P a s s i n g t h e b a t o n After a successful pilot at the Faculty level, ITServices takes the lead on Moodle

"We had very positive feedback on our Moodle Course Management System pilot last year," explains Brian Frank, Director (Program Development) for the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science (EAS). "We were able to implement functionality specifically designed to help our engineering professors deliver their courses and to gather data for program improvement. Now that we are ramping up the numbers of our instructors using the system, it is logical that we hand over the day-to-day operations of the system to ITServices, who have the resources and expertise to properly manage and support it. We will continue to work closely with the development team at ITServices to enhance Moodle for our Faculty. By handing Moodle over to ITServices, we can now turn our attention to exploring other ways to support our instructors and enhance our curriculum."

“Timing is everything,” notes Nancy Owen, Teaching & Learning Support, ITServices. “Following our own successful pilot project with Moodle last year, we were already in the process of developing Moodle as an enterprise service offering. We've been working closely with Engineering and Applied Science for several months to ensure that functionality that was developed in their pilot is available in our enterprise offering. We have been participating in requirements gathering, co-development and testing. All of last year’s Applied Science Moodle courses have been successfully migrated to our Moodle installation and are currently available to instructors.” Adds Owen, “We've all seen the value of working together and believe we have a stronger service offering because of it, both for this September and into the future.”

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COMING FOR SEPTEMBER 2010

Peer Review Group members assess each other’s contribution

Group Submit Permit anyone in a group to submit on behalf of the group

Group Grader Provide marks to each member of a group

Clicker Registration Students register their “clickers” and update their information

Students Auto-Populated

Queen’s Themes

G e t t i n g S t a r t e d

Online :

To request a course space, register for a workshop, or find help documentation (Queen’s-specific as well as links to moodle.org):

moodle.queensu.ca To request a one-to-one consult:

email moodle@queensu.ca; call ext. 75611; or drop by the Faculty & Staff Learning Facility,

B176 Mackintosh-Corry Hall. Moodle Development Team members (l – r): Brad Murphy, Manoj Hemnani, Mike Kulesza

Brian Frank, Director (Program Development), Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, and Nancy Owen, Teaching & Learning Support, ITServices, discuss the Queen’s Moodle implementation.

moodle.queensu.ca INFO SHEET

Faculty of Engineering and Applied

June 2010

On campus:

Moodle Mania - every Wednesday all summer long Wednesdays 10 AM to noon, Emerging Technology Centre, Mackintosh-Corry Hall B109 Whether you're an experienced Moodler or simply curious about the possibilities, you are cordially invited to drop by the Emerging Technology Centre to learn more about Moodle at Queen's.

Join Us for a Brief Introduction to Moodle @ Queen's (workshops are added as required/requested) July 20 — 10:30 AM - 12:00 pm, Faculty & Staff Learning Facility, Mackintosh-Corry Hall B176 An orientation to the primary administrative and instructional tools that can be used to develop and teach a course or collaborate with others on a project or research study. The session will demonstrate basic terminology and functions to start developing your own course/site.

How-To What’s New Workshops Mid-August, end of August and during Frosh Week. Dates will be advertised once finalized. These workshops will focus on the new modules available this year. These workshops will be held in the Teaching Studio (Beamish-Munroe 213).

Photo: Natasha Redknap

COURSE DEVELOPMENT

How do I update/add/remove/rearrange things in my course?

Turn editing mode on. Press the Turn editing on button on the top-right, or in the Administration block.

How do I change things like my course title, dates, other general settings?

Administration block > Settings

You will probably want to keep the course un-enrollable, as students are automatically enrolled. You can also keep the course unavailable to students until you have finished organizing it and are ready for students to access it.

How do I add/remove, and change the blocks in the margins?

Turn editing on > Blocks, Add... (located in the bottom right margin)

What are the icons for?

With editing turned on, you will see several icons that allow you to organize your course materials by editing Blocks or documents: left/right arrows to indent materials under

a LABEL a pencil icon to adjust settings an “X” to delete items an "eye" to show or hide the item up/down arrows to move items between

weeks/topics

How do I make my course look pretty and more customized?

Turn editing on, choose Add a resource > Insert a label

There is plenty of room to insert HTML or simply formatted text and pictures. This allows you to enter content (text, pictures, colours and formatting in WYSIWYG mode (default) or raw HTML mode (click “<>”).

Where do I put my course materials?

Administration block > Files Add a resource > link to a file or website

All content uploaded to the course (Word, PDF, images, etc.) is stored in the course’s file area. You can upload content to the file area in advance or while you are adding a resource. You can also create new folders to organize your materials.

MANAGING PEOPLE

How do I add missing students to my course?

Administration block > Assign roles > Student

Find the student on the list on the right (you can narrow down the list by entering part of their name into the search tool), and add them to the list on the left.

How do I add TAs and other faculty or personnel to the course?

Administration block > Assign roles > Course developer/Course grader (or both)

Search for the person's name (bottom right) and add them to the list on the left.

GRADES

How can I hide grades before I am ready to show them to students?

Grades can be seen by students in two places: within grades and within the module/activity from which the grades originate.

To hide within grades: Administration block > Grades > Choose an action > Categories & Items >Full View Look for a column (screen right) called Actions. Close the eyes of the items you wish to hide.

To hide the activity: Close the eye on the main course page beside the icon for the module you wish to hide. (Note: editing must be turned on.)

How do I maintain the grades (organize, override, import/export, etc.)?

To view all graded items for all students, go to:

Administration block > Grades > Choose an action (top left) > Grader report

If you are using groups, you can choose from the Separate groups drop-down menu.

Categories and Items—Full view: Arrange grade items into nested categories, define aggregations/custom formulas for grade/category/total course mark calculations.

Import-CSV File: Bring in new grades or override existing ones. Correlated by student number/username/email.

Export <various options>: Export chosen items from grades.

Fast Facts for Using Moodle STUDENT FEEDBACK

What’s a good way to survey the class with custom questions?

Questionnaire module. It offers multiple choice, text, numeric, and rating style questions. You can view results on Moodle, or export them to text for analysis in Excel. How can I make a sign-up for project topics on a first-come-first-serve basis?

Face-to-face module. This is really meant for meetings, but you can just as well specify topics/projects to choose from and their capacity in terms of number of students.

COURSE ANNOUNCEMENTS

How can I send an announcement to my students?

Use the News Forum. The News Forum is a special type of forum that allows the instructor to send announcements directly via a student's Queen's email address. It is one-way, broadcast only. Students cannot reply to the News Forum. Students cannot unsubscribe. This forum is directly tied with the “Latest News” block. To facilitate more dynamic two-way discussions, you can add additional forums of various types (Add an activity > Forum).

WORKING WITH MEDIA

How do I embed video content into my course?

The Media Player (activity/resource) is useful for sharing YouTube and Queen's streaming content in your course. Streaming content refers to both video and audio files that are located on the Queen's streaming server.

More info: https://wiki.queensu.ca/display/itsd/Media+Player “It’s a very powerful tool for project-based courses where there isn’t a lot of classroom interaction.”

— Brian Frank. Director (Program Development), Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science