2

Moodle Basics

In this chapter, we’ll cover the basics of the Moodle interface and some of the options
you have when setting up your class. Then we’ll start adding some content to your first
Moodle class.

Getting Started
As I mentioned in Chapter 1, Moodle is a web-based tool you can access through a web
browser. This means that in order to use Moodle you need a computer with a web
browser installed and an Internet connection. You also need to have the web address
(called a Uniform Resource Locator, or URL) of a server running Moodle. If your
institution supports Moodle, it will have a server with Moodle up and running. You can

7
8 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

then get the server address from the system administrator. If you don’t have access to a
server with Moodle installed, and you’d like to set up your own, visit the Moodle website
for instructions on setting up a Moodle server on any platform.
After you’ve gotten the URL, open your web browser and type the address in the address
bar. You’ll then be taken to the Moodle main screen.

The Moodle Interface

When you first visit your Moodle site, you’ll see the main screen with the site news and
the courses you are teaching or taking (see Figure 2-1).

Figure 2-1. Moodle main screen

Take a moment and familiarize yourself with the interface. Moodle uses a number of
interface conventions throughout the system. Frequently updated or important
information is presented in the middle of the screen. On the lefthand side of the screen
you’ll see several “blocks” that list available courses and site news. Blocks are useful for
holding all kinds of tools and content. I’ll be using the block terminology throughout the
rest of the book.
Getting Started 9

Languages
On the upper right, you’ll see a dropdown menu with language options. As of August
2004, Moodle has been translated into 40 languages by the developer community.
Anyone who uses Moodle, both students and teachers, can select the language in which
Moodle’s tabs and instructions will appear. For example, if I choose to view the site in
Norwegian, the system labels will be translated into that language. However, Moodle
does not translate user content. Any user-generated content remains in the language in
which it was entered.
You can choose the language settings for the main site and for each course you visit. As
an instructor, you can also force students to use a given language. This is a useful feature
if you’re teaching a language course and want the entire course to be in that language. Or
you can simply confuse the heck out of your students by choosing some really obscure
language and have them guess what everything means.
The system administrator can override this feature and force everyone to use the same
language. If you cannot change the language for a course or for the Moodle main page,
contact your system administrator and make sure he isn’t forcing everyone to use one
language.

Moodle’s Help System

Throughout Moodle, you will see a question mark in a yellow circle. This is a link to
Moodle’s very extensive help system. Although you shouldn’t need it very frequently
after you read this book, the community has worked hard to provide you with a help
system that is tied to what you are doing at that moment.
When you click the question mark icon, a new window pops up with the help entry for
the item you are asking about (see Figure 2-2). After your read the help entry, you can
close the window with the “Close this window” or look at other help files by clicking on
the “Index of all help files” link. You can then select any help item from anywhere in the
help system.

Figure 2-2. A help screen

10 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Creating an Account
Right above the language selection list, you’ll find a hyperlink that says “Login.” Click
the link and Moodle will present you with the login screen, as shown in Figure 2-3. Your
username and password will depend on how your system administrator set up the system.
Moodle has a number of options for user authentication, including email authentication,
or an LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) server, or users can register their
own accounts. Self-registration is the default method, and many sites use this.
If you need to create your own account:
1. Click the “Start now by creating a new account” button.
2. Fill in the new account form by creating a username and password for yourself (see
Figure 2-4).
3. Enter a valid email address because the system will send you an email to confirm
your account. You won’t be able to log in again until you confirm your account.
4. Click “Create my new account.”
5. Within a few minutes, you should receive an email at the account you specified on
the form.
6. Click the link in the email (or copy and paste it into the address window in your
browser) to confirm your account.
Creating an Account 11

Figure 2-3. Login screen

You now have a verified account. Your account isn’t automatically associated with the
courses you’re teaching. You’ll need to find out from your system administrator how to
enroll your account as an instructor in a course. By default, the system administrator will
have to enroll you as an instructor in a course.

Editing Your User Profile

Once you have successfully confirmed your account and logged in, you will find yourself
back at the main page. As Figure 2-5 shows, your username will now be displayed at the
top of the screen.
12 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Figure 2-4. New account screen

Figure 2-5. Main screen after login

If you look at the upper-right corner, you’ll see that the “Login” link has changed. It now
reads “You are logged in as” and whatever your username is, highlighted as a clickable
word. Click on your username.
Moodle will then present you with your user profile summary, like the one shown in
Figure 2-6. You’ll see your profile summary, and the last time you logged in. From this
screen you can also edit your profile or change your password. Let’s take a moment and
edit your profile to customize the site and help other people get to know you.
Creating an Account 13

Figure 2-6. User profile page

To edit your user profile:
1. Start by click the Edit Profile button on the upper right hand side of the screen. Your
user profile will look like Figure 2-7.

