Prepare for new academic year guide

This page provides suggestions on how to induct students to Moodle. Inducting students to their online learning environment can help you set expectations about how technology will be used to support students' learning. Getting students online at the start of a programme also provides you with opportunities to troubleshoot any initial access problems. Refer students to IT Self Service Portal to resolve technical issues impacting on access or to their course officer to investigate enrolment issues.

Explain to students how you expect them to engage with the online and the in-class activities.You could consider the following:

• How regularly do you expect students to access Moodle?
• How much time do you expect them to spend on online activities?
• How will you be monitoring online participation?
• How will you be interacting with students online?
• How do you want students to interact with each other online?

• Start by outlining the benefits of using technology to support learning - such as for supporting directed independent learning, Moodle can help:
  • Extend subject knowledge, by covering more material than could be covered in face-to-face teaching.
  • Provide flexibility in how students engage with the subject knowledge.
  • Provide an opportunity for students to become part of a learning community and to develop a support network.
  • Engage students with real world problems.
  • Provide mechanisms to monitor students' progress.  (Thomas, Jones & Ottaway 2014)
• Set clear expectations with students on:
  • How much time you expect them to spend on online activities.
  • How you will be monitoring online participation.
  • How you will be interacting with them online.
  • How you expect them to interact with each other online.
• Provide an overview of Moodle, tailored to the online activities that you are using on your programme. This could include:
  • Overview of My Moodle page which is personalised to the student and the modules they are studying.
  • Searching for and favouriting modules.
  • Accessing and navigating between modules.
  • Navigating around a module.
  • Downloading automatic alternative formats for many of the file types uploaded to Moodle modules. This will allow students to choose the type of format that they want to use to review the content.  
  • Information about assessment deadlines, online assignment submission, grades and feedback
  • Participating in Forums or other communication or collaboration tools being used on the module.
• Provide an overview of how you are using other educational technologies to support teaching and learning activities on your programme.

Welcome to Moodle screencast

• The Welcome to Moodle screencast provides an overview of Moodle, how to login, access and navigate modules.

Learning with Moodle Module

• Staff can use the Learning with Moodle module to highlight important aspects of Moodle and encourage students to review screencasts and practice submitting assignments or completing Quizzes online.
• Students are automatically enrolled on the module. If students don’t have access to the module, they can self-enrol on the module by selecting if from City Links on the top navigation menu of any Moodle page.
• The Learning with Moodle module provides students with guidance to navigate around Moodle and their modules and is a great resource to complete before they start lectures. It's also a good idea for students to add it as a favourite so that they can return to it as a reminder when needed.  Within the module students will get the chance to practice submitting an assignment, learn how to best communicate with their lecturers and classmates and understand how to access their assessments and feedback. 
• The module is updated every year so it's still worth completing for returning students. The module now also includes a Digital skills self-assessment to help students to reflect on what digital skills they may want to focus on.  

 User Tours

• You can help students familiarise themselves with the Dashboard page by directing them to the User Tour which will play when they login to moodle4.city.ac.uk. If they have already dismissed this, they select the ? icon at the end of the Dashboard page and select the link Reset user tour on this page.
• There is a new User Tour to introduce the new navigation features of Moodle 4. This will automatically play when a student opens a module in Moodle 4 for the first time. If they have already dismissed this, they select the ? icon at the end of the module page and select the link Reset user tour on this page.

Navigate Moodle 4 guidance

There is a specific guide on Navigate Moodle 4 that will be useful to new and returning students. This is available from the Student EdtechGuides.

Student Educational Technology Guidance

The student Educational Technology Guidance pages contain guidance on all common tasks that students are likely to undertake on Moodle. There is guidance on how to submit assignments, access grades and feedback, take part in quizzes and much more.

Provide activities for students to participate in at the beginning of the induction. This can help move the focus from information transmission and encourage students to find the information for themselves on Moodle.

• A Scavenger Hunt activity is quick and easy to set up and can be tailored to how you plan to use Moodle and educational technology on your programme. This activity could be run in groups to help students to get to know each other. Each group can post their answers to a Q&A Forum. By default, a Q&A Forum requires students to post once before viewing other students' postings.
  • If you are running your Moodle induction during a synchronous session you could get the students to work on scavenger hunt in breakout rooms and to report back on their findings via the Chat in the main meeting room.
• Tailor the induction to students' requirements by asking them to submit the questions they want answered about using technology to support their learning. The Q&A option in Poll Everywhere is a great tool to facilitate this activity or you could use Q&A Forum on Moodle.
• Invite a second-year student to present or pre-record a video to first year students outlining what they wish they'd known about using technology to support their learning at the start of their programme.
• 1 minute introductions: Ask students to post a short introduction to a Forum to help the cohort to get to know each other. Students have the option of uploading a short video file instead of a text introduction.
• Ask students to add a glossary entry about themselves under their name onto a Moodle glossary. They can post an image/video, answer questions or provide background info about themselves. This can then be linked to peer activities where students work in smaller groups of 4/5 and find out about each other – either synchronously in breakout rooms or asynchronously via chat or using the forum/glossary to find out students favourite film, book, snack, karaoke song, recipe.

The following are the most Frequently Asked Questions from students accessing Moodle during the Induction period.

• Nordmann, E., Kuepper-Tetzel, C.E., Robson, L., Phillipson, S., Lipan, G., Mcgeorge, P. (2018). Lecture capture: Practical recommendations for students and lecturers [online] Available from: https://osf.io/esd2q/ (Accessed: 12.12.18)
• Thomas, L., Jones, R., & Ottaway, J. (2014) Effective practice in the design of directed independent learning opportunities. [online] Available from: https://bit.ly/3j0NW1f (Accessed: 16.08.19)