Faculty LMS Orientation
Welcome. The AIU ODeL Department uses the Moodle (LMS) Learning management system to facilitate elearning initiatives at the university.
Generally, in the Moodle LMS, a lecturer has responsibility for the materials in their own course. They often also manage enrolments and are able to change the layout of the course page.
This quick start orientation guide introduces the ODeL portals (Moodle's) features to those with the Lecturer/Teacher role.
On this page the following areas have been covered : (Screenshots and videos have been provided) For quick access to the areas You may click on the item you need to start with or scroll down to access it.
Adding Content (Resources) to Your Course
Adding Activities to Your Course
Enrolling Participants to Your Course
Navigation Tray and the Course Management Panel
AIU Online Course Expectations
The university has a few basic requirement for its online courses. It is thus expected that all courses hosted on this platform should have the followings:
- Course overview : Introducing and Indicating the main purpose of the course
- General course objectives : At least 4 to 6
- Course outline or syllabus in ether PDF, Word or HTML formats
- The Lecturer's contacts : email and/or phone contact
- General Expectations of what the students are expected to do.
- Core Resources : shared resources that can be used in a number of topics or entire course
- Introductory Course Forums : Introduction forum;Q and A Forum;Latest news Forum – For lecturer to post
- Core Assignments: Assignments needing more than a few weeks to prepare
- Ten to fourteen subdivisions/sections (Could be Weeks or Lessons or Topics).
- A course evaluation
Accessing Your Course(s)
- Accessing your courses required that you login with your university credentials
- Once you login to Moodle, your course(s) should appear in the center of the page under My courses. For students only the current semester's courses are typically visible; for faculty you will see the current/active semester's courses first.
- You can also find your courses in the left column under My Courses, or in your Dashboard where your full list of courses will be displayed under the heading "Course Overview".
NOTE : if you do not see a course site for one of your current courses, please contact your departmental admin or the ODeL office . It is possible that your course.
Editing Your Course
Your course site(s) can be organized in either weekly or topics format. The default format is weekly. Your course will automatically have a block, or section, for each week of the semester. Relevant readings, assignments, etc. can be placed together within each week's block.
The topics format allows you to organize your content around topics, with a block, or section, for each topic.
This subdivisions/Sections usually take the format below
- A Topic
- Expected learning outcomes for topic
- Instructions on how to proceed with/ or use the resources provided thereafter.
- Resources: could be in any of the following format of Lecture Notes, Videos, Readings, Interactive Content (HTML5/ SCORMS/ IMS content packages/H5P), Book, Links etc.)
- Activities : ( Assignments, Discussion Forums, Quizzes, )
VIDEO : Editing the Course Sections
Adding Content (Resources) to Your Course
A resource is an item that a teacher can use to support learning, such as a file or link. Our portal based on Moodle supports a range of resource types which teachers can add to their courses. In edit mode, a teacher can add resources via the 'Add an activity or resource' link.
Resources appear as a single link with an icon in front of it that represents the type of resource.
Popular resource types at AIU include: Files, Folders, Urls, Labels and Pages.
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- File - A picture, a pdf document, a spreadsheet, a sound file, a video file
- Folder - For helping organize files and one folder may contain other folders
- Label - Can be a few displayed words or an image used to separate resources and activities in a topic section, or can be a lengthy description or instructions
- Page - The student sees a single, scrollable screen that a teacher creates with the robust HTML editor
- URL - You can send the student to any place they can reach on their web browser, for example Wikipedia
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Introductory Video : How to add Content
Video : How to add Files
VIDEO : How to add URLs
VIDEO: Adding Pages (Web Pages)
VIDEO : How to add Labels
Adding Activities to Your Course
An activity is a general name for a group of features in a Moodle course. Usually an activity is something that a student will do that interacts with other students and or the teacher.
In our LMS (Learning management system) terminology, an Activity, such as Forums or Quizzes, properly means something students can contribute to directly, and is often contrasted to a Resource such as a File or Page, which is presented by the teacher to them.
There are 14 different types of activities in the portal that can be found when the editing is turned on and the link 'Add an activity or resource' is clicked.
AT AIU, three types of activities are heavily relied on. These are
- Assignments : Enable teachers to grade and give comments on uploaded files and assignments created on and off line
- Forum : Allows participants to have asynchronous discussions
- Quizzes : Allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, which may be automatically marked and feedback and/or to correct answers shown
Adding Assignments:
The assignment activity provides a space into which students can submit work for teachers to grade and give feedback on. This saves on paper and is more efficient than email. It can also be used to remind students of 'real-world' assignments they need to complete offline, such as art work, and thus not require any digital content.
Student submissions are together on one screen of your course. You can require them to submit one or several files and/or to type text essays. It is possible to have them submit work as a group and you can also choose as a teacher to grade their work 'blind' in other words not to see the identities of those who have submitted assignments. Assignments can have deadlines and cut off dates - which you can also extend if necessary.
Video : How to add an Assignment
Adding forums:
The forum activity allows students and teachers to exchange ideas by posting comments as part of a 'thread'. Files such as images and media maybe included in forum posts. The lecturer can choose to grade and/or rate forum posts and it is also possible to give students permission to rate each others' posts.
VIDEO: Overview of the Forum activity
Enrolling Participants to Your Course
The process of adding students to courses is called Enrolment. This is different from adding users to the site, which is known as Authentication. There are various methods of enrolling students into courses, once they have logged in to Moodle.
A teacher can view, activate, add and remove the enrolment methods within their course from the Enrolment methods link accessed either from the gear menu in the nav drawer Participants link, or from the More link in the course gear menu (or in Course administration > Users in the Administration block if you are using a theme other than Boost). It may also be the case that the students are automatically enrolled into the course by an administrative process, and the teacher does not need to do anything.
Self enrollment
From this semester onward, we are implementing the self enrollment feature for all courses.
NB:
The enrollment key or password is currently Jan2020
Before students enroll, they should ensure that they have booked for the course in the student portal
Enrollment period starts - 7th January and ends - 31st January 2020
To self enroll, students are asked to follow the instructions below :
Visit the ODeL portal and Login into your account
Navigate to the current semester via the top menu : Programmes and Courses > Current Semester (https://elearning.aiu.ac.ke/course/index.php?categoryid=377)
Navigate to the course category hosting your course eg, BACP, BADS etc
Click on the course you wish to enroll into
Add the enrollment key and click on the "enroll me" button to complete the enrollment.
The Navigation Block & the Course Administration Panel
Last modified: Thursday, 19 March 2020, 7:45 PM