moodle/doc/teacher.html
2002-08-18 15:31:09 +00:00

226 lines
13 KiB
HTML
Executable File

<HEAD>
<TITLE>Moodle Docs: Teachers Manual</TITLE>
<LINK REL="stylesheet" HREF="../theme/standard/styles.css" TYPE="TEXT/CSS">
</HEAD>
<BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF">
<H2>Teacher Manual</H2>
<P>This page is a quick guide to creating online courses with Moodle. It outlines
the main functions that are available, as well as some of the main decisions
you'll need to make.</P>
<P>Sections in this document:</P>
<OL>
<LI><A HREF="#started">Getting started</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#settings">Course settings</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#upload">Uploading files</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#activities">Setting up activities</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#course">Running the course</A></LI>
<LI><A HREF="#further">Further information</A></LI>
</OL>
<H3><A NAME="started"></A>Getting started</H3>
<blockquote>
<p>This document assumes your site administrator has set up Moodle and given
you new, blank course to start with. It also assumes you have logged in to
your course using your teacher account.</p>
<p>Here are three general tips that will help you get started.</p>
<ol>
<li><strong>Don't be afraid to experiment:</strong>
<blockquote>feel free to poke around and change things. It's hard to break anything
in a Moodle course, and even if you do it's usually easy to fix it.
</blockquote>
<li><strong>Notice and use these little icons</strong>:
<blockquote>
<p>&nbsp;<img src="../pix/i/edit.gif"> - the <strong>edit icon</strong>
lets you edit whatever it is next to.</p>
<p><img src="../pix/help.gif" width="22" height="17"> - the <strong>help
icon</strong> will provide you with a popup help window </p>
</blockquote>
</li>
<li><strong>Use the navigation bar at the top of each page</strong>
<blockquote>this
should help remind you where you are and prevent getting lost.
</blockquote></li>
</ol>
<hr>
</blockquote>
<h3><A NAME="settings"></A>Course settings</h3>
<blockquote>
<p>The first thing you should do is look under the &quot;Administration&quot;
on your course home page and click on &quot;<strong>Settings...</strong>&quot;
(Note that this link, and in fact the whole Administration section is only
available to you (and the site administrator). Students will not even see
these links).</p>
<p>On the Settings page you can change a number of settings about your course,
ranging from its name to what day it starts. I won't talk here about all these,
as they all have a help icon next to them which explains them all in detail.
However, I will talk about the most important of these - the <strong>course
format</strong>.</p>
<p>The course format that you choose will decide the basic layout of your course,
like a template. Moodle version 1.0 has three formats - in future there will
probably be many more (please send new ideas to <a href="mailto:martin@moodle.com">martin@moodle.com</a>!)</p>
<p>Here are some screenshots of three sample courses in each of these three
formats (ignore the different colours, which are set for a whole site by the
site administrator):</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Weekly format:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><img src="pix/weekly.jpg" width="570" height="527"></p>
<p align="center">&nbsp;</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Topics format:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><img src="pix/topics.jpg" width="570" height="463"></p>
<p align="center">&nbsp;</p>
<p align="center"><strong>Social format:</strong></p>
<p align="center"><img src="pix/social.jpg" width="570" height="429"></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>Note that the weekly and topics formats are very similar in structure. The
main difference is that each box in the weekly format covers exactly one week,
whereas in the topic format each box can cover whatever you like. The social
format doesn't use much content at all and is based around just one forum
- this is displayed on the main page.</p>
<p>See the help buttons on the Course Settings page for more details.</p>
<HR>
</blockquote>
<H3><A NAME="upload"></A>Uploading files</H3>
<blockquote>
<p>You may have existing content that you want to add to your course, such as
web pages, audio files, video files, word documents, or flash animations.
Any type of file that exists can be uploaded into your course and stored on
the server. While your files are on the server you can move, rename, edit
or delete them.</p>
<p>All of this is achieved through the <strong>Files</strong> link in your Administration
menu. The Files section looks like this:</p>
<p align="center"><img src="pix/files.jpg" width="400" height="347"></p>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
<p>This interface is only available to teachers - it is not accessible by students.
Individual files are made available to students later on (as &quot;Readings&quot;
- see the next section).</p>
<p>As you can see in the screenshot, files are listed alongside subdirectories.
You can create any number of subdirectories to organise your files and move
your files from one to the other.</p>
<p>Uploading files via the web is currently restricted to one file at a time.
If you want to upload a lot of files at once (for example a whole web site),
it can be a lot easier to use a <strong>zip program</strong> to compress them
into a single file, upload the zip file and then unzip them again on the server
(you will see an &quot;unzip&quot; link next to zip archives).</p>
<p>To preview any file you have uploaded just click on its name. Your web browser
will take care of either displaying it or downloading it to your computer.</p>
<p>HTML and text files can be edited in-place online. Other files will need
to be edited on your local computer and uploaded again. if you upload a file
with the same name as an existing file it will automatically be overwritten.</p>
<p>A final note: if your content resides out on the web then you don't need
to upload the files at all - you can link directly to them from inside the
course (see the Readings module and the next section).</p>
<HR>
</blockquote>
<H3><A NAME="activities"></A>Setting up activities</H3>
<blockquote>
<p>Building a course involves adding course activity modules to the main page
in the order that students will be using them. You can shuffle the order any
time you like.</p>
<p>To turn on editing, click &quot;Turn on editing&quot; under Administration.
