Moodle at EPFL

Patrick Jermann et David Brechet

February 13, 2007

Contents

1 Moodle at EPFL 4

1.1 Foreword . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.2 Course creation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

1.3 Login . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

2 Frequent Administration Tasks 8

2.1 Who has access to the course ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9

2.2 How can I add an invited student by hand ? . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.3 How can I add teachers ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

2.4 How can I login as a student ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

2.5 How can I create groups ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3 Resources 13

3.1 How to use resources ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

3.2 Copyrighted material . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

4 Assignments 16

4.1 When and how to use assignments ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.1.1 De�ning what you expect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

4.1.2 Providing feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4.2 Con�guration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

4.2.1 General Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

4.2.2 Additional Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

5 Forums 22

5.1 When to use forums ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

5.2 General guidelines . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

5.3 Con�guration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

6 Quizzes and Questionnaires 25

6.1 When and how to use quizzes and questionnaires ? . . . . . . . . 25

7 Project Format 27

7.1 Con�guration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

7.2 Advanced topics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31

8 Enrolments and IS-Academia 33

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9 Using Modules 36

9.1 Collecting assignments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369.1.1 Assignment (Devoir) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 369.1.2 Database (Base de données) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

9.2 Communication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379.2.1 Forums . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379.2.2 Chat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38

9.3 Testing knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389.3.1 Quizzes (Test) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389.3.2 Choice (Sondage) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399.3.3 Questionnaire (Questionnaire) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

9.4 Managing time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399.4.1 Scheduler (Consultation) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

9.5 Building knowledge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399.5.1 Glossary (Glossaire) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 399.5.2 Wikis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 409.5.3 Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40

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Chapter 1

Moodle at EPFL

1.1 Foreword

According to the guidelines de�ned in EPFL's eLearning strategy1, we do notenforce the use of one particular Learning Management System (LMS). Never-theless, in order to grant easy access to basic eLearning tools to a large numberof teachers, Moodle was progressively introduced at EPFL since the summersemester 2005. The deployment of Moodle at EPFL is still in a growing phase:it is currently hosting over 200 courses, with an average of 1000 visits per day.We expect this number to increase during the coming years.

Figure 1.1: Visits to http://moodle.ep�.ch/. The top month since the intro-duction of Moodle at EPFL was November 2006 (27809 visits).

1.2 Course creation

To get your course online, simply write an email to housekeeper@moodle.ep�.ch(this address is an alias for Patrick.Jermann@ep�.ch and David.Brechet@ep�.ch)by specifying a title, a short description, the list of teachers (and assistants) andyour preferred course format (topic, weekly, social, project based).

• The topic format resembles the structure of a book where one sectioncorresponds to one topic of the course.

1http://craftwww.ep�.ch/learntech/docs/StrategieTechnologiesFormation-14-111.pdf

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• The weekly format resembles the structure of a calendar where one sectioncorresponds to one week of the course.

• The social format simply consists of a single discussion forum withoutcontent sections.

• The project format is similar to the topics and weekly formats, but al-lows teachers to de�ne arbitrary durations for the sections (called projectphases in this context). A simple gantt chart, showing project phases anddeliverables is automatically displayed at the top of the course (see detailson page 27).

1.3 Login

Login for Moodle at EPFL is based on Tequila2, the identity management sys-tem used (and developed) in our institution. Among other things, it will allowfor a single sign-on authentication, meaning that once you logged in for oneof EPFL's administrative services, you don't have to retype your password toaccess other services.

Figure 1.2: The main page from http://moodle.ep�.ch/. The login link islocated in the upper right corner of the window.

2http://tequila.ep�.ch

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EPFL members

Use your GASPAR username and password to login to Moodle. If you don'tknow what your username is, go to: http://www.ep�.ch/cgi-bin/csoldap, andsearch for yourself. Your username is printed in the query result under `User-name'.

Members from outside EPFL

Members from Swiss universities

Members from Swiss universities can be authenticated via the AAI Authentica-tion and Authorization Infrastructure3 provided by Switch to the institutions ofhigher education in Switzerland. Students from other Swiss universities simplychoose their institution from a pull-down menu (See 1.3) and use the accountfrom their home institution to login to Moodle.

Figure 1.3: The login screen allows users from outside EPFL to select theirhome institution during login.

3 http://www.switch.ch/aai/

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Guests from elsewhere

EPFL-Guest accounts can be created for external students and teachers whoparticipate in a course at EPFL. To create guests by yourself, use the serviceprovided at https://guests.ep�.ch. Guests can also create an account by them-selves. People who have an EPFL-Guest account automatically have access toMoodle and can act as a regular EPFL member.

If you want to create accounts for a large number of students from an externalinstitution, write to housekeeper@moodle.ep�.ch to arrange for a solution.

Demonstration Courses

Several demonstration courses are available: a topic based course4, a project-based course5.

Demonstration accounts

You can test the teacher and student roles in Moodle by clicking on the corre-sponding buttons on the Moodle main page (http://moodle.ep�.ch/).

