Faculty Introduction to Moodle 2.7

1. Locate Moodle You can access Moodle 2.7 three locations:

1. Type directly into your browser: moodle2.lakeforest.edu

2. Enter through my.lakeforest.edu

3. Enter through the Quick Links menu on lakeforest.edu

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2. Log in to Moodle 2.7

1. Log into Moodle with your Lake Forest College credentials. You should not use the .mx.lakeforest.edu extension in your Username.

2. After logging in with your Lake Forest College credentials, you can see your courses by clicking “My Courses” on the left side:

3. Similarly to the previous version of Moodle, you can “Turn editing on”

in the upper right-hand corner.

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4. Click on “Participants,” and see “Enrolled Users.”

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3. Blocks

1. Blocks Overview

Blocks are items which may be added to the left or right column of your course. Available Blocks include:

2. To add new blocks to your course, after clicking “Turn editing on” on, you can select a block on the bottom left side of page. Quickmail is a very useful block and many people add it to their course page:

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3. Add a Quickmail Block to your course by selecting and clicking on “Quickmail” in the “Add a Block” dropdown menu.

4. Once your Quickmail Block is installed, you can email your entire class or selected participants. Just click on “Compose New Email” and follow the prompts.

5. Moving Blocks up and down and around the perimeter of your course is much easier and faster in Moodle 2.7

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6. Just use your mouse to click on a block and hold it until you see the 4-way arrow instead of your regular cursor.

7. Hold down your mouse and wait for the block to fade in color.

8. Now you can drag the block to any location surrounding the body of your course. Once you decide where you want to place the block, release your mouse. NOTE: Some browsers do not support this feature. You can always click on the edit icon in the block and manually select where you would like the block to appear.

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4. Docking

1. A new feature of Moodle 2.x is the “docking” feature. You can move blocks to the side of the navigation to free up space in your browser. Click to dock, then click again to bring back to standard view:

2. Now you see that Quickmail is a tab on the dock, rather than a Block on the perimeter of your course.

3. Click once on the Quickmail tab to see the mailing options.

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4. To remove an item from the Dock, simply click on the icon below the tab. In this instance, Quickmail will appear in Block format again.

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5. Edit Course Page

1. Turn editing on:

2. Notice that you can edit the text label of each item directly to the right by clicking the pencil icon. There are more editing features available from the “Edit” drop down to the right of each item.

3. You can also edit your course settings. Click on this link under the “Settings” Block on the left side of your course.

4. The “Edit course settings” screen will pop up:

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5. You must enter information into all fields marked with a red apostrophe. When you are finished making changes, click on the “Save Changes” box at the bottom of the screen:

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6. Import Old Course Data

1. Click on “Import” under the “Settings” Block and use the radial button to select a course from which you want to import data. Click “Continue.”

2. Use the check boxes to decide which type of items to import.

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3. Finally, once the Import is complete, click “Continue” to return to your course with the imported items.

7. Adding Resources Overview

1. Resources are items you want to show to, or share with, your course participants and they display in the center blocks of your course page. To add a resource, click on “+Add an activity or resource” which appears on the right side of each segment in the middle of your course page.

2. These are the resources you can add in Moodle 2.7. Click on the radial button next to the resource you want to add in a specific week or topic in your course.

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3. Once you select an item by clicking the radial dial next to it, you are given information about the feature to the right. The example below explains what the Book module is.

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8. The “File Picker” and Uploading Files

1. A new feature in Moodle 2.x is the “File Picker.” Faculty and students will use the file picker to upload and organize files in areas called “Repositories.” In our old version of Moodle, if a file was used in multiple courses, it was duplicated. Now, files are no longer uploaded to the course to be used later. Instead, all files must be attached to an activity or resource and are uploaded when this content is created. The Files System is connected to the Repository system, and a File Picker which makes it easy to browse external and internal repositiories for files. The easiest way to handle this change is Don’t worry about where your files are – just let Moodle 2.7 handle it.

2. Adding a file in Moodle 2.7 is a lot easier! You can simply drag and drop your file into your course using the add a resource and file dialogue boxes. First, click

3. Next, choose “File.”

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4. Now simply drag your file to the area with the blue down arrow.

5. Once your file is uploaded, your screen will look like this:

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6. At the bottom of the screen select “Save and return to course.”

7. This is how your file upload will look in the course. It was added as a resource in Topic 7. Because the eye is closed, students are not yet able to view this file. You could add course material to Moodle in advance of when you will cover it simply by keeping it hidden with the eye until you want students to view it.

8. You could also add a file from a Repository. Follow steps 2 and 3 above, but this time, click on this:

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9. Then choose which Repository to browse:

10. Notice there is a repository for “Private files.” This is an area for you to store files and make it easier to use the same files in more than one course without having to upload them into each course. Entire zip files can be uploaded and extracted into the private files area.

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9. Folders

1. To add a folder that already exists into your course follow instructions 2 and 3 in section 8 of this guide, except choose “Folder.” You will then see this screen:

2. Click on “Add” and browse to a folder you want to upload. Select a folder by clicking it.

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3. Once you have selected a folder, this is how it will appear in your course:

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10. Activity Chooser Overview

1. Another new feature in Moodle 2.x is the “Activity chooser” which displays information about all activities and resources. To activate the “Activity chooser” simply click this

You can always turn this feature off if you like the traditional way of adding items: