Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development - Fourth Edition

Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development - Fourth Edition

by Susan Smith Nash, William Rice
Released May 2018
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781788472197

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Book description

A complete guide on course development and delivery using Moodle 3.x

About This Book
  • Get the best out of the latest Moodle 3 framework to ensure successful learning
  • Gain experience in creating different kinds of courses
  • Create your first Moodle VR app using the Moodle VR toolset
Who This Book Is For

This book is for anyone who wants to get the best out of Moodle. As a beginner, this is a thorough guide for you to understand how the software works, with great ideas for getting off to a good start with your first course. Some experience of working with e-learning systems will be beneficial. Experienced Moodle users will find powerful insights into developing successful and educational courses.

What You Will Learn
  • Know what Moodle does and how it supports your teaching strategies
  • Install Moodle on your computer and navigate your way around it
  • Understand all of Moodle's learning features
  • Monitor how learners interact with your site using site statistics
  • Add multimedia content to your site
  • Allow students to enroll themselves or invite other students to join a course
In Detail

Moodle is a learning platform or Course Management System (CMS) that is easy to install and use, but the real challenge is in developing a learning process that leverages its power and maps the learning objectives to content and assessments for an integrated and effective course. Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development guides you through meeting that challenge in a practical way.

This latest edition will show you how to add static learning material, assessments, and social features such as forum-based instructional strategy, a chat module, and forums to your courses so that students reach their learning potential. Whether you want to support traditional class teaching or lecturing, or provide complete online and distance e-learning courses, this book will prove to be a powerful resource throughout your use of Moodle.

You'll learn how to create and integrate third-party plugins and widgets in your Moodle app, implement site permissions and user accounts, and ensure the security of content and test papers. Further on, you'll implement PHP scripts that will help you create customized UIs for your app. You'll also understand how to create your first Moodle VR e-learning app using the latest VR learning experience that Moodle 3 has to offer.

By the end of this book, you will have explored the decisions, design considerations, and thought processes that go into developing a successful course.

Style and approach

Packed with clear step-by-step instructions, plenty of screenshots, and thorough explanations, this book guides you through the many features and options that you have to choose from when using Moodle 3.