4http://moodle.ep�.ch/course/view.php?id=85http://moodle.ep�.ch/course/view.php?id=12

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Chapter 2

Frequent Administration

Tasks

Many parameters can be set to control the behavior of your online course. We donot want to explain all of them here, as many parameters come with meaningfuldefault values (Details are available at Moodle's online documentation1). Hence,we only cover the basic and most important topics here. To access the settingsof your course, click on the `Settings' link as illustrated in 2.1.

Figure 2.1: The Administration block appears on the left side of the screen.Follow the `Settings' link to �ne tune the settings of your course.

1http://docs.moodle.org/en/Course_settings

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2.1 Who has access to the course ?

Controlling access to the course is somewhat complex and may be tricky forbeginners. The settings that a�ect access are available from the AdministrationBlock (follow the �Settings� link).

There are two categories of users:

• people who have a Moodle account (this includes EPFL members, mem-bers of Swiss Universities as well as people who have an EPFL-Guestsaccount as de�ned with http://guests.ep�.ch/)

• guests (all the others).

Enrolment key

The enrolment key is a �course� password that allows guests or people with aMoodle account to sign-up to the course.

• EMPTY Enrolment Key. Any user who has a Moodle account (EPFLmembers and EPFL-Guests) can sign-up to your course. If you set GuestAccess to �without the key� (see paragraph below), even guests can sign-upto your course.

• FILLED Enrolment Key. Restricts access to the course to the people whoknow the key. You typically announce the key during the �rst class. Usershave to type the key only once, when �rst trying to access the course.

Guest access

Three possibilities exist concerning guest access. Remember that guests have`read-only' access to your course and can only access the resources, and read fo-rum messages. Guests can neither submit assignments, nor can they participateto quizzes.

• without the key. Anybody, even without a Moodle account can accessyour course. Use this setting if you want to share your Moodle coursewith everybody. With this setting, Google and other search engines willbe able to enter your course and index its content.

• with the key. Guests can access the course, given that they have theenrolment key. See the comments about the �Enrolment key� above.

• no. Only people who have a local Moodle account can access the course.

IS-Academia ID number

Based on a special ID number, we can allow students who registered for thecourse through IS-Academia to enter the course without typing the enrolmentkey. Ask housekeeper@moodle.ep�.ch to �ll in the ID number. See more detailsabout this functionality on page 33.

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Hiding the course

The course can be hidden from students during the preparation phase. The�Availability� parameter lets you choose between:

• This course is available to students. Students can see and enroll to thecourse.

• This course is not available to students. The course is hidden to thestudents, which means that only teachers can see and access it.

2.2 How can I add an invited student by hand ?

1. Follow the �Students� link in the Administration Block.

2. Select the students you want to add from the list of potential students (onthe right side in �gure 2.2)

3. Use the arrows to move them to the list of enrolled students (on the leftside in �gure 2.2).

4. If the students do not appear in the list of potential students, it is verylikely that they never logged in. Hence, you have to ask the person tologin to Moodle a �rst time (see �Login� section on page 1.2).

Figure 2.2: This con�guration screen shows side by side, all students who areenrolled to your course (on the left side) and the potential new students (on theright side)

2.3 How can I add teachers ?

Teachers have special privileges in a course. They can edit the content of thecourse, add and remove resources, distribute grades and feedback, etc. Here is

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how you can select additional teachers (assistants, invited speakers, etc.) whohave access to your course:

1. Open the �Teachers� link from the Administration Block.

2. Search for the person you want to add as a teacher. If you don't �nd thenew teachers, it is very likely that they never logged in. Hence, you haveto ask the person to login to Moodle a �rst time. See �Login� section onpage 1.2.

3. Once you have found the person by doing a search on his/her name, youcan click on �Add teacher� link next to the person's name.

4. For each teacher, several options can be set:

• Order. The number from 1 to 10 de�nes the order in which the teach-ers are listed for the users (rather than alphabetical order). ChoosingHide allows you to add teachers without them being visible to thestudents, e.g. an external partner who is interested in seeing submis-sions by the students but does not want to participate actively.

• Editor. Choosing Yes allows this teacher to change everything in thecourse, i.e. the content of the boxes, the activities, etc... ChoosingNo allows the teacher to post to the forum, and assign grades. Thisis typically used for assistants who only correct assignments

• Role. Free text to describe the role of the teacher, e.g. "Professor","First Assistant", "Consultant", "Invited speaker", etc...

2.4 How can I login as a student ?

The `Student mode' allows you to see what students will see when they visityour course. To switch to this mode, click on the `Turn student view on' onthe top right side of the page. Once you clicked, the button says `Turn studentview o�', which allows you to switch back to the teacher's view.

It is also possible to login as one particular student, e.g. if you want to testwhether he or she has access to a particular group feature.

1. open the list of participants from the `People' block.

2. click on one of the students names which are listed.

3. from the pro�le of the user, click on the button labeled `Login as'

4. have a look at your course . . .

5. to switch back to your real self, click on your name on the top right of thepage.

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2.5 How can I create groups ?

Groups are useful mainly for assignments and forums. Assignments can becon�gured to take groups into account, i.e. when a member of a group submitsa �le, it is copied automatically to all group members. Similarly, when theteacher provides feedback, the grades and comments are given to all members ofthe group. Forums implement the group mode by creating separate discussions,one for each group.

