Moodle 2 Quick Guide for Teachers

I put together a comprehensive guide for teachers that includes information about features of Moodle 2 that were not found in Moodle 1.  I have sent it to the professors at BBC&S, but I thought I'd share it with the population at large.  Enjoy!

Click Here for Quick Guide

Using Rubrics in Moodle 2

As you know, a rubric is a grading standard established for a given assignment.  The rubric consists of various criteria.  For each criterion, several descriptive levels are provided.  Have you ever wished that you could have a rubric right inside Moodle and use it to grade assignments that are submitted through the system?  Well, now you can!

Imagine this:

A student submits an assignment via Moodle.
You open the assignment and use a rubric inside of Moodle to award appropriate points for each criterion on the rubric.

Moodle gives a grade based on the points that you select for each item/criterion.

The grade automatically transfers into the grade book!

Why would one do this?

• It assures that the assignment objectives are tied to particular assessments.
•  A rubric only needs to be created ONE time and it can be shared across assignments!
•   It will allow for consistency across courses.  For example, the same rubric that is used to assess a forum discussion in one course can be used in another course as well.
•  It’s easier!  You don’t have to get out your syllabus and look at your rubrics and switch from looking down at your paper to up at the screen!  You can do it all electronically!
•  Moodle does the math for you!  

Watch this video to learn how to set up rubrics in your Moodle course:

Conditional Activities: Pedagogical Considerations

Moodle 2 allows you to restrict the availability of activities until certain conditions are met.  These are called conditional activities.  For example, you may restrict all of the content and activities in a particular module until a certain grade is earned on the quiz in a previous module. 

Conditional activities are a way for you to force your students to work through things in a particular order.  It is certainly good course design to make it clear to your students what they are expected to do next, but do you need to force?  Malcolm Knowles and his principles of andragogy would tell us that adult learners like to be in control of their own learning.  So, should you use labels and layout, rather than locks and keys, to suggest the best learning path?  Something to think about, eh?  Here are some suggestions for when the use of conditional activities might be appropriate:

- The idea of restricting access to something until another task has been completed happens to nicely mirror the level structure present in many games.  You could venture into games-based learning.  Just a thought for those who are creative in that way…

- Conditional activities are good to use when one week/module builds on the next.  If you need to lead the horse to water AND make him/her drink, a conditional activity might be just what you are looking for.  Suppose you need the students to choose a group for an activity.  You can create a “Choice” activity and then make access to that week’s graded discussion forum dependent upon the completion of the “Choice” activity. 

- If you want to be sure that students have read content before posting in the discussion forums or before taking a quiz, you can set up the forums or the quiz so that the PDFs/URLs (i.e. electronic reading material) must be opened before the activities become available.  This way, the students can’t discuss material that they have never even opened!

-Facilitating self-directed learning is perhaps where conditional activities are the most powerful.  They allow you to automate several paths through content.  Conditional activities make it simple to offer both extension and remedial activities to students simultaneously.  For instance, you might have a practice quiz set up so that students who achieve above a certain score are directed to further exploration activities whereas those who achieve below a certain score are given access to some help resources.

 Watch this video to learn how to set up conditional activities in your Moodle course: