to all subscribed participants.


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Viewing 1. Click on the Discussion title.

Replying 1. Click Reply on the post you wish to respond to. Note there may be several posts, make sure you

click the correct Reply link.

2. Make your post as above.

Subscription Subscribing to a forum means that you will receive email notifications of each new post in the forum.

To subscribe to a post you can click the following buttons within the thread.

Once you have subscribed to the forum, the pages will show as below.

4 – Submitting Assignments

1. Click an assignment link . The status area appears:


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2. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the Add submission button.

3. The File submissions area appears:

4. Drag a file from your computer and drop it into the file submission area. After the file appears in the window, click Save changes.

5. Alternatively, if the file does not upload, click the Add icon. The File picker window will now open, and you will need to select where the file is to be retrieved from. In most cases, you will choose the Upload a file button on the left, then click the Browse button on the right. For convenience Google Drive, OneDrive and Dropbox are also available for file uploading.

6. The Browse button opens the file browser on your computer and you will then need to select the file you require.

7. Click Upload this file. You can change the name of the file as it is uploaded, by changing the Save as: dialogue box as required.

8. You will now be returned to the file manager area. You can now add additional files if required or click Save changes if you are finished adding files.


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Note: You must wait until the file icon is displayed before clicking Save changes.

9. Finally, you will be returned to the assignment screen, which will show you a list of the files submitted. In the example below, the Require students click submit feature is enabled. This leaves the submission status as Draft until you click the Submit assignment button. Until you do so, the assignment submission date is not locked in, and you may make changes.

Note: Depending on the type of assignment your lecturer has set up the Send for Marking button may or may not appear. If you don't see this button, don't worry your submission is complete. However, if you do, you must click it to finalise the submission. Failing to do so will prevent Moodle from time stamping your submission, which will make it appear late.

5 – Browser compatibility (& Mobile devices)

Browsers Moodle works with most modern browsers. However, occasionally you may experience issues with some browsers due to caching of content, or unsupported plugins that some Moodle content requires. We suggest that if you are experiencing issues with Moodle, then you should first try to empty the browser cache. Should this not fix your problem, changing to a different browser will likely resolve the issue. Older versions of Internet explorer are more likely to suffer from ‘anomalies’.

Mobile Devices Federation Moodle has been designed to support mobile devices natively. There is no need to download any app to access FedUni Moodle. However, you may wish to utilise the Moodle Mobile App. This app is provided free of charge from Moodle and provides the ability to receive messages directly to your phone. It also allows you to download some content for offline viewing.


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Note: Due to screen sizes, blocks will appear at the bottom of course content. The Navigation bar will be replaced with a menu selection ‘hamburger’.

When uploading assignments, remember that Moodle supports DropBox, Google Drive and Microsoft OneDrive. This can be handy for slow internet uploads.

6 – Completion Tracking (& the Completion Progress bar) Many courses are designed to assist students with managing their progress. Completion tracking is often tied to a progress bar, located in the upper right column of blocks. Completion can be automatic, requiring a student to complete a task, such as submitting an assignment or completing a quiz. Completion can also be manual, whereby a student ‘checks off’ items by clicking in the square.

Progress bar

Green Indicates: Task complete.

Yellow Indicates: Assignment submitted, but not yet graded.

Red Indicates: Task overdue.

Blue Indicates: Not yet complete or due.

Self-checked item – solid square

Auto checked item – broken square

7 – Turnitin Turnitin is a software tool that is used to check the originality of submitted work. It does this by comparing the text submitted against an extensive library of journals, books, current and past internet pages as well as previously submitted student work. Turnitin does not check for plagiarism. It is the student’s responsibility to ensure all material submitted is original or clear attribution of others’ work is made through referencing.

Reports When assignments are submitted to Turnitin a report will be generated highlighting the percentage of non-original content. Depending on the subject there may be greatly varying levels of acceptable ranges. For example, when referencing large amounts of prior work for a scientific report, you would expect a higher percentage match than a piece of work done for a creative writing subject. Turnitin can assist students in identifying the work of others, by highlighting matches, to which the student would need to correctly attribute the source through referencing.

Accepted formats Turnitin only supports a limited number of file formats. Federation University recommends students


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adhere to the PDF format to limit the chance of a submission being rejected. A student is responsible for their work to be posted in a suitable format for checking. FedUni provides, free of charge, access to Microsoft Office 365 for both Mac and Windows users. Please note, at this point in time, Turnitin does not support Open Office nor Apple Pages formats. However, both of these applications are capable of saving content in both PDF and MS Word formats.

https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Student/Student_QuickStart_Guide - Step_4_-_Submitting_a_Paper

8 – Redirect your student email Moodle has been configured to only use the official Federation University email address of the user that logs in. You may wish to redirect your email via the FedUni Outlook/webmail client to an external email address that you monitor. E.g. Gmail

The guide below shows how to create a simple email-forwarding rule for all emails delivered to your FedUni Outlook Webmail.

1. To get started open your web browser to http://federation.edu.au/office365 or go to the University homepage, scroll toward the bottom to find the Login to heading and then click on Student email.

2. Provide your username and password to login

3. Click the Cog drop down box (top right) and select Options

https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Student/Student_QuickStart_Guide#Step_4_-_Submitting_a_Paper

https://guides.turnitin.com/01_Manuals_and_Guides/Student/Student_QuickStart_Guide#Step_4_-_Submitting_a_Paper

http://federation.edu.au/office365


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4. In the left hand menu under Mail, Accounts, select Forwarding

5. Select 'Start forwarding'. Enter the address you would like your mail forwarded to. Select 'Save' to begin forwarding your email.

Tip: Check the box ‘Keep a copy of forwarded messages’ and test your forwarding by sending an email to your student account. When you’ve confirmed the forwarding works, uncheck this box. Be mindful that if you leave this option checked, you must periodically log in and delete all your old emails. This prevents your inbox becoming full.

9 – Know where to find help

Moodle can direct you to a range of help and support services. Click the Study Help drop down at the top of the screen to reveal links to Moodle Guides and Study Skills link. There are also support links for writing guides, counselling and many other services.

getting started as a student online · section provides quick links to other key student resources...

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