Groups of students and teachers can be de�ned by following the `Group' linkin the Administration Block. Group creation follows two steps:

1. Create the group by providing a name and clicking the `Add new group'button

2. Select students and/or teachers from the left list, as well as one groupfrom the central list. Click on `Add selected to group ->'.

Figure 2.3: Group creation interface

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Chapter 3

Resources

3.1 How to use resources ?

Contrary to many Content Management Systems, Moodle's primary purpose isnot to create and deliver an online book, but rather to serve as a repository forresources and a central place for activities. While Moodle allows for content tobe directly composed online (as text or HTML), we recommend to use Moodleas a way to distribute textbooks, articles, source code and powerpoint slides intheir original format.

Of course, we also encourage you to use tools in Moodle which allow stu-dents to produce content, for instance, the assignment, the database or thewiki modules. Don't hesitate to contact us1 for more information about thesemodules.

Several types of resources can be created inside or distributed with Moodle.See Moodle's documentation2 and Moodle's manual3 for details.

Files and resources

The term `resource' is used to refer to electronic material which is accompaniedby a title and a description. For example, a word document called schedule.docaccompanied by a title like `Course Schedule' and a description like `This �lecontains the schedule for the lecture and practical work sessions'. When re-sources are added to the sections (the boxes) of a course they appear with theirtitle rather than with their �lename. Students can display a list of all resourcesin the course. It is therefore important to provide meaninful titles and descrip-tions to ensure that students quickly identify the material at their disposal.

Files and directories

If you plan to upload many �les (exercices, corrections, papers, etc.) we recom-mend that you organize them in directories by using the �le manager which is

1Patrick.Jermann@ep�.ch and David.Brechet@ep�.ch2http://docs.moodle.org/en/Resources3http://download.moodle.org/docs/using_moodle/ch3_content.pdf

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available in the `Administration Block' (click on `Files'). Directories can be dis-played as resources, with a title and a description (for example a resource called`Mandatory Readings' that points to a directory called `mandatory_readings').

From the Moodle Documentation4:

Whilst uploading is restricted to one �le at a time you can upload azip containing many �les. Once uploaded Moodle will recognise the�le as a zip and show on unzip link. You can then follow the unziplink which will extract the �le(s) within.

HTML and text �les can be edited in-place online. Other �les willneed to be edited on your local computer and uploaded again. if youupload a �le with the same name as an existing �le it will automat-ically be overwritten.

You can also create a directory and display the whole contents ofthat directory using the setting in the add resource drop down in acourse section.

3.2 Copyrighted material

When a Moodle course is open to guests, Moodle makes all resources availableto them without restriction. The guests however cannot participate in activities,and of course, cannot modify the course.

Some teachers at EPFL wanted to make their course available to a largeaudience while at the same time distributing some copyrighted resources totheir enrolled students only. We started from a hack5 to implement our ownrestricted resource.

A working example can be found online at the Restricted Resource DemoCourse6. The resource is visible for regular students and users who have a login,but it is invisible for guests.

Con�guration

From the Resources pull-down menu, choose �Link to a restricted �le or website�as shown in the snapshot below.

On the next screen, simply chek the box next to �hide this resource forguests�.

4http://docs.moodle.org/en/Files5http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=16264#831866http://moodle.ep�.ch/course/view.php?id=39

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Chapter 4

Assignments

4.1 When and how to use assignments ?

Moodle's assignment module is useful to collect students' exercises, collect deliv-erables in project based courses, collect reports and other documents producedby the students for an exam. Beyond the simple collection of �les, the "assign-ments" module is used to assign grades and provide feedback to the students.

Assignments are added by using the �Add an Activity ...� pull-down menuinside the sections of the course. Choose �Assignment� from this menu. Ournew custom assignment module (see page 17) o�ers the following features:

• It is possible for individuals or groups to submit a response to an assign-ment.

• A teacher can assign individual or group grades.

• Feedback can be provided either as a short text comment or by uploadinga �le (possibly the annotated/modi�ed original submission)

• Students can submit several �les as a response to the assignment

• Teachers optionally can specify how many �les have to be submitted, aswell as the �lenames that have to be submitted.

• Assignments can also be collected o�-line, but grading and feedback isdone online

4.1.1 De�ning what you expect

Especially if you have many students enrolled in your class, it is important tode�ne the assignments as clearly as possible. This will save you a lot of time-consuming manipulations when grading the submissions. In a nutshell, youshould make sure that you can quickly �nd the needed �les (only the required�les should be submitted) and open them easily (the �les should be in the correctformat). Provide a description of what is expected from the students including:

• how many �les should be submitted. If students work on a programmingexercise it is easier to ask for a single �le archive (tar or zip) rather than along list of �les. Correction and upload are simpler when the archive can

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be uploaded and uncompressed in one click. On the other hand, if the as-signment includes clearly identi�able components, e.g. theoretical review(word) and a data sheet (excel), it might be easier to ask for di�erent �les,because one could directly click on di�erent theoretical reviews from thegradebook in order to compare them for grading.

• whether you want to force �lenames. When students submit several �les,they will choose their own naming conventions. The same �le will benamed �introdoc1.doc� by one student and �Introduction théorique� (with-out �le extension) by another. If you want to quickly identify which �lecorresponds to each part of the assignment, we recommend that you ei-ther state explicitely what �lenames you expect in the description of theassignment, or be more strict by con�guring the list of �lenames that areaccepted. Following the latter possibility, Moodle will refuse �les that donot conform to the rules that you set up (See page 16).

