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Hi this is Friday, December 21, and this is VelociGram: Information at the Speed of the
Web. I'm George Self, Director of the Virtual Campus,
and in today's episode we're going to introduce some
important new changes to Moodle. One change involves the assignment module. Jennifer's
going to show you all of the ins and outs of the
new assignment module and I think you're going to
appreciate how much simpler it is to create assignments. Another important change involves
the Personalized Learning Designer. This is a
very powerful tool that's not used to its full capacity
by our instructors. Grace is going to introduce you to the newest changes to the Personal
Learning Designer and I think you may want to use them. Our
third change involves handling files within Moodle. We have
an exciting new capability: we can simply drag-and-drop from your desktop into your
Moodle class. Also, there's some new repositories available. You'll
be able to share files not only within your own classes,
but with your teaching colleagues. I think you're going to like how Moodle was changed.
Take a moment to look at it; and good luck with your classes.
Hey everyone it's Adam from the Virtual Campus. This week in the newsletter were gonna actually
do something just a little bit different. Typically, from me, you
would get a Web 2.0 tool, and from Grace you would get a Moodle tip, and George you'd get
policies and stuff like that. However, Moodle has actually updated their
system. I have been tasked with showing you guys some new features in the repositories.
So as you can see, I'm in my sandbox course, and I'm going to add a
file so that I can show you the repositories. And I'm going to upload an image from Dropbox,
and it's going to be called 'camera help.' Camera. Okay, so I got the name
and description in, and when I come down to select files, I'm going to select 'add,' and
here is the file picker, and you can see, on the left you've seen, 'recent files'
before, you seen 'upload a file' 'private file' and 'district-wide files,' but now we've
added: 'server files', 'Dropbox', and 'Google Docs.' With Dropbox and Google Docs
you need to have an account with those sites. And the first time you want to use Dropbox
with Moodle you just, this screen will come up, you'll see 'click
login,' all you need to do is login to Dropbox. And as you can see it's asking me to login
so I'm gonna go ahead and find the sign in. And now it's going to say,
'Hey, this app from Moodle, Moodle for Cochise College wants to connect with your Dropbox.
So I'm going to allow that. And here is my Dropbox. And this is my, since
I work with cameras I have a lot of cheat sheets for cameras cause they are sometimes
difficult to work with, and I want some exposure help. Now, this is new also in
the file picker. It's going to ask you to make a copy of the file, or create a shortcut
to the file. I would suggest creating a shortcut to the file because
that will not bog down your course with images that may be big or video files that are maybe
big. If you work with me and get a video file, which I typically
will send out videos through Dropbox, you can keep those videos in the shared folder
between you and I, and just send, get a link from that video file into your
course. That way you're not having, you know, a four gig video file within your course.
Its just shortcutted from Dropbox. So that's what I'm gonna do here. Create the
shortcut. Select this file, and as you can see, this little arrow here tells me that
this is linked to Dropbox, and I will scroll down to save and return to course. And here
it is. Camera help. I will click on that link and it will take me, straight, keep me in
Moodle. Here's the image, but the image is actually a link from Dropbox, but
in case you want any kind of camera help, and you want this image, please give me, send
me an email, and I'll send this to you. I use, I use this one a lot. The other
thing I need to show you, and this is the more important one, is the server files repository.
Now this is from Moodle, where you can connect files from any one of the classes
that you're involved, and what were going to do is create a repository for specific
departments. So were going create a depository for the english department, math,
science, business department, and all the instructors can add files, as many files as
they want from there and then any other instructor from that specific department
can link those files to their courses. And let me show you how to do that. Now, to show
you this example I actually switched over to one of our dummy instructor accounts
which is Harvey Instructor. Harvey is a business instructor, and in his course he has examples
of case studies. As you can see, here's case study number one. 'This
is a case study.' And I need to add case study number two, but that's from one of my other
business instructors, one of their courses. So, I'm going to go ahead
and add a label. And then type in 'Case study two,' and now I'm gonna choose the edit image
icon, and I'm going to browse for an image. And again, I'll get the file picker, and this
time it's on server files. And so, from here you can see a bread crumb trail that ends
with 'Harvey instructor sandbox' and 'system.' I'm gonna click 'system.' And it will
give me, now, the other courses that, I am, Harvey is connected to. And you'll see 'business
repository sandbox.' So, I need 'case study two.' Here it is, and here is the image
I want. I'm going create a link from it, just like we did with the Dropbox file, and select
that file, and I need to resize it. Okay, I've resize the image so that
it that comes in a little more cleaner. So, I'll save and return the course. And, as you
can see, here is the second case studies, so, 'this is also case study!' And, this was
just a brief explanation of the new repository features within Moodle. If you have any more
questions or need any help, remember help is only a phone call or a click away.
