lms | Thomas' Work Space

How to navigate your Moodle gradebook more easily by hiding columns

2012/02/09 plagwitz Leave a comment

Clicking on the minus-icon next to aggregate columns will hide the assignments in this category; clicking the plus-icon will unhide:
before (wide)
after (narrow, better overview)

Categories: audience-is-teachers, documentation, e-learning, lms Tags: gradebook, moodle

How a teacher creates a Moodle file upload assignment for writing

2012/01/30 plagwitz 1 comment

In your Moodle course, turn editing on, choose Assignment: Advanced upload of files (required for response file from teacher).
Provide name and instructions. Choose the desired options (uploading one file is enough):
A gradebook column will be automatically created, and will be initially empty.
Instruct your students how to take the MS-Word upload assignment, and when (if you leave the default availability/due date on, the assignment will automatically appear in their Moodle Calendar, and can appear in their Ninermail calendar).

Categories: audience-is-teachers, documentation, lms, service-is-learning-materials-creation, Writing Tags: advanced-upload, moodle, MS-Word

How to bypass a Moodle Popup Window when using Respondus lockdown browser

2012/01/24 plagwitz Leave a comment

Problem: when starting the Moodle Lockdown browser to take an online exam, it opens with a popup window about messages. Popup window prevents access to the underlying main Moodle browser window (and exam). When closing the popup window, the entire lockdown browser closes, including main Moodle browser window.
Cause: Moodle can be configured to show a notification window when messages have arrived since your last login. This notification window has poor compatibility with the lockdown browser.
Workaround: In the popup window, click on the tab: “Settings” and uncheck (at least for this exam session) the checkbox to show the message box as a popup when logging in. Close the popup window.
Result: Even if this closes the main Moodle browser window once again, when you start the Moodle Lockdown browser again, the popup window will not appear again, and you can take your exam.

Categories: audience-is-language-learning-center-staff, audience-is-language-learning-center-temp-staff, audience-is-teachers, e-learning, Glitches&Errors, lms Tags: FAQs, moodle, Respondus-lockdown -browser

How to enforce deadlines on your language syllabus using Moodle

2012/01/23 plagwitz 1 comment

Experience seems to make teachers much prefer if students “try and fight with the computer over deadlines”, or rather spend their time studying instead of arguing about excuses why not study (“Dog ate my homework"- syndrome).
When you create a Moodle assignment, in each assignment type you will find a fields that allow you to create a time window

before
and after which the assignment is not available to students.

For easier remembering, assignments with deadlines

automatically appear in the Moodle Calendar
and can be made to automatically show in the NINERMAIL calendar

Hint: provide some extra credit to ease the pain of learning how to meet deadlines which are a requirement for progression in learning a language, especially when not doing independent study, but interacting within a cohort.

Suggested: “Best 3 out of 5” for first-time users, “4 out of 5” for tech-savvy.

Categories: audience-is-teachers, e-languages, lms Tags: calendaring, moodle, syllabus

How to do writing assignments in Moodle with deadlines, file and response file upload and MS-Word tracked changes

2012/01/20 plagwitz Leave a comment

Benefits
1. Keep the cohort in shape and focus it on studying by enforcing deadlines.
2. You can have students automatically receive reminders of the upcoming deadlines from their calendar (in NINERMAIL, no need to even look at the Moodle Calendar)
3. You can save time managing the assignment.
  1. Moodle does it for you; you will save even more time once you begin recycling your assignment across terms) and rather provide more timely feedback, and improve changes that your feedback arrives during a teachable moment.
  2. Automatic email notifications, which are available in Moodle for teachers (if you do not prefer to grade student submissions in a batch) and students to (automatic correction and grading is not ready for prime-time when it comes to essay writing; you may however consider teaching some more basic writing skills using it with close-exercises in Moodle).
4. Costs
  1. You need to TBA:create a Moodle file upload assignment for writing (once)
  2. You need to grade a Moodle file upload assignment for writing (any time you assign; depending on your preference as submissions arrive or conveniently as a batch from the gradebook past the deadline)
    1. I prefer the MS-Word reviewing features for grading writing assignments,
    2. but other tools have other affordances, e.g. like recently described here for Adobe Acrobat Professional.
  3. Moodle does not automatically add unique usernames to student submitted files like Blackboard. It also does not afford the TBA:convenience of a shared network storage that the WebDAV-based Blackboard Content system provides. However, as long as you do not need to maintain a local archive of student submissions, you can rely on the Moodle gradebook managing the archive of assignment files (student submissions and teacher response files).
  4. How? These 4 posts guide you through the entire workflow from teacher to student back to teacher to student:

Categories: assignments, audience-is-teachers, e-languages, lms, office-software, Writing Tags: 1.9, gradebook, moodle, MS-Word, reviewing, simple-file-upload

How a teacher grades a Moodle MS-Word file upload assignment for writing

2012/01/18 plagwitz 1 comment

Where students have submitted MS-Word files in the Gradebook, click (1) button “Grade”:
This opens the (2) Feedback window, with the (3) student MS-Word submission:
Download the student MS-Word submission by clicking on the link:
open with MS-Word:
Correct with track changes turned on (CTRL+SHIFT+E), and save:
YOU WILL SAVE under a different filename (suggest adding “_corrected”at the end) INTO YOUR DEFAULT TEMP DIRECTORY, here is a shortcut to get to it: key-combination WIN+R, %temp%, “ “OK”:
Back in Moodle, select your response file from the temporary directory:
Provide (1) Grade and (2) comment, then (3) upload the file:
Done, you can move to “ Next”
Which is where you are here: now repeat as above (provided student has submitted his file already)
Or view the gradebook, where your results are visible,
including to the student.
Instead of using the Moodle Response File feature, can I just make my corrections in MS-Word and copy/paste the resulting track changes markup into the Moodle Feedback Window Comment textbox? I would not try this. This way, you are not giving the students the full functionality of the track changes feature in MS-Word for them to continue working with the file. Moreover, whether the basic coloring of track MS-Word’s changes get preserved, will likely depend on how the web browser that you (and possibly the student later) uses supports the rich edit control of the comment textbox. If you just want to preserve the colors, I would instead try and Save as PDf from MS-Word 2007 and up, and send the PDF as a Response File.