Moodle Course Basic Setup
This guide provides an easy checklist of what to do when creating your Moodle courses. It covers what you should do before a Moodle Module starts, what the types of activities and resources there are in Moodle to allow for better engagement of students, and finally how to edit and navigate your course.
Course Setup Checklist:
Things to do before getting started: |
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Keeping things tidy | After you have imported content, give your module a general tidy. Delete any files that are no longer relevant, remove old reading list links and only keep announcement forums that you are actually using. |
Module description and outline | Ensure that a module description is easily available to students, alongside the learning outcomes. You could also use a welcome video to provide this information in an alternative format. |
Welcome Video | Create a welcome video to introduce your module and give students a quick overview of how they can use your Moodle page. You can record audio and video directly into a text and media area in Moodle. In the HTML text editor, click the Show more buttons button on the left. |
Assessment details and marking criteria | Provide clear assessment details for students, including marking criteria and any rubric that will be used. Where possible, also provide an assignment submission point in the Moodle module space. |
Contact Details | Ensure tutor contact details, availability and tutorial booker links are clearly visible on the Moodle page. |
Feedback Opportunity | Try to incorporate feedback opportunities into the module. Students will appreciate the chance to submit draft assignments and receive feedback. Equally, give students the opportunity to provide feedback by setting up mid-module or end-of-module evaluations. |
Blocks | Following the upgrade, you may need to rearrange some of the blocks within your module pages. You can move blocks around using the cross symbol.
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Module Image | Add a course image to your module. This will appear throughout the module at the top of the page, with the title superimposed on top of it. Choose a compelling image that is representative of your course. To change the course image, use the Course management button to navigate to Edit course settings. Scroll down to the Course image section, where you can upload an image. |
Course Activities, Resources and Editing Features
Users with editing rights, such as Manager, Course Leader or Editing Tutor, can add, edit and delete activities and resources in a Moodle space. This section of the guide summarises the main activities, resources and editing features available in Moodle.
Activities:
Assignment
An activity used to submit files for marking. It can be integrated with Turnitin for plagiarism detection. The assignment activity enables a teacher to communicate tasks, collect work and provide grades and feedback.
Students can submit digital content such as documents, spreadsheets, images, audio or video clips. They may also type text directly into the text editor. An assignment can also be used to remind students of offline, real-world tasks, and students can submit individually or as part of a group.
Enhance: Create assignment dropboxes so students can submit work electronically. Include clear instructions and information in the description.
Extend: Ask students to peer review each other’s assignments. See Workshop.
Empower: Ask students to contribute to assessment criteria and then peer review. See Workshop.
Chat
A synchronous text-based chat activity that can be used for group work. Chats may be one-off or repeated at set times. Sessions are saved and can be made available for everyone to view or restricted to users who can view chat session logs.
Enhance: Create a one-off chat around a specific theme, such as final assessment, and make the transcript available.
Extend: Arrange regular out-of-office-hours chats around themes such as final assessments or reflection. Students participate in a facilitated chat and transcripts are made available.
Empower: Ask students to suggest themes, organise and facilitate chat sessions, and make transcripts available.
Choice
The choice activity enables a teacher to ask a single question and offer a selection of possible responses. Results may be published after students answer, after a set date or not at all, and may be published with names or anonymously.
Use as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic.
Quickly test students’ understanding.
Support student decision-making, such as voting on the direction of a course.
Enhance: Set up a choice activity to test understanding of a topic.
Extend: Use choice to support decisions on course direction, assignment questions or topics for online debates.
Empower: Ask students to propose choice questions and use the data to inform conclusions or learning.
Database
The database activity enables participants to create, maintain and search a collection of entries or records. Entry structures are defined by the teacher using fields such as checkbox, radio buttons, dropdown menu, text area, URL, picture and uploaded file.
Teachers can allow comments on entries. Entries can also be rated by teachers or students, and ratings can be aggregated into a final grade recorded in the gradebook.
Enhance: Create database entries related to key concepts in the discipline, including concept, theorist, journal article, key text, website and relevant media.
Extend: Ask students to research and add entries, then rate, review or comment on each other’s entries.
Empower: Have students create entries around their own research interests or questions and use the data to identify shared interests.
External tools
The external tool activity enables students to interact with learning resources and activities on other websites. External tools require an LTI-compliant tool provider and may be created by a teacher or configured by the site administrator.