Publisher resources

View/Submit Errata

Table of contents

  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright and Credits
    1. Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development Fourth Edition
  3. Dedication
  4. Packt Upsell
    1. Why subscribe?
    2. PacktPub.com
  5. Contributors
    1. About the authors
    2. About the reviewers
    3. Packt is searching for authors like you
  6. Preface
    1. Who this book is for
    2. What this book covers
    3. To get the most out of this book
      1. Conventions used
    4. Get in touch
      1. Reviews
  7. A Guided Tour of Moodle
    1. Moodle's philosophy of learning
    2. A plan to create your learning site
    3. Step-by-step instructions to use Moodle
      1. Step 1 – Learning about the Moodle experience
      2. Step 2 – Installing Moodle
      3. Step 3 – Configuring your site
      4. Step 4 – Creating the framework for your learning site
      5. Step 5 – Making decisions about common settings
      6. Step 6 – Adding basic course material
      7. Step 7 – Making your courses interactive
      8. Step 8 – Evaluating your students
      9. Step 9 – Making your course social
      10. Step 10 – Adding collaborative activities
      11. Step 11 – Managing and extending your courses
      12. Step 12 – Taking the pulse of your course
      13. Applying the Moodle philosophy
        1. Adding static content
        2. Interactive and social course material
        3. Creating activities
    4. The Moodle experience
      1. The Moodle front page
        1. Arriving at the site
        2. Using moodlecloud.com
        3. The main menu
        4. Blocks
        5. The site description
        6. Available courses
      2. Inside a course
        1. The navigation bar
        2. Blocks
        3. The navigation block
        4. Sections
        5. Joining a discussion
        6. Completing a lesson
      3. Editing mode
      4. Normal mode versus editing mode
        1. The Edit icon
        2. The Delete icon
        3. The Hidden/Shown icons
        4. The Group icons
      5. Resources and activities
        1. Adding resources and activities
      6. The administration menu
    5. The Moodle architecture
      1. The Moodle application directory
      2. The Moodle data directory
      3. The Moodle database
    6. Summary
  8. Installing Moodle
    1. Installation step 1 – Requirements
      1. Hardware
        1. Disk space
        2. Bandwidth and data transfer limits
        3. Memory
        4. Ensuring minimum prerequisites
    2. Installation step 2 – Subdomain or subdirectory?
    3. Installation step 3 – Getting and unpacking Moodle
      1. Choosing a Moodle version
      2. The quick way – Upload and unzip
        1. Uploading and decompressing the ZIP file on the server
    4. Installation step 4 – Creating an empty database
    5. Installation step 5 – Creating the (moodledata) data directory
      1. Creating the database
    6. Installation step 6 – Installing Moodle
      1. Web-based installer
    7. Installation step 7 – Final configuration
    8. MoodleCloud basics
      1. Getting started with MoodleCloud
      2. MoodleCloud options
    9. Summary
  9. Configuring Your Site
    1. Being mindful of user experience
    2. On-premise versus MoodleCloud
    3. Preparing to experiment
      1. Creating test accounts
      2. Installing several browsers
    4. Exploring the site administration menu
      1. Configuring authentication methods
        1. Manual accounts and no login methods
          1. Manually creating a new user
          2. Suspending a user's account
        2. Enabling email-based self-registration
        3. Authenticating against an external source
          1. Connecting to an external database or server
          2. What happens when users are deleted from the external database?
          3. What happens when usernames are changed in the external database?
      2. Granting access to courses with enrollment choices
        1. Name
        2. Instances/enrollments
        3. Enable
        4. Up/down
        5. Settings
        6. Manual enrollments
          1. Manually enrolling a student in a course
        7. Guest access
          1. Enabling Guest access for a course
        8. Self enrolment
        9. Cohort sync
        10. Creating a cohort
          1. Adding users to a cohort
          2. Adding a user from the cohort page
          3. Adding a student using the bulk action method
        11. Enrolling a cohort in a course
        12. Category enrollments
        13. The flat file
          1. The file
          2. Student ID number required
          3. Course ID required
          4. Role
          5. Summary of flat files
        14. IMS Enterprise file
        15. LDAP
          1. External database
          2. External database connection
          3. Local field mappings
          4. Remote enrolment sync and creation of new courses
        16. PayPal
        17. Mnet remote enrollments (formerly Moodle networking)
      3. Language
        1. About language files
        2. Installing and enabling additional languages
          1. Installing additional languages
          2. Configuring the language
          3. Sitewide locale
          4. Excel encoding
        3. Offering courses in multiple languages
      4. Security settings
        1. The IP blocker – Limiting access to specific locations
        2. Site policies
          1. Protect usernames
          2. Forcing users to log in
          3. Forcing users to log in for profiles
          4. Open to Google
          5. Maximum uploaded file size
          6. Changing the limit on uploaded file size in PHP
          7. Changing the limit on uploaded file size in Apache
        3. Allowing embed and object tags
        4. HTTP security
          1. Using HTTPS for logins
          2. Running Moodle entirely from HTTPS
        5. Filters
          1. Activity names and glossary auto-linking filters
          2. Math filters
          3. Email protection filter
          4. Multimedia plugins
          5. Multi-language content
          6. Word censorship
          7. HTML tidy
      5. Configuring the front page
        1. How to use this section
        2. Front page settings page
          1. Full site name
          2. Front page items
          3. Using a topic section on the front page
          4. Show news items
      6. Backup
      7. Setting up the cron job
    5. Summary
  10. Creating Categories and Courses
    1. Planning based on your institution's mission and vision
    2. Using course categories and the user experience
      1. Displaying courses and categories on your front page
      2. Displaying an uncategorized list of courses on your front page
        1. Choosing the best option for your front page
          1. Creating course categories
          2. Rearranging course categories