• what �le format is required. State whether you want word (.doc), openo�ce (.sdw), .tex, .pdf, .java, .m or .c source �les. This will avoid timeconsuming conversions on your side.

• what criteria for grading will be used. One of the pitfalls with assignmentsis that students do more (or something else) than what is expected fromthem. This might be a indicator for high motivation, but can also leadstudents to feel that too much is required from them. Be as speci�c aspossible with regard to the problem that has to be solved, and about therelative importance of say, mathematical soundness and stylistic matters.

4.1.2 Providing feedback

• Provide a short comment in addition to numeric grades. Grades alonemight be su�cient for simple assignments, but some explanations andhints are needed if you expect the students to learn from their errors.Simply getting a grade of 45/60 for a 5 page long document does notallow students to identify areas for improvement.

• Text processing programs like MS Word or the Acrobat PDF �le formatallow for annotations to be made directly in the �le. This is a convenientway to provide detailed feedback. The annotated �le can be uploaded asa feedback for the student(s). To use this possibility the option �Attach areview �le� has to be set to �Yes�.

4.2 Con�guration

This section describes the speci�cities of the �EPFL assignment� module in Moo-dle. This module rassembles the features from the group assignment (a groupof students submits the assignment), the multi�le assignment (the possibility tosubmit several �les) and the review assignment (the possibility for a teacher toupload a �le for feedback).

Assignments are added by using the �Add an Activity ...� pull-down menu in-side the sections of the course. Choose �Assignment� from this menu. The formthat is displayed upon creation of an assignment allows to de�ne the settings.

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4.2.1 General Settings

First of all, you need to clearly tell your students what you expect from them.Provide a name (e.g. Java class for stepper motor) and describe the detailsof the assignment by including the goal (e.g. write a Java class to control astepper motor, submit the .java �le and not the .class), references to usefulresources (e.g. use Eclipse, start with the templates that can be downloadedfrom Moodle), the criteria for grading (e.g. the program has to pass the testsuite for motors) and the number of points that can be earned with the exercise(e.g. this exercise counts for 5 percents of the �nal grade).

Figure 4.1: Settings for the assignment (screen 1).

Grade

With the `Grade' pulldown menu you can choose whether you want to assign agrade. If you do not want to grade the assignment, choose `No grade'. If youdecide to grade the assignment, choose the maximum number of points (0-100)that can be earned. If you want to use marks from 0 to 6, you can either choose6 as the maximum (the grading interface will propose grades 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and6), or 60 which allows you to set marks with a tenth of a point precision. Thegrades given for all the assignments in the course can later be combined and

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modi�ed to compute a �nal grade (e.g. [0.7 * �nal exam + 0.3 * exercises] =�nal grade).

Dates

Two dates can be set for an assignment:

• The `Available from' date allows to prevent early submissions by the stu-dents. We usually do not use this setting because it's ok for students towork at their own pace. Setting a date for this parameter would simplyhide the possibility to upload a �le or compose an online text before thegiven date.

• The `Due date' is used to set the deadline for the assignment. It can eitherbe a sharp deadline (if you choose `Yes' for the `Prevent late submission'option) which prevents any further submission, or you can tolerate somedelay (choosing `No').

Assignment type: o�ine, online or upload

All three assignment types can be carried out by individuals or groups (this canbe determined with the `Type of activity' parameter described below on thesecond con�guration screen).

• O�ine activity at EPFL. This is useful when the assignment is performedoutside of Moodle. It could be an activity elsewhere on the web or forinstance students turning in a paper version of a blueprint. Studentscan see a description of the assignment, but can't upload �les or anything.Grading works normally, and students will get noti�cations of their grades.

• Online text at EPFL. This assignment type asks users to edit a text, usingweb-based editing tools (the same editor that you use when describingtopics of the course). Teachers can grade them online, and even add inlinecomments or changes. (If you are familiar with older versions of Moodle,this Assignment type does the same thing as the old Journal module usedto do.)

• Upload �le(s) at EPFL. This type of assignment allows each participant(or group) to upload �le(s), of any type. This might be a Word processordocument, or an image, a zipped web site, or anything you ask them tosubmit.

Group mode

Simply ignore this setting as it only has a marginal e�ect on the presentationof grades in the grading book.

Student visibility

Assignments, as any other module, can be hidden from students. Simply choose`Show' or `Hide' in the corresponding pulldown menu to set visibility. Assign-ments may for instance be hidden because their description is not up to date,or after the due date because the teacher does not want to leave the descriptionavailable to the students.

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4.2.2 Additional Settings

Depending on the `Assignment Type' that you choose, the second con�gurationscreen contains di�erent parameters. The `�le upload' has four more parametersthat in�uence its behavior. The `o�ine' and `online' assignments are simpleronly propose one additional parameter (the `Type of activity').

Figure 4.2: Settings for the assignment (screen 2).

Type of activity: individuals or groups

It is quite common in higher education to have groups of students work togetheron projects, or exercises. Hence, we needed a way to set up group assignments,i.e. one user uploads the �le but all the members of his or her group "bene�t"from the submission. Also, for the teacher we wanted to allow for group grading,i.e. assign the grade and give feedback only once for all the students in a group.