External tools are context aware and can access launch information such as institution, course and name.
External tools support reading, updating and deleting grades associated with the activity instance.
External tool configurations create a trust relationship between Moodle and the tool provider for secure communication.
Feedback
The feedback activity enables a teacher to create a custom survey using question types such as multiple choice, yes/no and text input. Responses may be anonymous, and results can be shown to participants or restricted to teachers.
Course evaluations to improve content for later participants.
Sign-ups for course modules, events and similar activities.
Guest surveys of course choices or school policies.
Anonymous reporting, such as anti-bullying surveys.
Forum
The forum activity enables asynchronous discussions over an extended period. Forum types include standard forums, forums where each student posts one discussion, and question-and-answer forums where students must post before viewing others’ posts.
Enhance: Create a general help forum for course questions.
Extend: Create a discussion forum for debate around a theme, topic or reading, with students rating and commenting on peers’ posts.
Empower: Nominate student groups to moderate weekly debates, encourage participation, keep discussion on track and summarise outcomes.
Glossary
The glossary activity enables participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, collect resources or organise information. Files can be attached to entries, and entries can be searched or browsed by alphabet, category, date or author.
Enhance: Create a primary glossary of key terms and auto-link entries throughout the course.
Extend: Create a second glossary for each theme or topic that students populate through research.
Empower: Ask students to rate and comment on each other’s entries, with the most highly rated terms promoted to the primary class glossary.
Group Choice
The Group Choice activity allows students to enrol themselves in a group within a course. Teachers can select which groups students can choose from and set the maximum number of students allowed in each group.
Interactive Content
The H5P activity enables you to create interactive content such as interactive videos, question sets, drag-and-drop questions, multiple-choice questions, presentations and more. H5P supports import and export for reuse and sharing.
User interactions and scores are tracked using xAPI and are available through the Moodle Gradebook. H5Ps must not be used for exams or similar, as it may be possible for people with programming skills to cheat and obtain full scores without knowing the correct answers.
You can add interactive H5P content by creating content using the built-in authoring tool or by uploading H5P files from other H5P-enabled sites.
Lesson
The lesson activity enables a teacher to deliver content or practice activities in flexible ways. Lessons can be linear or provide a range of learner pathways, using questions such as multiple choice, matching and short answer.
A lesson may be graded, with the grade recorded in the gradebook.
Self-directed learning of a new topic.
Scenarios or simulations and decision-making exercises.
Differentiated revision using different question sets based on initial answers.
MEDIAL
The MEDIAL activity provides a customised LTI-based Moodle integration with the MEDIAL server.
Open Forum
The Open Forum activity enables asynchronous discussions over an extended period. Teachers can allow file attachments, control subscription modes and restrict posting limits if required. Forum posts can be rated by teachers or students, with aggregated ratings recorded in the gradebook.
A social space for students to get to know each other.
Course announcements using a news forum with forced subscription.
Discussion of course content or reading materials.
Continuation of issues raised in face-to-face sessions.
Teacher-only discussions using a hidden forum.
A help centre where tutors and students can give advice.
One-to-one support using separate groups.
Extension activities such as brain teasers.
Quiz
The quiz activity enables a teacher to create quizzes with question types including multiple choice, matching, short-answer and numerical. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts, shuffled or randomised questions and time limits. Most attempts are marked automatically, except essay questions, and grades are recorded in the gradebook.
Enhance: Create a short formative quiz to test understanding.
Extend: Create themed formative quizzes using random questions from a question bank, with detailed feedback and scores.
Empower: Allow students to generate their own quiz questions for a practice question bank and create a formative quiz from those questions.
Scheduler
The scheduler activity helps you schedule appointments with students. Teachers specify time slots, students choose a slot, and teachers can record meeting outcomes and optionally a grade. Group scheduling is supported.
SCORM
A SCORM package is a collection of files packaged according to an agreed standard for learning objects. SCORM or AICC packages can be uploaded as a zip file and added to a course.
Content is usually displayed over several pages, with options for pop-up windows, a table of contents and navigation buttons. SCORM activities often include questions with grades recorded in the gradebook.
Presenting multimedia content and animations.
Assessment activities.
Turnitin Assignment
Creates a Turnitin Moodle Direct assignment linking a Moodle activity to one or more assignments in Turnitin. Once linked, instructors can assess and provide feedback on written work using Turnitin’s Document Viewer.