    3. Creating courses
      1. Creating a new and blank course
    4. Enrolling teachers and students
      1. Assigning teachers
        1. How to set enrollment methods
    5. Handling course requests
      1. Enabling course requests
      2. Getting notified about course requests
        1. How to request a new course (teachers and students)
    6. Summary
  11. Resources, Activities, and Conditional Access
    1. Mapping your approach
    2. Identifying course goals and learning objectives
    3. Settings that are common to all resources and activities
    4. Adding a resource or activity
    5. Entering the name and description
    6. Showing and hiding a resource or an activity
    7. Setting the availability of a resource or an activity
      1. Using the visibility setting to show or hide a resource
      2. Using the ID number to include a resource in the grade book
      3. Restricting access
        1. Summary of the process to use completion conditions
          1. Creating the activities and resources that need to be completed
          2. Creating the activity completion settings
          3. Creating the activities or resources that will be restricted
          4. Setting the competency conditions
        2. Allowing students to see the activity or resource before they can access it
    8. Rearrange/move items on the course home page
    9. Summary
  12. Adding Resources
    1. Tying resources to course outcomes
    2. Adding different kinds of resources
    3. Adding URLs
      1. Display options – Embed, Open, and In pop-up
        1. Embed
        2. Open
        3. In pop-up
    4. Adding pages
      1. Adding a page to your course
      2. Adding images
        1. Inserting an image file
        2. Inserting a hot-linked picture into a Moodle page
        3. Pasting text
          1. Stripping out the formatting – Pasting plain text
        4. Pasting text from Microsoft Word
      3. Composing in an HTML editor and uploading to Moodle
      4. Learn more about HTML
    5. Adding files for your students to download
      1. When a student selects a file from the course
      2. File repositories
        1. Types of repositories
        2. Using file-sharing services to collaborate
        3. Using repositories to overcome Moodle's limit on file sizes
          1. Enabling the filesystem repository
          2. Creating the directory for the filesystem repository
          3. Uploading files to the filesystem repository
          4. Creating the filesystem repository in your course
    6. Adding media – Video and audio
      1. Adding video or audio to a page
    7. Organizing your course
      1. Name your topics
      2. Rearrange/move items on the course home page
      3. Giving directions and organization with labels
    8. Summary
  13. Adding Assignments, Lessons, Feedback, and Choices
    1. Instructional strategy
    2. Learning objectives
    3. Competency learning definitions
    4. Definitions
    5. Selecting assignments
    6. Understanding assignments
      1. What you can do with an assignment
        1. Types of work students can submit
          1. Submitting a digital file
          2. Requiring students to submit online text
          3. Submitting work done in the real world
      2. Submitting an assignment from the student's perspective
      3. Grading an assignment
      4. Receiving a grade for an assignment
        1. Allowing a student to resubmit an assignment
      5. Adding an assignment
        1. Availability
        2. Submission types
        3. Feedback types
        4. Submission settings
        5. Group submission settings
        6. Notifications
      6. Printer-friendly directions
      7. Indicating that assignments are mandatory
    7. Lesson
      1. Definition of a lesson
      2. Example of a simple lesson with remedial page jump
      3. Types of lesson pages
        1. Content pages
        2. Cluster with questions
        3. End of branch
      4. Planning, creating pages, and adding content
      5. Configuring lesson settings
        1. General settings
        2. Appearance
          1. File popup
          2. Display ongoing score
          3. Display left menu and minimum grade to display menu
          4. Maximum number of answers
          5. Use default feedback
          6. Link to next activity
        3. Prerequisite lesson
        4. The flow control
          1. Allow student review
          2. Provide option to try a question again
          3. Maximum number of attempts
          4. Number of pages to show
        5. Grade
        6. The Practice lesson
        7. Custom scoring
        8. Handling of retakes
        9. Minimum number of questions
        10. Adding the first lesson page
          1. Importing questions
          2. Adding a content page
          3. Adding a cluster
          4. Adding a question page
        11. Creating a question page
          1. Page Title
          2. Page Contents
          3. Answers
          4. Responses
          5. Jumps
          6. This Page
          7. Next or Previous Page
          8. Specific Pages
          9. Unseen question within a cluster
        12. Random question within a content page
        13. Creating pages and assigning jumps
        14. The flow of pages
        15. Editing the lesson
          1. Collapsed and expanded
          2. Rearranging pages
          3. Editing pages
          4. Adding pages
    8. Feedback
      1. Feedback isn't just for students
      2. Creating a feedback activity
      3. Question types
        1. Adding a page break
        2. Avoiding bots with captcha
        3. Inserting information
        4. Adding a label
        5. Creating a textbox for a longer text answer
        6. Displaying multiple-choice questions
        7. Creating multiple-choice questions
        8. The numeric answer
        9. The short-text answer
      4. Viewing feedback
        1. Seeing individual responses
        2. Analyzing responses with the Analysis tab
    9. Choice
      1. The student's point of view
      2. The teacher's point of view
        1. Limit
        2. Display Mode
        3. Publish results
        4. Privacy of results
        5. Allowing students to change their minds
    10. Summary
  14. Evaluating Students with Quizzes
    1. Developing graded assignments using quizzes
    2. Question banks
      1. Configuring quiz settings
        1. General
        2. Timing
        3. Grade
        4. Layout
        5. The question behavior
          1. Adaptive mode
          2. Interactive with multiple tries
          3. Immediate feedback
          4. Deferred feedback
          5. Each attempt builds on the last
        6. Review options
        7. Appearance
        8. Extra restrictions on attempts
          1. Techniques for greater security
        9. The overall feedback