Ok, I'm going to go over some of the new assignment features with you. The first thing that you're
going to notice when you go to add an assignment activity
is that there's two assignment options now. The assignment 2.2 is the old
version were you had to select what type of an assignment you wanted to build;
now you're just can use assignment it's an all in one function. You're going
to notice there are some changes in verbiage. If you
see a setting that looks a little like an old setting but a little different
and you're not quite sure what it does if you click on "i" it will give you a
little description of exactly what that setting does and that's the same with across the board
in Moodle. One of that new functions is notify graders
of a late submission. If you want to know when a student is submitting something
late you can set that yes and set it up to get an email notification.
Another big change is TurnItIn being available directly within the assignment. If you
want to use it you're going to leave it "yes" and then set all of your settings up that
way and if you don't use it, you'll just click on no and it will
be grayed out and go away. Another big change is the online text or file submissions.
Previously, if you selected online text and you wanted to change it to file submission
you had to completely rebuild the assignment; you no longer have to do that.
You just make the change here. If you had it originally file submission, and you want
to allow online text, you just click yes or vice versa. You can have them both
yes, or one yes and one no. Another big one is the feedback settings. You can
now, within an assignment, leave comments. You can set it to where you can leave comments
directly in the online text, or you can set it so you can leave comments in
an assignment that you download, make your comments and then re-upload it for the student
to see. There's a lot of little changes again a lot of them are just verbiage changes;
if you want information in more detail you can always click on the Moodle docs and
you get a pop-up that gives you more detail about
the assignment activity or again any other activity or function that you're in in Moodle.
There's always a Moodle docs at the bottom of the page. So if you have any questions
we're always here and hope everybody has a great break.
Hi everyone, this week we’re going to look at a feature inside of Moodle called the Personalized
Learning Designer. Some of the neat things about the Personal Learning Designer, or PLD,
it's kind of an extra set of hands in your class to monitor students, or keep up the
certain things, send them reminders, send you reminders. Sometimes it's nice, it’s
almost like having a teaching assistant that will take care of some of the, the paperwork
or the daily things. So what we are going to do is, I’m gonna go into settings and
I’m going to go down to Personalize Learning Designer. And you can see in this class right
now I already have two PLDs included in my class. One of them the first one is the Course
Procedure Acceptance and what this is is that I've set up my class so students have to do
the Course Procedure Acceptance exam before they can see any of their work. So I want
to make sure that they've gone through that. So my condition is set so that I know if a
student hasn’t logged in the class yet. This is real helpful especially when we start
doing Census to see who’s completed it and who has gone into the class. So I have said
that my condition is the current date or the start of the class, plus seven days. Meaning
seven days after the start of class, if they haven't logged in yet and you can change this
if it's an eight week class you may drop down to four days. If it is a 16 week then after
one week you can do this. And it will say ‘I want to send an e-mail’ and you'll
see here a little bit of the the e-mail that it sends. It'll send it from me to the triggering
user that means whatever user has meets this criteria. And is says ‘Dear and the first
name of the student, you've enrolled in the class don't forget that it started on this
date and that you need to login. If you have any questions please contact me.’ And so
that's a nice little reminder and I know that this way at least an e-mail goes out remind
them to login the class. The other thing that I have already is a Midterm Grade in my 128
class. I only have two exams so if you miss the midterm or you don't do well on the midterm
then it may be a little bit more difficult to pull yourself out of that hole. So I like
to send an e-mail to my students if they have less than 70% or greater than 5%, the assumption
is that they at least attempted it, then it will send them a grade that says, ‘Hey remember
there's only two exams in the class and you failed the first one, so we need to talk and
maybe if you're having trouble the material get in touch with me.’ Let’s, we’re
going to add a new one, this is kind of a neat rule for me. I’m going to add a rule.
And I'm going to call this rule ‘Attendance.’ And the type of event that we are going to
do is we’re going to say a recurring event. Cause what I want to do is I want to be able
to see or get a notice for a student who hasn't logged in for a whole week, okay? Or maybe
two weeks cause we know that with online classes participation is logging into the class and
doing some work. So I want to see and be alerted early if a student hasn't logged in in a week.
