Create content guide

Moodle has a range of resources that you can use to present your content to students. Providing content online gives students the opportunity to extend their subject knowledge at a time, pace and place that suits their requirements. 

• Explain how content extends or consolidates learning during face-to-face sessions.
• Explain what content needs to be studying to help students prepare for the next face-to-face session.
• Think carefully about how many resources your students will have time to read.
• Students engage for short amounts of time online on a regular basis. Provide a mix of longer (textbooks) and shorter (journal articles, web pages, PowerPoints and videos) resources as this helps students to tailor their learning to their schedules and personal circumstances.
• Consider specifying core resources separately from further or optional resources focused on elective or specialist themes.
• Use an appropriate mix of multimedia and consider the benefits of audio versus video. Students can listen to audio whilst travelling or engaged in low level tasks.
• Consider what activities you can design either online or during your face-to-face teaching to help students to apply and review what they have learned from the content presented.

Maximise your content and ensure that it is accessible to the greatest number of students. You will need to consider how you write your content and structure your documents to ensure that the content is accessible.

• Write accessible documents and use City PowerPoint and Word templates (login required) 
• Add meaningful alternative (alt) text to all images.
• If you use images as teaching resources, you might find the Poet tool useful to learn how to describe your images effectively for students using a screen reader.
• All pre-recorded video and audio content should be uploaded to Kaltura MediaSpace and linked to Moodle so that students can stream the video resources. Add captions/transcripts to audio and video resources.
  • Review captions with Kaltura Reach.
  • Real-time captions in PowerPoint.
• Present content in different formats to cater for individual ways of learning. Anthology Ally features a tool that converts files into alternative formats without any additional actions from staff.
• Include an editable version of the files for students to tailor to their viewing requirements and to take notes during lectures/seminars.

The Activity chooser in Moodle provides an overview of the range of activities and resources that you can add to your Moodle module.

1. Turn Edit mode on.
2. Open the section where you want to display the new activity/resource.
3. Select Add an activity or resource.
4. Select the relevant content type from the Resources tab.

   

5. Complete the settings.
6. Select Save and display.

Selecting the i icon alongside a content type will provide you with more information about the content and contexts in which you can use it.

Clicking the star icon on a content type will save it into a separate Starred tab for quick access.

Common file types that are uploaded to Moodle modules will automatically be assessed by Ally and receive an accessibility score viewable only to enrolled lecturers on the module. These accessibility scores are created by checking the resource against each of the requirements of UK legislation for web accessibility relevant to higher education and then also given a weight based on how much of an accessibility challenge an issue may pose to education.

The accessibility score assesses the way content is conveyed to students, not the quality of the content itself. For example, a low accessibility score for a resource may be because it is a scanned PDF of a photocopied book, not because the book itself or content therein is of pedagogical low quality. 

These accessibility scores include:

• Explaining which specific issues are the easiest to improve, with step-by-step guidance
• Explaining which specific issues are the most important and impactful to improve, with step-by-step guidance
• A weighted aggregate score for the whole module to identify successes and areas for improvement across the module

Find out more about using Anthology Ally in your modules by visiting the Digital Accessibility guide.