Figure 2-7. Editing your user profile

2. You’ll see your username and a blank for your password. If you want to change
either, do it here
3. You can then change the real name the system has stored for you.
4. The next four lines dictate how Moodle and other users can communicate with you
through emails:
14 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Email address
Make sure this is an address you check frequently and that it is correct. Moodle
has a lot of important email features, and I wouldn’t want you to miss out
because your email address had a typo or is not an address you check frequently.
Email display
You can choose who can see your email address. Your choices are to hide your
email from everyone, allow only the people in your classes to see it, or display it
for everyone who logs in to the site. If you choose to hide your email from other
people, they will not be able to send you email directly from Moodle.
Email format
Here you can select whether mail sent from Moodle is formatted using HTML
or is sent in plain text. Most modern email clients can receive and properly
display HTML mail, although this may be a preference you have to enable in
your email preferences. If you have a slow connection, or simply prefer your
email plain and simple, the plain-text option is probably a good choice
Forum auto-subscribe
Moodle forums are a powerful communication tool for classes. (We will discuss
forums in great depth in Chapter 4. For now, I’ll simply mention that you have
the option of “subscribing” to forums, which means that new forum posts will be
sent to you via email.) This is a great way of keeping current with your course
discussions without having to log in and look at the forums every day. Of
course, if your discussions really get cooking you’ll end up with a lot of email,
but at least it won’t be spam.
5. The next option, “When editing text:,” lets you choose whether to use Moodle’s
native HTML editor to enter text or to use plain text. Moodle’s HTML editor is an
easy way to enter formatted text into your course site. We’ll cover the specifics of
how it works in Chapter 3.
6. After setting your city and country, you can choose your preferred language. Setting
your language here makes it your default language for all pages.
A First Look at a Course 15

7. The timezone setting can be very important, especially if you’re working with an
international audience or will be traveling and accessing the system. Be sure to set
the time zone to your local time, not the server’s local time. I almost missed a
meeting because I didn’t set my time zone. The Moodle server we were using was in
another country and I had left my profile setting on the default server’s local time.
The meeting was set for 11 p.m., which seemed odd to me. Then I realized I had the
wrong time zone. When I changed the setting, I realized the meeting was scheduled
for 8 a.m. my time!
8. The description box gives you a place to tell your Moodle community a little about
yourself. If you don’t feel comfortable writing a description, just put a couple of
characters in here and the system won’t complain.
9. The remaining optional fields allow you to include personal details about yourself,
including your photo or a representative image, and contact information. Your
picture will appear by your postings in the forums, in your profile, and in the course
roster.
10. To upload a new picture, follow these steps:
a) Prepare the picture you want to use by converting it to a gif or jpeg if you
haven’t already. It should be smaller than the maximum upload size (see Chapter
3 for more details).
b) Click the Browse button and locate your prepared picture. Then click Choose in
the dialogue box.
c) Then click Update Profile at the bottom of the screen. Moodle will crop your
picture into a square and shrink it to 100-by-100 pixels.
Moodle provides you with a number of ways to personalize your experience and share
information about yourself with other people.

A First Look at a Course

On the left side of the main screen, you’ll see a block that includes a list of all the courses
you are teaching or taking as a student. You can access your courses by clicking on the
course name in the block, as shown in Figure 2-8.
16 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Figure 2-8. Main screen course list

Let’s start with the upper lefthand corner of the course screen, as shown in Figure 2-9.
There you’ll see the name of your course as entered when the course was created. Either
your system administrator entered your course name by hand or she got it from your
institution’s course database. (Read the “Course settings” section below if you need to
change the name.)
A First Look at a Course 17