        10. Common module settings
      2. Adding questions to a quiz
        1. Adding questions to the Question bank
          1. Moving questions between categories
          2. Managing the proliferation of questions and categories
          3. Creating and editing question categories
        2. Creating a question
        3. Question types
        4. Adding feedback to a question
          1. Types of feedback for a question
          2. Feedback for individual responses
          3. Feedback for a numeric question
      3. Adding the existing questions from the question bank
        1. Adding random questions to a quiz
        2. Maximum grade
          1. Grade for each question
          2. Changing the order of questions
        3. Preventing glossary auto-linking in quiz questions
        4. Preventing an open book quiz
    3. Mastery learning
      1. Competency Frameworks
      2. Certificates
      3. Badges
    4. Summary
  15. Getting Social with Chats and Forums
    1. A forum-based instructional strategy
    2. Learning from one another
    3. The Chat module
      1. The chat settings page
        1. The name of this chat room
        2. Description
        3. The next chat time and repeat/publish sessions
        4. Saving past sessions – Past sessions and everyone can view past sessions
      2. Preventing students from seeing one another's chats
    4. Creating and running forums
      1. Forum-based content delivery
      2. Forum-based assignments
      3. Forum-based peer review
      4. Forum-based review and link to assessments
      5. General purpose forum
      6. Using the news forum to send notifications
      7. Multiple forums
      8. Forum settings
        1. General settings
          1. The forum name
          2. The forum description
          3. The forum type
          4. The maximum attachment size
          5. The maximum number of attachments
          6. The display word count
          7. The subscription mode
          8. Read tracking
        2. Post threshold to block settings
        3. Ratings
    5. Summary
  16. Collaborating with Wikis and Glossaries
    1. Using collaboration as an instructional strategy
    2. Glossary
      1. Enabling glossaries and auto-linking
        1. Enabling glossaries for your site
        2. Enabling auto-linking
          1. Enabling auto-linking for the site
          2. Enabling auto-linking for the course
          3. Enabling auto-linking for the activity or resource
      2. Adding and configuring a glossary
        1. The global glossary versus local glossary
        2. The main glossary versus secondary glossary
        3. Entries approved by default
        4. Always allow editing and Duplicate entries allowed
        5. Allowing comments
        6. Automatically linking glossary entries
        7. Appearance settings
        8. Enabling ratings
      3. Adding glossary entries
      4. Importing and exporting entries
    3. Wiki
      1. Using a wiki for student contributions and explanations of a topic
      2. Using a wiki to create a list of judging criteria for evaluating a competition
      3. Planning collaborative projects – Using the wiki type and groups mode to determine who can edit a wiki
        1. Event planning
        2. Business plan for a start-up
      4. Using the wiki type and groups mode to determine who can edit a wiki
      5. The first-page name
      6. The Default format
    4. Summary
  17. Running a Workshop
    1. Why use a workshop?
    2. When are group project-based workshops best?
    3. Workshop strategies
      1. Peer assessment of submissions
      2. The timing of submissions and assessments
      3. The four questions
    4. The four phases
      1. The setup phase – The edit settings page
        1. Name and description
        2. Grading settings
          1. The grading strategy
        3. The Submission settings
        4. Assessment settings
        5. Feedback settings
        6. Example submissions settings
        7. Availability settings
        8. The edit assessment form page
        9. Adding an example to the workshop
      2. The submission phase – Students submit their work
        1. Allocating submissions
      3. The assessment phase
      4. The grading evaluation phase
      5. The closed phase
    5. Summary
  18. Groups and Cohorts
    1. Groups versus cohorts
    2. Cohorts
      1. Creating a cohort
      2. Adding students to a cohort
        1. Manually adding and removing students to a cohort
        2. Adding students to a cohort in bulk – Upload
      3. Cohort sync
        1. Enabling the cohort sync enrollment method
        2. Adding the cohort sync enrollment method to a course
        3. Unenroll a cohort from a course
        4. Differences between cohort sync and enrolling a cohort
    3. Managing students with groups
      1. Course versus activity
      2. The three group modes
      3. Creating a group
        1. Manually creating and populating a group
        2. Automatically creating and populating a group
        3. Importing groups
    4. Summary
  19. Extending Your Course by Adding Blocks
    1. Defining a block
      1. Uses of blocks
        1. Examples of blocks in action
    2. Configuring where a block appears
    3. Standard blocks
      1. The Activities block
      2. The Blog menu block
      3. The Blog tags block
      4. The CALENDAR block
      5. The comments block
      6. The Course completion block
      7. Course/site summary
      8. The Courses block
      9. The FEEDBACK block
      10. The HTML block
      11. The Latest News block
      12. The Logged in user block
      13. The Messages block
      14. The My latest badges block
      15. The My private files block
      16. The Online users block
      17. The quiz results block
      18. The Random glossary entry block
      19. The recent activity block
      20. The Remote RSS feeds block
      21. The Search Forums block
      22. Section links
      23. The Upcoming Events block
    4. Summary
  20. Features for Teachers
    1. Logs and reports
      1. Viewing course logs
      2. Viewing live logs
      3. Viewing activity reports
      4. The participation report
      5. Using activity tracking
      6. Viewing grades
      7. Categorizing grades
        1. Viewing grade categories
        2. Creating grade categories
          1. To create a grade category
          2. To assign an item to a grade category
      8. Using extra credit
        1. Weighting a category
      9. Compensating for a difficult category
    2. Summary
  21. Other Books You May Enjoy
    1. Leave a review - let other readers know what you think

Product information

  • Title: Moodle 3 E-Learning Course Development - Fourth Edition
  • Author(s): Susan Smith Nash, William Rice
  • Release date: May 2018
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781788472197