The groups used for submission and grading rely on the groups de�ned in thecourse (more information about groups in Moodle can be found in the MoodleTeacher's Manual1 or the french Manuel de l'enseignant2):

1http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=39682http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2812

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• When groups are de�ned in the course, the submissions are handled byusing these groups.

• When no groups are de�ned in the course, the whole class is treated as agroup. We have this case in projects with only few participants (3-5).

When setting up the assignment, the teacher can choose whether to gradegroups (all students in a group get the same grade and feedback) or to gradeindividuals (allows to give di�erent grades and feedback to the members of agroup).

Upload File Type

The `Upload File Type' allows to determine how many �les can be submittedfor the assignment. The three possible values for this parameter are:

• `Single File': This option allows students to upload one single �le. The�le can or course be a zip or tar archive with other �les inside.

• `Multiple Files': This enables the student to upload multiple �les. Stu-dents have to submit the �les one by one.

• `Required Files': This forces the students to submit a given number of �lesrequired by the teacher. Further, even the name of the �les that have tobu uploaded can be de�ned (e.g. one �le called `theory.doc' and another�le called `data.xls').

Attach a review �le

The `Attach a review �le' parameter allows the teacher to attach one or morereview or correction �les to the feedback of the student. A convenient wayto correct submissions might be to annotate and comment a PDF or worddocument and use the annotated version as feedback for the students.

Allow resubmitting

By default, students cannot resubmit assignments once the teacher has gradedthem. If you turn this option on, then students will be allowed to resubmitassignments after they have been graded (for you to re-grade). This may beuseful if the teacher wants to encourage students to do better work in an iterativeprocess. Obviously, this option is not relevant for o�ine assignments.

Email alert to teachers

If enabled, then teachers are alerted with a short email whenever students addor update an assignment submission. Only teachers who are able to grade theparticular submission are noti�ed. So, for example, if the course uses separategroups, then teachers restricted to particular groups won't receive any noticesabout students in other groups. For o�ine activities, of course, mail is neversent since students never submit anything.

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Chapter 5

Forums

5.1 When to use forums ?

Forums often stay empty, students don't post questions and teachers don't an-swer. This is due among others to: the lack of incentives ("posting won't giveme a better grade"), the lack of time (it takes a lot of time to produce a goodwritten answers), the lower cost of other communication channels ("I can ask theteacher at the end of the course", "I talk about the course with my colleaguesat the cafeteria").

However, there are scenarios where forums work well!

Administrative noti�cations

The simplest and least interactive use of forums consists of announcing admin-istrative information to the students. This type of forum is principally used bythe teachers.

• Email forwarding makes sure everyone gets the information (make surethat you "force everyone to be subscribed")

• Keeps a trace of past announcements in the forum.

• Students might reply to state their opinion, for instance when discussinga meeting date, or a change in the agenda.

Note that a simple system like (Doodle)1 is best suited for �nding commonmeeting dates with many people.

Group coordination and �le exchange

In project based courses, forums can be used by the members of a group to coor-dinate work (especially if the students don't meet daily) and share intermediaryresults. In some instances, the teacher can use the forum to publish students'responses to an assignment in the order to make them available to everyone.

• Files can be attached to posts

1http://www.doodle.ch/

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• Forums can be con�gured to separate di�erent groups' discussions.

• Posts to the forum are forwarded as email to the participants. This ensuresthat everyone gets the information while at the same time keeping a traceof the exchanges.

Reading Seminar

Face to face discussions during a seminar-based course can bene�t from a discus-sion forum. As an example, every week during our doctoral course "distributedcognitive systems" (Pierre Dillenbourg, Patrick Jermann, CRAFT) one studentpresented a paper from the reading list to the rest of the class. The rest ofthe class had to post a question about this paper three days in advance to thecourse forum. The �nal deliverable for the course was a conference-like paperthat reported results from an experimental study.

• Presenters can use the questions posted in the forum to prepare theirpresentation.

• The questions are used by the teachers to guide the face to face discussionthat follows the presentation.

• Posting a question requires that students read the paper even if they don'thave to present it.

• The questions posted directly re�ect active participation to the course.Questions could be graded and be part of the �nal grade.

• Posts to the forum are useful for the �nal report.

Experience based course

Posts to discussion forums can be used as an assignment. In a course that buildson re�ection and sharing of personal experience, the forum can be used as themain sharing medium. The doctoral course "tutoring skills" (Nadine Stainier,CRAFT) is a good example thereof.

• Every week, the assignment is to post a message that describes one aspectof students' experience.

• The teacher provides written feedback and encouragements for contribu-tions.

• The posts to the forum are used towards writing up a report.

5.2 General guidelines

Forums need a lot of attention in order to be successfully used in a course.Simple advice includes:

• use the forum instead of email to communicate with the students. Thiswill keep a trace of discussions available to everyone and will ensure thatMoodle is the main communication channel between you and the students.

• answer questions on a regular basis and tell the students what the time-frame is to get responses to their questions (e.g. 24 or 48 hours).

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• some moderation is needed when a forum is used as a tool for open dis-cussions (e.g. �what are the advantages and pitfalls of method X�).

• make the postings mandatory, or useful for the exam: e.g. de�ne postingsto the forum as an assignment to get extra credit, tell the students thatthey can use their postings as a resource for the exam.

See page 24 for details about settings related to the forum.

5.3 Con�guration

In the settings for the forum (enter the Forum and click the �Update this forum�button on the upper right side) you can choose several options that a�ect theway the Forum works:

Can a student post to this forum ?

Note: the permission to post `discussions' refers to starting new discussionthreads. The permission to post `replies' corresponds to the permission to re-spond to existing messages.

• Discussions and replies are allowed. This is used for an open forum whereall course participants can create a new discussion thread.

• No discussions, but replies are allowed. Use this option to post questionsand have students reply to them. It is also possible to grade the responses.

• No discussions, no replies. Choose this to use forum as an announcementboard to transmit information one-way.

Force everyone to be subscribed ?

• Yes, forever. This setting makes sure that when you post something in theforum, all participants are noti�ed by email. We recommend this setting.

• Yes, initially. Allows students to unsubscribe from the forum to stopgetting email.

• No. Students have to explicitely subscribe to the forum to get noti�ca-tions. By choosing this option, it is unlikely that when you post somethingto the forum, students will get an email copy.

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Chapter 6

Quizzes and Questionnaires

6.1 When and how to use quizzes and question-

naires ?

Checking knowledge

• Before a lecture, the responses to a quizz are useful to identify preconcep-tions (�What do students know/believe about the subject?�). The teacheruses the answers of the students as a starting point for the course. Acaveat is that it might be di�cult to motivate the students to participatein such a quizz. A simple version of this type of polling can also be realizedwith the �Choice� activity.

• As an exercise after the lecture, the students might test their knowledgeby answering a series of questions which either test their memory (e.g.simple knowledge questions like �What is the e�ect of temperature onthe speed of a reaction: a) speed up b) slow down c) none�) or theircomprehension of the content (e.g. by applying the information from thecourse in solving a problem �What can be done to speed up the reactionin this speci�c situation: a) increase the temperature by 10% b) decreaseby 10% c) augment pressure to 5 bars, ... �).

• As an examination tool quizzes o�er the advantage of automatic correctionand scoring. Of course in this context it is critical that students do not chator email the responses to each other. As a preventive measure, Moodlecan mix the order of questions and responses so that students do notget the same questionnaire. The system can also present que quizz ina popup window that prevents copy and paste. Finally, the weight ofthe quizz in the �nal grade probably should not be too large. CRAFTcan also assist you in automatically scoring paper-based quizzes (contactFlorence.Colomb@ep�.ch by mentioning the Electric Paper system).

Setting up

Getting feedback about the course

• Especially during their initial rollout, exercises and practical work assign-ments need �ne-tuning. A questionnaire can typically be used to collect

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short feedback about the level of di�culty and the time needed to com-plete the exercises. Teachers can use this information to adapt their course�on the �y�.

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Chapter 7

Project Format

Background

Moodle o�ers several course formats which allow teachers to control the appear-ance of the sections (or topics) in their course (see Moodle's teacher manual1

for snapshots). The topic format ressembles the structure of a book where onesection corresponds to one topic of the course. The weekly format ressemblesthe structure of a calendar where one section corresponds to one week of thecourse. The social format simply consists of a single discussion forum withoutcontent sections.

The project format is similar to the topics and weekly formats, but allowsteachers to de�ne arbitrary durations for the sections (called project phases inthis context).

Aims and Principle

The goal of the project format is to facilitate the management of a project forteachers as well as for students. It does this by visualising the phases and thedeliverables of the project in a simple Gantt chart in the �rst section of thecourse (see Figure 7.1). This enables a quick overview of phase durations anddeadlines.

It is also of interest for the teachers to know quickly whether all studentshave submitted their deliverables and whether all students got feedback. Tothis end, the milestones on the Gantt chart are represented by using a simplecolor coding that re�ects whether things are OK (green), in progress (orange)or missing (red).

A project is simply a collection of phases. A project phase is in fact a normalMoodle course topic that is additionally de�ned by a start date and an end date.Within each phase, assignments are treated as deliverables for this phase andrepresented in the Gantt chart as milestones. A project-based course can in factcontain a mix of normal topics and phases.

1http://moodle.org/doc/?�le=teacher.html#settings

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Example

A working example can be found online at the Project Format Demo Course2.In the Gantt chart each `bar' represents a phase of the project and `squares'represent deliverables.

Figure 7.1: Snapshot of the gantt chart which is automatically generated fromthe structure of a project based course.

Figure 7.2: By moving the mouse over a deliverable's icon, a popup shows asummary table with all students listed in rows

2http://moodle.ep�.ch/course/view.php?id=12

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Figure 7.3: By moving the mouse over a phase, a popup shows a short descrip-tion of the phase

7.1 Con�guration

Setting the course format

Go to the `Settings' interface for the course and choose `Project Format' for thecourse format as is shown below.

Figure 7.4: Choosing the project format from the pulldown

Topics and phases

A project-based course can contain a mix of topics and phases. The topics canbe used to distribute resources, propose quizzes, etc . . . The phases are typicallyused to structure the project based activities.

