This page is a very 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.

Getting started

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.

Here are three general tips that will help you get started.

1. Don't be afraid to experiment:

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.

2. Notice and use these little icons:

- the edit icon lets you edit whatever it is next to.

- the help icon will provide you with a popup help window

- the open-eye icon will let you hide something from students

- the closed-eye icon will make a hidden item available

3. Use the navigation bar at the top of each page

this should help remind you where you are and prevent getting lost.

Setting up activities

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.

To turn on editing, click "Turn on editing" 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.

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:

Assignment

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 you 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.

Choice

A choice activity is very simple - you ask a question and specify a choice of responses. Students can make their 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.

Forum

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.

Resource

Resources are the content of your course. Each resource 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.

Quiz

This module allows you to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers. This module includes grading facilities.

Survey

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).

After adding your activities you can move them up and down in your course layout by clicking on the little arrow icons ( ) next to each one. You can also delete them using the cross icon , and re-edit them using the edit icon .

Running the course

There are some big plans to extend this document into a more comprehensive tutorial. Until then here are a few ideas:

1. Subscribe yourself to all the forums so you keep in touch with your class activity.

2. 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 and help you to respond in ways that are tailored to their own needs.

3. Keep notes to yourself in the private "Teacher's Forum" (under Administration). This is especially useful when team teaching.

4. Use the "Logs" 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.

5. Use the "Activity Reports" (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.

6. 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.