Center for Teaching and Learning
Moodle for lecturers
Topics
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Registering and logging in
You can access the Moodle learning platform of the Viadrina via the link https://moodle.europa-uni.de. By clicking on the “Dashboard” or “Login”, the registration mask will open. Please register with your registration details of your centralised Viadrina staff account (<mustermann>@europa-uni.de). In the event of questions and problems, please contact elearning-support@europa-uni.de.
Navigating around Moodle
The navigation bar can be shown and hidden by clicking on the “Hamburger” symbol (top left). In the menu you can find:
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Working with courses
A Moodle course is automatically created for lecturers at the Viadrina, if this was stated in the announcement of the course via Viacampus.
Lecturers are entered in the course in the role of “Trainer” and can make changes there. If your course cannot be found in your Dashboard (in the “Course overview”), please contact the IKMZ: elearning-support@europa-uni.de
Providing work material and activities
A course is an area where the lecturer provides the course attendees with work material and activities. This could be a simple page with documents to download or a complex collection of activities which enable learning by interacting.
The progress of learning can be documented in different ways. The course side comprises individual sections that contain the learning objectives.
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| You can change your course at any time. To do so, click on the Settings symbol at the top right. |
Adjusting settings in edit mode
The “Turn editing on” option takes you to ‘edit’ mode. This is for editing course content to post, for example, material or activities (PDFs, images, surveys, ...)
You can find all important settings in a course behind the “Settings” symbol (top right).
- There you will find the general Edit settings (title, course begin, course format, course visible, course description, course image, ..).
- Backup, restore, reset – this is for saving courses to your own PC and to be able to use them in part or in their entirety later. There are separate instructions for this
- You can access User management (enrolled users, methods of enrolling, groups) via “More”. Click on the “Users” tab.
- You can also find the Question collections and the Course assessment under “More…”.
Selecting course formats
You can choose from five different formats within the course settings:
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Stipulating the method of enrolment for students
Stipulate the way students can enrol for your course. You have 2 options:
- Let the students enrol in the course themselves (with or without a password)
- You add each individual student
You can stipulate this configuration under ‘Course administration’. To get there, click on the Settings symbol and then click on ‘More’. Click on the Users tab.
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Select the ‘Enrolment methods’. |
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In the following window, you can select the desired enrolment method under ‘Add method’.
| Important: More than one method is possible at one given time. If you only wish to allow one method, remove, or deactivate the other enrolment methods in the list above the recycle bin symbol or the settings symbol. Deactivated methods are listed in light grey. |
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Granting editing rights to students
A user’s rights are connected to their role. Each Moodle user has at least one of the following rights:
- Teacher – is permitted to manage courses and course content (and grant all roles stated below)
- Non-editing Teacher – is permitted to make assessments in courses but not permitted to make changes to the course or the course content.
- Hidden Teacher – is permitted to manage course and course contents (is displayed in the course as “without role”).
- Students – can access a course and participate in course activities.
Lecturers usually have the Teacher role.
| In order to change editing rights, click on the pencil symbol next to the desired person, then on the triangle and select the desired role. Only roles that have not already been assigned are available for selection. |
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Creating the course page
The way students see a course page can ab altered and reviewed in various ways. First go to ‘Edit mode’ by selecting ‘Turn editing on’.
Adding elements
You add new elements as ‘Blocks’. You can place the likes of a calendar above it in the right-hand column of your course page. To do so, select the desired course in the ‘Hamburger’ menu and click underneath the course description on ‘Add block’.
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| A list of elements that can be scrolled will open up, which you can add to the right column. In this case, select ‘Calendar’. |
| You can put the elements in the right-hand column in any order by clicking and holding the mouse on the cross symbol and placing the element where you want it to be. Further configurations can be made via the Settings symbol in each element. |  |
Creating a new topic
If you have selected the topic format in your course page, then you can easily add further topics directly in the course page. To do so, scroll down to the end of the topic list and select ‘Add topic.