Upon course creation, a project-based course only consists of topics. Theteacher then decides which topics should be used as project phases by clickingon `Make this a phase' as is shown in �gure 7.5.

Once this is done, the start and end dates of the phase are de�ned by editingthe phase, as is shown in �gures 7.6 and 7.7.

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Figure 7.5: Changing a topic into a phase

Figure 7.6: Editing a phase

Phases can be moved up and down the course as normal topics by using thesmall up and down arrows on the right side of the box. It is also possible totransform a phase back into a topic without loosing its description.

Assignments and milestones

Each assignment de�ned within a phase automatically becomes a milestone inthe project's Gantt chart. The color codes for these milestones are explained in�gure 7.8.

Assignments are added by selecting `Assignment' from the pull down menuentitled `Activities' present in each phase. Be sure to select a date that corre-sponds to the start and end dates of the phase.

Group assignments may be of particular interest for projects, as it is commonfor a group of students to work together. To set an assignment for a group ofstudents (possibly all the enrolled students), choose �Team based �le upload�on the �Assignment type� pull-down menu.

It is possible to de�ne several assignments for one particular phase. This isespecially useful for instance to ask students for a revised version of their work,or to ask for distinct parts of a deliverable (e.g. one .doc �le for the descriptionand one .m or .c �le for the code)

Figure 7.7: Editing the start and end dates for a phase

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Figure 7.8: The color coding re�ects whether everything is ok (green), inprogress (orange) or missing (red).

7.2 Advanced topics

Meta-course and projects

A meta-course is a special kind of course that allows to get users automati-cally enroled in a general course (the metacourse) when enroled in any of themetacourse-linked courses (the projects in our case). A meta-course might beuseful when Moodle is used to support a whole teaching program (e.g. a mas-ter's cycle, or all the courses from a section). The meta-course then, is a placewhere general information about the cycle can be provided.

When a meta-course is set to be project-based, the following table is dis-played in place of the Gantt chart. A working example can be found online at theProject Metacourse 3. The table lists all the assignments de�ned in the `child'courses. For each assignment, the table displays the number of submissions(compared to the number of students) as well as the number of grades/feedbackthat were given (compared to the number of submissions). The color coding ofthe small icons is the same as presented in �gure 7.8.

3http://moodle.ep�.ch/course/view.php?id=37

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Figure 7.9: In a meta-course, the Gantt chart is replaced by a table that listsall the assignments de�ned in the `child' courses.

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Chapter 8

Enrolments and IS-Academia

IS-Academia and Moodle

This article describes the speci�cities of �IS-Academia enrolments� for Moo-dle at EPFL.

Background

Enrolments determine who has access to a course. Moodle allows for severalways to manage enrolments. The most basic way consists of the teacher addingstudents by choosing them from a list of potential students. This can be tediousas the number of students increases. A more sophisticated way consists of usingan �enrolment key�, a course password that you communicate to your studentsand that they will have to type only the �rst time they try to access your course.Finally, it is possible to connect Moodle to an external database, which providesinformation about who can access courses. This is what happens at EPFL inrelation with information provided by IS-Academia1.

Aims and Principle

Within three weeks following the beginning of the semester, students have tochoose their courses. Their choices are registered in IS-Academia. Moodle thenretrieves information from IS-Academia on a regular basis (more or less threetimes a day) and updates its own enrolment information accordingly.

Having access to a course (to be listed as a participant in IS-Academia) isnot equivalent to being an active participant in a Moodle course. The studentswill be active users in your course only when they have accessed your courseonce (they have logged in, and browsed to your course).

To see who is an active student in your course, click on the link entitled�Participants� in the box entitled �People�. You will get a list like shown in�gure 8.1.

1http://is-academia.ep�.ch/

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Figure 8.1: The list of participants in your course

Con�guration

For Moodle to be able to establish the correspondance between its own courseand the course in IS-Academia, we use a special key that identi�es the academicyear as well as the subject matter and the teachers involved. This key appearsin the �ID number� entry of your course settings.

Figure 8.2: The special ID number taken from IS-Academia

You don't have to worry about this key yourself. To bene�t from the IS-Academia enrolments, simply tell us the �o�cial� name of your course as youdescribed it for the �livret de cours�. We will �nd the corresponding key andmodify the settings of your course accordingly.

Complements

You may well want your students to access your site before they have o�ciallyregistered for your course through IS-Academia. This is done by using an �en-rollment key�. You would communicate this �course password� to the studentsand they will have to type it in when they �rst try to enter your course. The�enrolment key� can be de�ned in the settings screen for your course.

If you would like to add individual students to your course, you can choosethe �Students� link from the Administration box and move students in the in-terface below from the right side (potential students) to the left side (enroled

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students). See details on page 10.

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Chapter 9

Using Modules

Many activities are available in moodle. The most commonly used are `As-signment', `Quiz' and `Questionnaire'. For details about how to set up theseactivities, have a look at the Moodle Teacher's Manual1 or the french Manuelde l'enseignant2.

To add an activity:

1. activate editing (click on the �Turn editing on� button on the upper rightside of the window)

2. choose an item in the pull-down menu entitled �Activities� inside a week/topic/phaseblock.