So I can go and check and say "Hey what's going on?" So I'm going to say daily, I'm
going to say, actually, I’m going to say weekly. I'm going to do it on Monday morning.
I’m going to have it check at, we’ll say 8AM and we're going to have that start date
for January when we start classes on the 14th. And then it's going to end on March 15 is
when we finish. So you will notice, we have a recurring event, so every week on Monday,
let me uncheck Wednesday here, every week on Monday eight o'clock it, the systems can
go through and check the students are enrolled in the class and see whether they have logged
in at all. And I'm going to say, Add this, so now we can say that it's a recurring event.
The start date is in the future cause we won’t start it until January when classes come back.
So my condition says for the attendance what am I looking for? I want to see whether somebody
has logged into to the system and I’m going to say ‘Add that.’ Now its going to say
"User has,” and it’s going to say, “not logged into the course within the last seven
days." Now I may want to change that and say, “Hasn’t logged in for ten days if they
missed it on Monday, but for me as a reminder, I’m just going to say seven days. So I'm
going to save that, and so now my condition is it’s gonna send it, if the user is not
logged in the course within the last seven days. Now, so we said okay this is what we
want this is what it's going to check what we wanted to do if that becomes true? And
I'm going to say "Send an e-mail" and click Add. It’s going to come from the instructor
and it's going to, when I add a recipient, I'm going to say "Triggering user" because
that means it only be sent to a user that has met all of those conditions. And I'll
say “Attendance in CIS 128” and then I may say, “Dear,” and I'll insert a token
and I'll say, I'm going to use their first name so it makes it a little more personal.
So "Dear student, I noticed you have not logged into the class in a week. Please let me know
if you are having any difficulties or issues with the course. Remember that two or more
weeks of non-participation may result in being dropped from the class." And I'll just sign
that, and you can change that and put whatever message you want in there. And then I'm going
to save that, but I’m going to do something else on this because I want to make sure that
I keep an eye on it. So the student gets an e-mail this is what I'm going to do. I'm going
add another e-mail but I'm going to send it from the instructor, but I'm going say to
the "Action creator" that's you, that's who is creating it, you’re the instructor and
I'm going to say "Attendance alert for," insert a token, say First name and Last name. Then
in the body of the message because this just going to me, say “First name, Last name,
put a space and there, has not participated in CIS 128 in the last seven days. The last
login was over a week ago.” And this is just a reminder for me to know. So, I'm going
to say the e-mail to the students can say Attendance in CIS 128 and then for me it’s
an attendance alert for the student's name. And now I’m going to save that, you must
hit save. Then you'll come back to the main page of your PLD and it will say, here, these
are the three that I have so have a Midterm Grade going out to the students, I have a
Course Procedure Acceptance to know when they’ve log in class or started it, and then for Attendance
so that I know throughout the semester if they haven't logged in a week. These are just
kind of a few of the capabilities of the PLD. This is just an overview and introduction
to it. Keep an eye on the Faculty Resource Center, George and I'll be creating videos
to help you set these up and look at some different ways to be able to use the PLD in
your class. And was always if you have any questions give us a call. As George likes
to say, "Help is only a phone call or click away."
Another important change involves the Personalized Learning Designer. This is a very powerful
tool that's not used to its full capacity by our instructors. Grace is going to introduce
you to the newest changes to the Personal Learning Designer and I think you may want
to use them.
Our third change involves handling files within Moodle. We have an exciting new capability:
we can simply drag-and-drop from your desktop into your Moodle class. Also, there's some
new repositories available. You'll be able to share files not only within your own classes,
but with your teaching colleagues.
I think you're going to like how Moodle was changed. Take a moment to look at it; and
good luck with your classes.
Let me share which you four little changes being made to our Moodle system, along with
two changes being made to quizzes. I think you'll like all of these, they're small changes
but rather interesting.
First, in this course I can go to settings, and edit settings, and I can set up my course
to be shown as one section per page. Let me scroll down. It's easiest just to show you
this instead of try to explain it. Now, we start out with the course page. It looks like
it used to; however, if I now click on, say, this section, it shows up on a page all by
itself. Nothing else down below here; and if I want to go to the next section, I would
click there and go to the next section. I could go back to the first section, or return
to the main course page. Now, the main course page shows me all of the sections, all of
the activities; but as soon as I click on one, then that will show up on a page by itself
so I can focus on this page. I can move forward, I can move back, or I can go back to the main
course page. Let me go back to the main course page. So that's one little change with the
Moodle system.