Reviewing the way the students see the course page
| In order the check how your course is displayed to the students, you can put yourself in their shoes. To do so, click on the triangular symbol next to your name and then select ‘Switch role to .... Your course will now be displayed the way the students see it. By returning to ‘Initial role’, you can return to your role in the same place. |  |
Providing materials
If you wish to provide students with materials, please proceed as follows:
- ‘Turn editing on’ and select the desired course. In the course, select the desired section ‘Add an activity or resource’.
- Select from a wide range of activities and work materials and click on ‘add’. A window will open where you can state further details (title, description, etc.). After clicking on ‘Save’, your addition will appear on the course interface.
Creating assignments and assessing submitted work
An assignment is a Moodle activity that you can create in a course. To create an assignment, first navigate over the Dashboard to one of your courses. ‘Turn editing on’ and add an activity – an ‘Assignment’
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Give the assignment a name, describe the task and state the method the students are to submit their solution. |
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Make further settings (deadline, feedback options, etc.) and check in particular the assignment settings (declaration of originality, number of attempts, etc.). Please also stipulate the means of assessment |
Assessing assignments
| After the students have submitted their solutions, you can assess the assignments submitted. To do so, click on the assignment on the course page and click on ‘View all submissions’. |
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You can view individual submitted assignments, download all submitted assignments, add notes to uploaded files, assess work, and leave feedback as a comment or file. Do not forget to save everything when finished.
Giving students access to a course
A Moodle course is automatically accessible for students via the university calender thanks to the cross-linking with ViaCampus. The courses should thus be visible when the university calendar is published. For future attendees to then be able to find your course, you will first have to make it ‘visible’. To do so, click on the ‘Settings’ symbol in the course and then on “Settings”. In the page that opens up, select the option “Show” (instead of “Hide”) under “Course visibility”. The course can now be seen by Moodle users in the navigation bar and found in the search bar.
Hiding parts of the course
Not only the entire course but also individual parts of the course can be shown or hidden. You can first prepare the topics before making them visible. To do so, ‘Turn editing on’. The selection menu “Edit” now appears in each section of the course
With courses in a topic format, you can find the following entries in this menu
- Edit topic
- Highlight
- Hide section, and
- Delete topic
With courses in a weekly format, the menu entries are
- Edit week
- Hide week, and
- Delete week
If you select “Hide”, this section of the course can no longer be seen by the students.
Communicating in forums
Forums in the scope of a course are for students to communicate. This communication can be set up as one-sided (announcement) or two-sided (discussion).
There are two different types of forums:
- Forum for announcements: Lecturers communicate important information to the course participants such as the short-notice cancellation of a lecture. Each participant receives these forum posts also obligatory by e-mail. Students cannot reply to the announcements or even write their own posts. A forum for announcements is automatically available in every course.
- Forum for communication: There are forums for discussions, explanations, questions, as well as for sending files, in which all course participants create posts and where others can respond. It is even possible to upload files.
Adding a communication forum
To add a communication forum, proceed as follows:
‘Turn editing on’ and click in the main filed of the course on “Add an activity or resource”. and select “Forum”. In the following page, select “Standard forum for general use” as forum type. This way, students can post answers and create their own posts. Via “Subscription and Tracking”, you can stipulate whether students should receive an obligatory e-mail (makes sense with announcements of forums).
Managing access to forums
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If you would like to manage access to a forum via additional criteria, then select in the area “Edit forum” the option ‘Restrict Access’. Tip: A combination of requirements can quickly become confusing. Therefore, use this function with reservation and care. |
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Posts
Forums in courses also provide a range of functions like you are probably aware of from your experience of the Internet. Only the general functions the lecturer should know are presented here.
Click on the forum (speech bubble or text) you want to work in.
Reading the post and replying
Click on the topic you want to open and then click on “Reply” (on the right). A box will appear for you to type in your reply.