Figure 2-9. Course layout

Below the course name is a bar that fills with the hyperlinked names of pages as you
navigate from one page to another. Also known as “breadcrumbs,” these links track
where you are in the course and allow you to easily to find your way back to where you
started or to return to a page. Frequently, the best way to return to the course main page is
to click on the course ID in the breadcrumb trail. For example, in Figure 2-9, you would
click on Mdl101 to go back to the course main page from another page in the course.
Below the navigation bar are three columns, which are also shown in Figure 2-9. The far-
left and far-right columns contain tool blocks, while the center block contains your course
content and activities. The topmost tool block on the left is the People block. From here,
you and your students can view the individual profiles of other participants in the course
and check who is a member of student workgroups.
18 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Beneath the People block is the Activities block. As you add forums, quizzes, workshops,
assignments, and other activities to your course, the activity types will be listed here. By
clicking on the activity type, students can view all of the activities of that type that are
currently available to them. For example, if you gave a quiz every week, each content
block would list a quiz, and all of the quizzes would also be listed under the quiz link in
the Activities block.
Next in the column is the Search block. The single text-entry field currently allows only
you or your students to search the forums. As I write this, a more general course search is
currently under development.
Below the Search block is the Administration block (see Figure 2-10), from which you
can set your course options, manage your roster, perform backups of the course, and
manage student grades. In this chapter, we’ll cover the first two tools, “Turn editing on”
and “Settings,” and we’ll cover the rest in detail as they arise throughout the book.

Figure 2-10. Administration block

The far-right column contains three blocks that report on activity in the course. The
Latest News block lists the latest items added to the News forum, such as important news
stories that pertain to the subject you’re teaching. The Upcoming Events block lists
events you’ve created in the calendar, such as exams and holidays. At the bottom of the
block are links to view the calendar and add new events. Finally, there’s the Recent
Activity block, which lists the recent forum postings and uploads by you and your
students.
The middle column is where the action is. This is where you add all of your content and
activities, such as forums, quizzes, and lessons for students to access. Before we get to
that, however, you need to make a choice about the format in which your course will be
presented.
A First Look at a Course 19

Course Formats
Unlike some CMSs that force you into one format, Moodle provides you with a number
of options for the general format of your course. You can choose to order your course
chronologically by week, conceptually by topic, or socially with a big forum as the
central organizing principle.
Weekly format
With this format, you specify a course start date and the number of weeks the course
is to run. Moodle will create a section for each week of your course, as shown in
Figure 2-11. You can add content, forums, quizzes, etc. in the section for each week.
If you want all your students to work on the same materials at the same time, this
would be a good format to choose.

Figure 2-11. A course in weekly format

20 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Topics format
When you create a course using the topics format, you start by choosing the number
of topics you will cover in your course. Moodle then creates a section for each topic,
as shown in Figure 2-12. You can then add content, forums, quizzes, and other
activities to each topic. If your course design is concept-oriented, and students will
be working through a range of concepts but not necessarily according to a fixed
schedule, this is a good choice.

Figure 2-12. A course in topics format

Social format
The social format is based on a single forum for the whole course as shown in Figure
2-13. It’s useful for less formal courses, or non-course uses, such as departmental
sites.
A First Look at a Course 21

Figure 2-13. A course in social format

To set the course format:
1. Click Settings in the Administration block.
2. Select the course format from the dropdown list just below the course summary
block (see Figure 2-14).
3. Enter the parameters for your course:
a) For the weekly format, set the start date and the number of weeks.
b) For the topic format, set the number of topics.
c) For the social format, set the course start date. You don’t need to worry about
the number of weeks or topics.
22 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Figure 2-14. Course settings screen

Moodle allows you to switch between formats if you find that a given format isn’t
working for you. Simply follow the instructions above and select a different format. You
can also add or remove topics or weeks at any time. So you don’t have to worry too much
about locking yourself into a format before you really understand the system.
Course settings
The settings area where you set the course format (see Figure 2-14) also gives you access
to a number of important course options. You’ll find it is important to take a moment to
review the settings for your course to ensure that it behaves the way you want.
To change your course settings:
1. Click Settings in the Administration block.
2. Review each of the settings options to ensure they are correct for your course:
A First Look at a Course 23

Category
Your system administrator may have created course categories, such as
department or college labels, to help students and teachers find their courses.
Depending on how your system is set up, you may be able to categorize your
course by department, subject, or other organizational principle.
Full Name
This is the name that is displayed on the top header of every screen in your
course. The name should be descriptive enough so students can easily identify
the course in which they are working, but it shouldn’t be too long. For example,
use “English 400 – Beowulf” and not “ENG400 – Beowulf and the heroic
poems of the ancient world.”
Short Name
Enter the institutional shorthand for your course. Many students recognize
Eng101, but not Introduction to Composition. The short name also appears in
the breadcrumbs bar at the top of the screen.
Summary
The summary will appear in the course listings page when other users scan the
course catalogs. A good one-paragraph summary will help communicate the
essence of your course to your students.
Course Start Date
The start date is the day the course is first active.
Enrollment Period
The enrollment period is the number of days after the start of the course during
which students are enrolled. After the enrollment period, all of your students
will be unenrolled from the course.