Now, for today I'm going to go ahead go back into the edit settings and I'm going to put
all of my sections on one page. Next, if you have more than one block on the side of your
page used to be in order to move those blocks we had to click on the little arrow and wait
for it and such. Now you can actually drag-and-drop those blocks to move them. If I move my cursor
up, for instance, into the top part of this calendar block, you'll notice it changes into
a four headed arrow. I can click on it, move it up and drop it, and the calendar's now
at the top of the page with activities at the bottom. Let me do that again, it was so
fast. I'll click on activities and I'll move them to the very top and drop them; and now
activities are at the top. So you can drag and drop the blocks and that's kind of nice.
The next feature I really like. You'll notice, and let me scroll down to the bottom of, oh,
I don't know, this one. You'll notice you have the drop-down. See, you can add an activity
and another drop-down, see, you can add resources that's the way Moodle's always been. However,
if you'll go to to settings, you can turn on something brand-new called an activity
chooser. I'll turn on the activity chooser. Notice those drop downs are now gone, but
I have this block that says add an activity or resource. If I click on that, an activity
chooser pops up and I can choose from activities and resources. What's nice is if I click on
this item, I get some verbiage over here so I can see what the heck it is. Oh, for instance,
what is a label; and here's some information about a label, along with a link to more help.
When I finally decide what it is I want to add, maybe a workshop, it's highlighted. I
can click add, and that would be added to my course. I really like this activity chooser.
The last thing I'll show you before we look at quizzes is one of the slickest new improvements.
Here's the name of my quiz. Suppose I want to rename this because I don't like this name.
I can just click on this little pencil icon and rename the quiz right here on this page.
I'll just call it quiz Chapter 1 and 2. Hit the enter key and it's renamed right here.
Now, if I want to actually edit the quiz, we have a new icon over here, a little pencil
on top of a gear, and that will let us edit this quiz. But to just change the name of
it, I click the little pencil icon. I can go in here and change the name, and there
we go. And you can change the name of anything here on your course page by using the little
pencil icon. It's really kind of a nice feature.
Finally I do want to go into a quiz and show you a new feature in quizzes, in fact, two
features in quizzes. I've edited a quiz here.
The first feature involves navigation method. You'll notice "free" or "sequential." Now,
free is what Moodle uses right now, what's been added is this sequential navigation method.
If you select "free," then students are free to go in the quiz and skip questions, they
can go backwards and forwards, they can go down to question eight go back to question
six and so forth. If you select sequential, however, students are forced to go question
by question in the same order that you've created your quiz. So, they start with question
one, they go to question two, and then question three. They cannot back up, they cannot skip,
they are forced to take your quiz in sequence. A lot of instructors have asked me for that
feature. I wish I could take credit for it, but I can't. But there it is. So, now if you
set up a quiz with, oh, I don't know, 20 questions, you can be assured that the students are going
to go from question one to question 20 without backing up or without skipping. It's a nice
little feature.
Now, the other feature (I'm scrolling back up on the page a bit), you can set up a time
limit for your quiz. Oh, let me set up a time limit of, whatever, 20 minutes. Now, what
happens at the end of that 20 minutes? Now, the way Moodle used to be is at the end of
20 minutes the quiz was automatically submitted. The student was done. But now, you have three
options. I'm going to click on this block; it says "when time expires, when I click on
it, we can open attempts, that is attempts that the students are still working on, are
simply closed and submitted automatically. That's what Moodle does right now. Next, there
is a grace period when open attempts can be submitted, but no more questions answered.
Oh, for example, suppose a student gets halfway through his quiz, he decides to stop, he goes
away, logs out, and while he is gone time expires. Now, when he comes back in and logs
back into Moodle, he clicks that quiz again, he gets a short grace period when he can submit
that quiz, but he cannot answer any more questions; he's done. But, he can go ahead and still
submit the quiz. Now, the third option to me is the most interesting. If you select
this then the student must complete the attempt before time expires or the quiz is not counted.
That means if I fool around and I take too long to finish my quiz I simply don't get
a score for that quiz. This is a very interesting feature and some instructors may like it.
I should point out to you, there is a timer at the top of the quiz page so the student's
always aware of how much time is left in the quiz, and the student simply must submit the
quiz before time expires or it doesn't count at all.
Now, that's about it, that's all for the new features of Moodle. Good luck with it, and
don't forget: help is only just a phone call or click away.