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To add a file (e.g. PDF), click in the Attachment box on “Files”. The post can be sent by clicking “Post to forum”.. |
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Creating a post
Click on “Add a new discussion topic”. A new window will open. What you write in “Subject” is what will appear in the “Topic” column.
If you write a new post (new topic), this will not be sent until after a delay of 30 minutes (note on this in the green highlighted box). This is how long you have time to change or delete your post.
Subscribing to forums
Click on the settings symbol and select “Subscribe to this forum”. A green highlighted box will appear that says that you will receive the forum by e-mail in the future. You can also change the settings again here.
In the role as trainer AND student, you will receive all posts from the forum by e-mail. You will then know whether and when they have arrived.
Backing up and restoring courses
Old Moodle courses are automatically archived by the IKMZ. Lecturers and students always have access to the latest semester courses and those of the previous semester. This makes Moodle quicker and only the latest lectures can be found in the search bar. If you need content from older Moodle courses, this can only be done with the help of the IKMZ unless you backed up your courses yourself.
To have access to your own courses at all times, you can conduct a backup yourself of each course and save it to your PC. The course can be imported into the Moodle system at a later time and be used in full or in part.
User-related data such as forum posts or uploaded homework assignments can be deleted via the “reset” function before being reused.
Backing up a course
- Open the course you want to backup and click on ‘Backup’ via the Settings symbol. On the next page, you decide which data and activities are to be saved. You may have to go through several pages (click on ‘Next’ each time).
- In principle, you can backup all files and settings. For data protection reasons, this function does not apply to “Enrolled users”.
- After selecting, you can take another look at the entries you have made. A “Green tick” signalises that the activity is contained in the backup
- By clicking on “Perform backup” (at the very bottom), you confirm your data entries and perform the backup.
- You can save the backup file via “Download” as a file on your computer. You can restore the backed-up course file from all of your Moodle courses in Moodle and use them in part or in full.
Restoring a course
You can restore your backups within the course area as a new course or merely as individual topics or activities. To do so, select an existing course where you wish to restore the data of a backed-up course. You can also create a new course that is initially empty. Then select ‘Restore’ via the Settings symbol.
If the desired backup is still in the following list, simply click on “Restore”.
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If you want to restore a backup that you have downloaded onto your computer, then drag & drop the corresponding file into the ‘Import backup file’ box. Alternatively, you can also select the file in the ‘Select file’ option to upload your backup file into Moodle. Select ‘Restore’ after uploading it. |
You can now see an overview of all backup details. Click on “Continue” at the bottom of the page.
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Now select which course the backup file is to be restored to and whether the previously available information of the two courses are to be “pooled” or whether the information in the selected course is to be deleted and replaced by the backup copy. Therefore. Select either
- ‘Merge the backup course into this course’ or
- ‘Delete the contents of this course and then restore’.
| If you have created a new course particularly for the restored file, then remain in the currently open course. All you need to do now is check the following steps and confirm with “Continue”. |
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Removing personal data: Resetting a course
In order to be able to reuse a restored course, all personal data of users should be removed. To do this, there is the ‘Reset course’ function. You will also find this function by clicking on the course Settings symbol.
Select ‘Reset’.
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On the following page, select which people should be removed from the course via the ‘Roles’ category. |
All user-specific course data is deleted. This applies to all forum posts, votes and other content by authors who belong to this role in this course.
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| Confirm your entries with “Reset course”. You will arrive at the next page where all changes are listed. By clicking on “Continue”, the course is reset according to your requirements. |
Afterwards, please check in the course whether all desired data has been deleted.
Show EvaExam tests in Moodle
If you create tests in EvaExam, you can also see them in Moodle. Click on 'My Exam Dashboard' in your Moodle dashboard to see the list of exams you have created.
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| Students can view their exam results in the same place as soon as they are available. |