Warning: Be very careful when using the enrollment period setting.

When we first started using Moodle, we thought the enrollment period
was how long a student had to enroll in a course, not how long she
would stay enrolled. After 14 days, hundreds of students were suddenly
unenrolled from their courses, causing headaches for weeks.

Group Mode
Moodle can create student workgroups. We will cover workgroups extensively
in Chapter 13. For now, you need to decide if you want your groups to work
independently or to be able to view each other’s work. You can also set the
group mode separately for many activities or force the group mode to be set at
the course level. If everything in the course is done as part of a group, or you are
running cohorts of students through a course at different times, you’ll probably
want to use the group mode to make management easier.
24 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Availability
Use this setting to control student access to your course. You can make a course
available or unavailable to students without affecting your own access. This is a
good way to hide courses that aren’t ready for public consumption or hide them
at the end of the semester while you calculate your final grades.
Enrollment Key
A course enrollment key is a code each student enters when they attempt to
enroll in a course. The key makes it more difficult for students who aren’t
officially in the class to gain access to your Moodle site. Create the key here and
give it to your students when you want them to enroll in your Moodle course.
They will need to use the key only once when they enroll.
Guest Access
You can choose to allow guests to access your course, either with an enrollment
key or without it. Guests can only view your course and course materials; they
can’t post to the forums, take quizzes, or submit any materials.
Hidden Sections
When you hide an upcoming topic block to prevent your students from jumping
ahead, you can choose to display the title as a collapsed section or simply hide
the topic altogether. Displaying the collapsed sections will give your students a
roadmap of the upcoming topics or weeks, so it’s probably a good idea to leave
this on the default setting.
News Items to Show
Use this setting to determine the number of course news items displayed on the
default page.
Show Grades
This setting allows you to choose whether grades are displayed to students. If
you are using the Moodle gradebook, I would recommend allowing students to
view their grades. Checking grades has become one of the most popular features
of CMS systems.
Show Activity Reports
This setting allows students to view their activity history in your course. This is
useful if you want students to reflect on their level of participation, or if they are
graded on participation.
Maximum Upload Size
This setting is used to limit the size of any documents you or your students
upload to the class. The maximum size is set by your system administrator, but
you can choose to limit students to files that are smaller than the system
maximum. You can limit the amount of storage space each assignment can take
or limit the size of picture or video files your students upload.
A First Look at a Course 25

Your Word for Teacher/Teachers

The next two settings allow you to enter the word you want Moodle to use for
the singular and plural versions of the word that designates the teacher’s role.
You can call teachers instructors, facilitators, professors, etc.. Whatever you
want to use, enter it here.
Your Word for Student/Students
Again, you can choose the word you want Moodle to use for people in the
student role, such as “participants” or “learners.”
3. Once you’ve made all your selections, click Save Changes.

Editing Mode
Now that you’ve decided on a format and settings for your course, we’ll look at how to
add content to your course. To start the process, you’ll first need to turn on Editing Mode
(see Figure 2-15), which will allow you to add resources and activities to your course. On
the left side of the screen of any course you are teaching, you’ll see a link labeled,
surprisingly enough, “Turn Editing Mode On.” Clicking on this link will present you with
a new array of options.

Figure 2-15. Editing mode

Starting at the top of the screen, let’s look at what Editing Mode enables you to do. At the
top of each block, you’ll see an icon of a hand holding a pencil. When you click it, you
are presented with a Summary text area. You can use this to label and summarize each
topic or schedule blocks in your course. You should keep the summary to a sentence or
26 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

two for each block to avoid making the main page too long. Click Submit when you’ve
added your summary. You can go back and change it later by clicking the hand-and-
pencil icon again.
On the lefthand side, next to the label for the People block, you’ll see the icons described
in Table 2-1.
Table 2-1: Block icons

Icon Function
Show or hide item. If you want to keep an item in your course, but
don’t want your students to see it, you can use this to hide it from
them.
Delete item. Removes the item or block from your course. Items
will be permanently removed; blocks can be added again using the
Blocks menu.
Move item. Clicking this will allow you to move an item to
another topic or schedule block.
Move right or left. You can move blocks to the left- or righthand
columns. You can also use this to indent items in your content
blocks
Move up or down. Moves items and blocks up or down in their
respective areas.