9.1 Collecting assignments

9.1.1 Assignment (Devoir)

From the Moodle help �le:

1http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=39682http://moodle.org/mod/resource/view.php?id=2812

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Assignments allow the teacher to specify a task that requires stu-dents to prepare digital content (any format) and submit it by up-loading it to the server. Typical assignments include essays, projects,reports and so on. This module includes grading facilities.

We needed some way at EPFL to set up group assignments, i.e. one useruploads the �le but all the members of his or her group "bene�t" from thesubmission. Also, we wanted to allow teachers to grade groups, i.e. assign thegrade and give feedback only once for all the students in a group. In addition tothis `group' feature, the new EPFL assigment allows students to submit several�les and allows the teacher to attach review �les as a feedback. For detailsabout this type of assignment, see the corresponding article in this manual onpage 17.

The advantages of using this module rather than email to collect submissionsare

1. that submissions are automatically stored and organised in a central placeand

2. that the system allows grading and distribution of feedback. Teachers cande�ne their own grading scales (e.g. 1. . . 6 or `poor'. . . `excellent') fromthe Administration Block (follow the `Scales' link).

9.1.2 Database (Base de données)

The database module is the `Swiss Army Knife' to collect structured informa-tion. From the Moodle documentation wiki:

The Database module allows the teacher and/or students to build,display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivabletopic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost un-limited, including images, �les, URLs, numbers and text amongstother things. You may be familiar with similar technology frombuilding Microsoft Access or Filemaker databases.

More information is available at http://docs.moodle.org/en/Database_module

9.2 Communication

9.2.1 Forums

From the Moodle help �le:

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This activity can be the most important - it is here that most dis-cussion takes place. Forums can be structured in di�erent ways, andcan include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewedin a variety for formats, and can include attachments. By subscrib-ing to a forum, participants will receive copies of each new posting intheir email. A teacher can impose subscription on everyone if theywant to.

Each course contains a forum added by default. Several other forums can beadded to the sections/topics/phases of the course to discuss speci�c questions.

9.2.2 Chat

From the Moodle help �le:

The Chat module allows participants to have a real-time synchronousdiscussion via the web. This is a useful way to get a di�erent under-standing of each other and the topic being discussed - the mode ofusing a chat room is quite di�erent from the asynchronous forums.The Chat module contains a number of features for managing andreviewing chat discussions.

Moodle also contains a short messaging service which allows users to ex-change chat like messages. It is available from the `Online users' block on themainpage.

9.3 Testing knowledge

9.3.1 Quizzes (Test)

From the Moodle help �le:

This module allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, con-sisting of multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions.These questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allowmultiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and theteacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct an-swers. This module includes grading facilities.

The quizz module might be used to allow students to check upon their knowl-edge, to organize exercices with a large number of students (grading is madeautomatically), or to organize exams (time to respond to the quizz can be re-stricted to the duration of the exam).

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9.3.2 Choice (Sondage)

From the Moodle help �le:

A choice activity is very simple - the teacher asks a question andspeci�es a choice of multiple responses. It can be useful as a quickpoll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to voteon a direction for the course; or to gather research consent.

9.3.3 Questionnaire (Questionnaire)

A questionnaire consists of a list of questions. The di�erence between theQuestionnaire and que quizz is that there are no correct or wrong answersde�ned and that there is no feedback provided to the students about theiranswers. This activity is typically used to collect feedback from the students,e.g. about the weekly exercices.

For general questionnaires which are not related to your course, we recom-mend the use of Inform3 developed by the KIS team at EPFL.

9.4 Managing time

9.4.1 Scheduler (Consultation)

The Scheduler module allows the management of a series of meetings, or theaccess to a resource (e.g. a lab room or a measurement device). The teacherde�nes a serie of timeslots that can then be chosen online by the students. Whenstudents choose one of the available slots, a new event is automatically createdin the calendar.

9.5 Building knowledge

9.5.1 Glossary (Glossaire)

From the Moodle help �le:

3http://inform.ep�.ch/welcome.php

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This activity allows participants to create and maintain a list of def-initions, like a dictionary. The entries can be searched or browsed inmany di�erent formats. The glossary also allows teachers to exportentries from one glossary to another (the main one) within the samecourse. Finally, it is possible to automatically create links to theseentries from throughout the course.

This module might be used to ask each student to de�ne one concept of thecourse based on essential readings. Students will bene�t from their predecessor'swork.

9.5.2 Wikis

From the Moodle help �le:

A Wiki enables documents to be authored collectively in a simplemarkup language using a web browser. "Wiki wiki" means "superfast" in the Hawaiian language, and it is the speed of creating andupdating pages that is one of the de�ning aspects of wiki technology.. . . The Moodle Wiki module enables participants to work togetheron web pages to add, expand and change the content. Old versionsare never deleted and can be restored.

One popular use of this module in education consists of asking the studentsto build a website with content related to the course, for instance.

9.5.3 Journal

From the Moodle help �le:

This module is a very important re�ective activity. The teacher asksthe student to re�ect on a particular topic, and the student can editand re�ne their answer over time. This answer is private and canonly be seen by the teacher, who can o�er feedback and a gradeon each journal entry. It's usually a good idea to have about oneJournal activity per week.

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