This toggle switch shows or hides the extra controls that allow you to manipulate
your main course page. Note in the first screenshot above (of the Weekly format
course) that the editing controls are turned on.</p>
<p>To add a new activity, simply go to the week or topic or section of the screen
where you want to add it, and select the type of activity from the popup menu.
Here is a summary of all the standard activities in Moodle 1.0:</p>
<dl>
<dt><strong>Assignment</strong></dt>
<dd>An assignment is where you set a task with a due date and a maximum grade.
Students will be able to upload one file to satisify the requirements. The
date they upload their file is recorded. Afterwards, you will have a single
page on which ou can view each file (and how late or early it is), and then
record a grade and a comment. Half an hour after you grade any particular
student, Moodle will automatically email that student a notification. </dd><BR>
<BR>
<dt><strong>Choice</strong></dt>
<dd>A choice activity is very simple - you ask a question and specify a choice
of responses (currently only two). Students can make that choice, and you
have a report screen where you can see the results. I use it to gather research
consent from my students, but you could use it for quick polls or class
votes.</dd>
<BR>
<BR>
<dt><strong>Forum</strong></dt>
<dd>This module is by far the most important - it is here that discussion
takes place. When you add a new forum, yu will presented with a choice of
different types - a simple single-topic discussion, a free-for-all general
forum, or a one-discussion-thread-per-user.</dd>
<BR>
<BR>
<dt><strong>Journal</strong></dt>
<dd>Each journal activity is an entry in the whole course journal. For each
one you can specify an open-ended question that guides what students write,
as well as a window of time in which the journal is open (weekly course
format only). Encourage students to write reflectively and critically in
these journals, as they are only available to them and you. Afterwards,
you will be able to grade and comment all the entries for that week or topic,
and students will receive an automatic email informing them of your feedback.</dd>
<BR>
<BR>
<dt><strong>Reading</strong></dt>
<dd>Readings are the content of your course. Each reading can be any file
you have uploaded or can point to using a URL. You can also maintain simple text-based pages by typing them
directly into a form.</dd>
<BR>
<BR>
<dt><strong>Survey</strong></dt>
<dd>The survey module provides a number of predefined survey instruments that are useful in
evaluating and understanding your class. Currently they include the COLLES and the ATTLS instruments.
They can be given to students early in the course as a diagnostic tool and at the end of the
course as an evaluation tool (I use one every week in my courses).</dd>
</dl>
<p>After adding your activities you can move them up and down in your course
layout by clicking on the little arrow icons (<img src="../pix/t/up.gif" width="9" height="10">
<img src="../pix/t/down.gif" width="9" height="10">) next to each one. You
can also delete them using the cross icon <img src="../pix/t/delete.gif" width="10" height="10">,
and re-edit them using the edit icon <img src="../pix/t/edit.gif" width="10" height="11">.</p>
<HR>
</blockquote>
<H3><A NAME="course"></A>Running the course</H3>
<blockquote>
<p>I could write a thesis about this. Actually I <strong>am</strong> writing
a thesis about this. <img src="../pix/s/biggrin.gif" width="16" height="16"></p>
<p>Until then here are just a few quick pointers:</p>
<ol>
<li>Subscribe yourself to all the forums.</li>
<li>Encourage all the students fill out their user profile (including photos)
and read them all - this will help provide some context to their later writings.</li>
<li>Keep notes to yourself in the private &quot;<strong>Teacher's Forum</strong>&quot;
(under Administration). This is especially useful when team teaching.</li>
<li>Use the &quot;<strong>Logs</strong>&quot; link (under Administration)
to get access to complete, raw logs. In there you'll see a link to a popup
window that updates every sixty seconds and shows the last hour of activity.
This is useful to keep open on your desktop all day so you can feel in touch
with what's going on in the course.</li>
<li>Use the &quot;<strong>Activity Reports</strong>&quot; (next to each name
in the list of all people, or from any user profile page). These provide
a great way to see what any particular person has been up to in the course.</li>
<li>Respond quickly to students. Don't leave it for later - do it right away.
Not only is it easy to become overwhelmed with the volume that can be generated,
but it's a crucial part of building and maintaining a community feel in
your course.</li>
</ol>
<HR>
</blockquote>
<H3><A NAME="further"></A>Further information</H3>
<blockquote>
<p>If you have any particular problems with your site, you should contact your
local site administrator.</p>
<p>If you have some great ideas for improvements to Moodle, or even some good
stories, come over to <a href="http://moodle.com/" target="_top">moodle.com</a> and join
in the Teacher's forum on that site. We'd love to hear them, and you can help
Moodle improve.</p>
<p>If you want to contribute to coding new modules, or writing documentation,
or papers, contact me: <a href="http://dougiamas.com/" target="_top">Martin
Dougiamas</a> or browse the &quot;bug tracker&quot; site for Moodle, at <a href="http://bugs.moodle.com" target="_top">bugs.moodle.com</a></p>
<p align="center">Thanks for using Moodle - good luck!</p>
<HR>
<p>&nbsp;</p>
</blockquote>
<P ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT SIZE="1"><A HREF="index.html" TARGET="_top">Moodle Documentation</A></FONT></P>
<P ALIGN="CENTER"><FONT SIZE="1">Version: $Id: teacher.html,v 1.4 2002/08/18 10:00:01
martin Exp $</FONT></P>
</BODY>