Apologies for being late with this MUG Mailing!!
Topics:
- Communication Tools in Moodle
- Cleaning up after Word - when copy/pasting goes bad
- Sources of Moodle Help
- MUG list subscription
Communication Tools in Moodle
Moodle has a number of ways to communicate with students, but which are most effective? That answer is in the eye of the beholder, so here are how they are different!
News Forum
The News Forum found at the top of every Moodle site is likely the easiest way to use Moodle to manage your class communications. It's a special kind of Forum in Moodle that emails every post to everyone in the class. Unless you change the settings, everyone in the class (instructors included) is subscribed to the News Forum, meaning that they will receive an email of each post to this space. If the message is time sensitive, be sure to check the box at the bottom “Mail Now.”
Advantages: Even if the students misplace or delete the email, the archive of messages posted is right at the top of their Moodle page. It's also handy for getting students who add the course later up to date. Also, when you are ready to archive the course, you can store all of these communications in moodle and NOT in your email. If you parcel out routine information, these posts can be available for reuse the next time you teach the course.
Disadvantages: It's not quite as convenient as opening an email (which you are likely to have open anyway) and sending off a message.
Send a Message
When you click on the Participants list in Moodle, you have the option to Send a Message to one or all students. Contrary to the implications, this does NOT necessarily send an email to your students. If your students are not logged into Moodle at the time you send the message, they should get an email. However, if they ARE logged then they should get a pop-up window that shows them your message.
Advantages: If the student is in Moodle at the time you send the message, delivery is immediate.
Disadvantages: This method of delivery is unreliable since it's possible for them to be blocking pop-ups from Moodle and it's easy to miss the window all together and just close Moodle.
A Note on Accepting Messages
When you receive messages from students they will either take the form of an e-mail or if you are logged in to Moodle a pop-up. The pop-up will show the student's ID photo and their name, to acknowledge your receipt of this message click on the photo or the students name. The pop-up will be cleared because the message will be registered as received, if you don't click it will show up each time your login to Moodle.
Calendar Items
The Moodle calendar is also fed into everyone's collection of Zimbra calendars. So putting important dates on the Moodle calendar also has the added benefit of feeding Zimbra. It's important to note that many students prefer GMail and forward their Carleton email to that system. This means they bypass the Zimbra calendaring all together. However, if you let them know that you are using this as a means of communicating important events to them, then it becomes their responsibility to check it either through Moodle or through Zimbra.
Advantages: Excellent for reminding students of events at a specific date/time, in an easy to use calendar format that is automatically fed into Zimbra and can also be subscribed to from other calendar programs.
Disadvantages: Not all students are even are that there are calendars in Zimbra and Moodle. So if you don't let them know that these are important places to check, they may miss the information entirely.
Cleaning up after Word
Don't you hate cleaning up after others? Well, unfortunately, you really should when you copy from Word and paste into Moodle. But Moodle makes it easy with it's Clean Word HTML button.
When you create a document in Word, it writes a whole lot of ugly code in the background to do all of that fancy formatting. Word is kind enough not to show you any of that stuff while you are working, but webpages are not quite smart enough to do that. The result can vary from slightly annoying formatting to losing sight of your entire course site!
To avoid problems, click the Clean Word HTML button in the Moodle editor toolbar
BEFORE SAVING
your Moodle page. You'll notice that some of the Word formatting is altered after you use the button, but it's a whole lot better than loosing your whole Moodle page! You can use the Moodle editor tools to add back any formatting you want to keep on the page.
Sources of Moodle Help
If you're stuck on something in Moodle and it's off hours, where do you get help? Here's where!!
Blue Question Mark Icons
In editing mode, Moodle is loaded with small blue circles that have white question mark icons. Contrary to common practice in software, these help icons are actually helpful!! Want to know what an activity does? Start to add it to your page and then explore the settings by clicking on the blue help icons. You'll learn a lot!
Academic Technologies Moodle Pages & Video Tutorials
Your friendly ATs have been working on providing help materials for the most commonly used Moodle features on Carleton's campus. This is an ever expanding challenge, but we already have an extensive collection of stuff available. Check them out here:
Printed (and printable!) documentation
Video Tutorials
Do you have a request for further documentation? Send it along to at@carleton.edu and we'll do our best!
Moodle Docs for this Page
Waaaaaay down at the bottom of each Moodle page, there is a small little link in the center that is called Moodle Docs for this Page. This link takes you to the Moodle.org help wiki, which is written by the international Moodle community. The pages are not always complete or helpful, but it's worth checking out if you are looking for more detail.
MUG List Subscription
If you would like to receive the MUG Mailings (once a week during the term), go to http://lists.carleton.edu/info/mug and click the Subscribe link in the left hand column. Our postings will also be posted on the Academic Technologies website in the right-hand column of the home page, http://go.carleton.edu/at
From Your Friendly ATs:
Carly Born
Randy Hoffner
Paula Lackie
Fiona MacNeill