Wiki
The wiki activity enables participants to add and edit a collection of web pages. A wiki can be collaborative or individual. A history of previous versions is kept, listing edits made by participants.
Enhance: Create a course or assignment knowledgebase.
Extend: Create a lecture notes wiki and ask student groups to summarise weekly lectures or seminars.
Empower: Have students work in groups to create and manage a wiki showing evidence of planning and preparation for group work.
Workshop
The workshop activity enables the collection, review and peer assessment of students’ work. Students receive two grades: one for their submission and one for their assessment of peers’ submissions. Both are recorded in the gradebook.
Enhance: Use technology in simple and effective ways to support students and increase activity and self-responsibility.
Extend: Facilitate individual and collaborative learning and assessment through increased choice and control.
Empower: Support higher-order individual and collaborative learning that reflects how knowledge is created and used in professional environments.
Resources:
Book
The book resource enables a teacher to create a multi-page resource in a book-like format, with chapters and subchapters. Books can contain media files as well as text and are useful for displaying longer content in sections.
Reading material for individual course of study.
A staff departmental handbook.
A showcase portfolio of student work.
File
The file resource enables a teacher to provide a file as a course resource. Where possible, the file displays within the course interface; otherwise students download it. Students need the appropriate software to open the file.
Share presentations given in class.
Include a mini website as a course resource.
Provide draft software files for students to edit and submit for assessment.
Folder
The folder resource enables a teacher to display related files inside a single folder, reducing scrolling on the course page. A zipped folder can be uploaded and unzipped, or an empty folder can be created and populated.
A series of files on one topic, such as past exam papers or images for student projects.
A shared upload space for teachers, kept hidden from students if needed.
IMS Content Package
An IMS content package is a collection of files packaged to an agreed standard for reuse across systems. The resource enables content packages to be uploaded as a zip file and added as a resource.
Content is usually displayed over several pages, with display options such as pop-up windows, navigation menus or buttons. IMS content packages may be used for multimedia content and animations.
Text and media area
The text and media area, previously called a label, allows text and multimedia to be inserted into the course page between links to other resources and activities. It is versatile and can improve the appearance of a course when used thoughtfully.
Split up a long list of activities with a subheading or image.
Display an embedded sound file or video directly on the course page.
Add a short description to a course section.
Lightbox Gallery
The Lightbox Gallery resource enables participants to view a gallery of images. Teachers can create, edit and delete galleries. Thumbnails are generated for the gallery view, and clicking a thumbnail opens the image for browsing. If enabled, users can leave comments.
Page
The page resource enables a teacher to create a web page resource using the text editor. A page can display text, images, sound, video, web links and embedded code such as Google Maps.
Compared with the file resource, a page is usually more accessible on mobile devices and easier to update. For large amounts of content, use a book rather than a page.
Present terms and conditions or a course syllabus summary.
Embed several videos or sound files with explanatory text.
URL
The URL resource enables a teacher to provide a web link as a course resource. Any freely available online item can be linked to, and URLs can also be added to other resource or activity types through the text editor.
Display options include embedded display, opening in a new window and advanced options for passing information such as a student’s name to the URL.
Talis Reading List
Use Talis Reading List to provide and manage course reading list links for students.
Editing and Navigation
The availability of these icons depends on your user role in Moodle. Not all icons may be available to you. If you think you should have access to more editing features, ask for more support in the support portal.
Use the pencil icon to turn on editing for titles and descriptions.
Use the four-headed arrow icon to drag and drop topics, activities, resources and blocks. In Moodle 4.1, you can move content using a list of headers rather than dragging and dropping.
Use the gear or cog icon to open the action menu and edit content or settings for Moodle spaces or individual elements.
Use the eye visibility icons to show or hide activities, resources or topics.
Use the arrow icons to move an activity or resource right or left, i.e. indent or outdent.
Use the copy icon to duplicate an activity or resource.
Use the user icon to assign roles to an activity so non-editors can make changes to a specific item.
Use the bin icon to delete an activity, resource or topic.
Hover over the question mark icon for contextual help.
Editing an activity or resource
Press the Turn Editing On button in the top right corner of the course page.
Locate the activity or resource you want to edit.
Click the three-dot menu icon (⋮) on the left-hand side of the item.
Select Edit settings from the dropdown menu.
From here, you can update the settings for your chosen activity or resource.