Moodle 4.0 Resources for Faculty

Leveraging Moodle to Enhance the Student Experience

Moodle, in its current implementation at our institution, is a powerful tool designed to help students manage their coursework and stay organized. It’s important to note that this is not a direct copy of the previous system, LATTE, and not every plugin from LATTE was transferred. For example, Not all seven of the polling tools available in LATTE were included in this new Moodle environment. However, Moodle provides a variety of built-in tools and settings that can enhance students' ability to manage their tasks and succeed in their courses.

Tools to Help Students Stay Organized

Moodle offers several features that help students stay organized and on schedule for success in class. By setting up due dates, availability windows, and completion criteria for activities like assignments, quizzes, and forums, instructors ensure that students have an accurate and up-to-date view of their upcoming tasks. When used correctly, these settings automatically populate students' timeline views, calendars, and notifications, providing them with a clear roadmap for the semester.

• Timeline View: This tool provides a comprehensive overview of upcoming deadlines, including assignments and quizzes, organized by due date. It helps students prioritize their tasks and plan their work accordingly.

• Calendar: The calendar feature in Moodle consolidates important dates from all enrolled courses, including assignment due dates, quizzes, and forum deadlines. It can be synced with external calendars to further streamline organization.

• Upcoming Events: Within each course, students can see a list of upcoming tasks and assignments. This section helps break down tasks by course and prioritize actions required in each one.

• Notifications (Browser and Email): Moodle provides notifications both through the browser and via email to alert students about new assignments, approaching deadlines, and forum posts. These notifications can be customized by the user to ensure they receive timely reminders.

Setting Notifications and Calendar Reminders for Assignments, Forums and Quizzes. 

Assignments:

• When creating or editing an assignment, set the due date and cut-off date in the Availability section.
• These dates automatically add the assignment to the student's calendar and timeline view.

 Forums:

• Set the availability dates (due and cut-off dates) in the Availability section to control when students can post or view forum discussions.
• This ensures the forum is added to the timeline and calendar.
• Encourage students to subscribe to forums, which triggers email notifications for new posts. You can set the subscription mode to Auto-subscribe to ensure students receive these alerts unless they opt out.

Quizzes:

• In the Timing section, set the open and close dates to specify when the quiz is accessible to students. 
• Enable time limit and reminders to ensure students get notifications of upcoming deadlines and timed assessments.

By using these settings, instructors ensure that all activities are reflected in the student’s calendar and timeline, and that students receive timely notifications, helping them stay on track throughout the course.

Overview of Activity Completion in Moodle 

Activity completion enables instructors to set specific criteria for completing an activity. Criteria may include viewing the activity, achieving a certain score, or the student marking it as complete.

Activity completion can be connected to Course completion to help both students and instructors track progress. As students mark each activity as 'complete,' they move closer to finishing the course.

Activity Completion Setup

1.  On the course settings page, check that Enable Completion Tracking and Show Activity Completion Conditions are both set to Yes. 

2. Now you can enable completion on an assignment or activity by accessing Completion conditions on the settings page. Instructors can set different types of completion requirements, such as:

• Completing a specific activity(e.g., submitting an assignment, posting in a forum, or completing a quiz). 
• Achieving a passing grade in a graded activity.
• Marking an activity as complete manually. 

3.  Instructors and students will be able to view this completion condition setting from the home page on activities:

4. Instructors can view the Activity Completion Report by accessing the Reports tab.

This report shows which students have met the activity completion requirements for all activities in the course that have completion conditions set.

Course Completion

The Course Completion feature in Moodle allows instructors to track and manage the progress of students as they work through a course. This feature enables instructors to define specific criteria that students must meet to mark activities or the entire course as complete. The criteria can include submission of assignments, completion of quizzes, participation in forums, and reaching a certain grade threshold.

By setting up course completion, instructors and students can both benefit from enhanced tracking, goal-setting, and overall transparency.

1. Access the Course Completion page by selecting Course Completion from the More tab.

2. On the next page you can select the activities that you want to contribute to the overall Course Completion. 

Course-Completion Block:

Instructors can enhance this feature by adding the Course-Completion Block.  This will allow students to check and monitor their progress in the course. 

1. Open the Block drawer.

2. Select Add a Block.

3. Select Course completion status

4. I like to move this block to the top of drawer so that it is easy for students to locate. 

Student View of Course Completion

Activity and course completion settings in Moodle provide students with a clear, structured path to track their progress and stay organized throughout the semester. By enabling these features, instructors can set specific milestones and completion criteria for assignments, quizzes, and other activities.  Students can easily see which tasks are complete and what remains to be done, helping them plan their workload and manage time more effectively.  The visual indicators on the course page, along with optional reminders and notifications, create a goal-oriented experience that encourages students to take ownership of their learning. 

My Courses Page

On the My Courses page, courses with Course Completion enabled will display students' progress toward completing the course.

Course completion status block

The course completion status block provides students with a visual overview of their progress in meeting the requirements to complete the course.

Selecting More details will reveal a detailed report of the status of each requirement. 

Course Completion Index

The Course Index will mark completed items with a green icon to help students track their progress.