You will use these icons throughout Moodle to customize the interface for your needs.
In addition to the icons for manipulating the blocks, each content block in the middle
column has two dropdown menus. On the left, the menu labeled “Add a resource…”
gives you tools for adding static content, such as web pages and word-processing
documents. On the right, the “Add an activity” menu gives you tools to add activities
such as forums, quizzes, lessons, and assignments.
The resource menu, shown in Figure 2-16, gives you access to tools for adding content.
There are a number of ways you can create content directly within Moodle, or link to
content you’ve uploaded. We’ll cover each of these tools in depth in the next chapter.
Compose a text page
From here, you can create a simple page of text. It doesn’t have many formatting
options, but it is the simplest tool.
Compose a web page
If you want more formatting options, you can compose a web page. If you selected to
use the HTML editor in your personal profile, you can simply create a page as you
A First Look at a Course 27

would using a word processor. Otherwise, you’ll need to know some HTML for most
formatting.
Link to a file or web site
If you want to upload your course documents in another format, you can save them
on Moodle and provide easy access for your students. You can also easily create
links to other web sites outside your Moodle course.
Display a directory
If you upload a lot of content, you may want to organize it in directories. Then you
can display the contents of the entire folder instead of creating individual links to
each item.
Insert a label
You can use labels to organize the links in your course’s main page. The only thing
they do is provide a label within the content block.

Figure 2-16. Resource menu

The Add Activity Menu, shown in Figure 2-17, allows you to add interactive tools to
your course. The bulk of this book is dedicated to describing how each of these tools
works and how to apply them in your course.
28 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

Figure 2-17. Add Activity menu

Table 2-2 explains each tool very briefly. We’ll learn more about these tools as they arise
later in the book.

Table 2-2: Activity types

Tool type Description
Assignment A basic task with which you can describe what you want the
students to do or record a grade. You can also have the
students upload a response and score it later.
Attendance Used to manually or automatically track student
participation in the class.
Chat A group chat room where people can meet at the same time
and send text messages.
Choice A simple poll displayed within a content block.
Dialogue Like a chat, but allows for one-to-one communication
between students and teachers.
Exercise A variant of the assignment tool with which you give
students an exercise and they upload their work and then
assess themselves. You can grade their work and their self-
assessments.
Forum Treaded discussion boards. They are a powerful
communication tool.
Adding Content to a Course 29

Glossary Dictionaries of terms that you can create for each week,
topic, or course. You can have your students participate in
building them.
Journal Self-reflection is an important idea in social constructivism.
Journals are free-response opportunities for students to
reflect on the course materials.
Label A way to insert text or other HTML elements into the
content area.
Lesson A set of ordered materials that use questions to determine
what content the student sees next.
Quiz A good, old-fashioned web quiz with a lot of flexibility.
Resource A file, web page, link, or other content for students to view
or download.
SCORM SCORM is an acronym for Sharable Content Object
Reference Model. It’s a packaging standard for educational
content. Moodle now has tools to allow you to upload
content packaged as SCORM.
Survey Gathers feedback from students using pre-packaged
questionnaires.
Workshop A very nice tool for student peer assessment. Students
upload their work and score their peers’ work using a
scoring guide you create.

Adding Content to a Course

By now, you’re probably wondering, “When the heck do I get to add stuff to my course?”
I’ve provided a lot of background here so you’ll understand some of the options you
have. But now’s the time to start building your course.
Let’s start with a News item to announce to the world that your online materials are
coming soon. The News forum is a special type of forum (for a full description of forums,
see Chapter 4). The News forum is automatically created when the course is first
generated. Everyone in the course can read the postings, and the news is automatically
emailed to them. It’s a good tool for making general announcements and sending
reminders to students about upcoming assignments.
30 Chapter 2: Moodle Basics

To add a news item:

1. Click News forum.
2. Click “Add a NewTopic.” You’ll see the screen to add a new topic such as the one
shown in Figure 2-18.
3. Type your new message to your class.
4. Click Save Changes. You will now be back at the main News Page.
5. Click on your course name in the navigation bar at the top.

Figure 2-18. The News forum posting screen

Summary 31

Summary
In this chapter, we’ve looked at how to create your account and personalize your profile.
We’ve become acquainted with Moodle’s user interface and tools, and we got the format
of your course set up the way you want it. In the next chapter, we’ll start adding different
types of content to your new Moodle course.