- How do I make my course available to students?
- One of my students has reported that s/he can’t see my course in Moodle? What’s the problem?
- How do I copy courses from the Moodle archive server to the main Moodle server?
- How do I add a Teaching Assistant to my course?
- I am teaching two sections of the same course, but I see three courses in Moodle. Why is that?
- My course is cross-listed between two departments or between undergraduate and graduate versions of the course. Which Moodle course should I use?
- Do I need to add and drop students from my Moodle course, or is that taken care of for me?
- I would like students to discuss course-related topics in an online forum, so I changed the name of the News Forum/Announcements at the top of my course. For some reason, though, students can’t post to that forum. What did I do wrong?
- How do I make my course available to students?
Moodle courses are created so that they are unavailable to students. When you are ready for students to see your course content, you need to edit the settings for the course to make your course visible to the students. To do that, click on “Edit settings” in the Administration block, in the Course administration area. In the General section at the top of the page, for the “Visible” setting, click on the downward-facing triangle so that the option says “Show.” Then scroll down to the bottom of the page, and click on the “Save and display” button. - One of my students has reported that s/he can’t see my course in Moodle? What’s the problem?
Moodle enrollments tend to be one day behind Banner. If the student brought his/her Add Form to the Registrar’s Office and the information has been entered into Banner, the student will be added to the course in Moodle the following morning at around 6:30, when we coordinate information between Banner and Moodle. Another possibility is that you haven’t made the course available to students yet. (See the answer just above.) - How do I copy courses from the Moodle archive server to the main Moodle server?
If two Moodle courses exist on the same server – for example, if they are both on our main Moodle server – you can use the Import process to copy course materials from a past course into a current course. However, if the courses exist on different servers for example, our Archive Server and our main Moodle Server – you will need to use the Backup and Restore process to copy materials from one server to the other. Please refer either to the full instructions or to the abbreviated instructions without screenshots) for more information. - How do I add a Teaching Assistant to my course?
We automatically add and drop students from Moodle courses based on the official course enrollments in Banner. Since Teaching Assistants are not listed in Banner, however, faculty members need to add Teaching Assistants manually into the Moodle version of the course. You can find detailed instructions on how to add a TA to your course here. - I am teaching two sections of the same course, but I see three courses in Moodle. Why is that?
When you are teaching two sections of the same course, we actually create three courses in Moodle: a course for each one of the individual sections, and a merged course that combines the enrollments from those two sections. Faculty members who view the two sections as basically the same course tend to use that merged version only and make it available to students, leaving the individual sections unavailable to avoid confusion. If you are using the merged course, you need to upload documents into only one Moodle site, which many faculty members find more efficient than building or updating two sites with similar content. Faculty members who view the two sections as distinct, separate entities tend to ignore the merged course and make each individual section available to students. - My course is cross-listed between two departments or between undergraduate and graduate versions of the course. Which Moodle course should I use?
As with the example just above (faculty teaching two sections of the same course), when a course is cross-listed between two departments, we create three courses is Moodle: a course for each of the departmental listings, and a “CROSS” version that combines the enrollments from the two individual courses. Similarly, when there is an undergraduate and graduate version of the same course that are cross-listed by the Registrar’s Office, we create a “CROSS” version of the course containing all undergraduate and graduate enrollments from the two component courses. In such instances, you will want to use the CROSS version only, since it will have all the appropriate students in the course. You’ll want to make that CROSS version available to students and just ignore the individual courses. - Do I need to add and drop students from my Moodle course, or is that taken care of for me?
Every weekday morning at 6:30 AM and every Saturday morning at 10:30 AM, we process data feeds from Banner that contain all the student course enrollment information. At that time, every student who should be added to your course – in other words, every student who was added to the course by the Registrar’s Office on the previous day – will be added to the Moodle version of the course. Every student who was dropped from the course (via the Registrar’s Office) on the previous day will also be removed from your Moodle course. Faculty members would need to add a student to a course manually only if the student’s official enrollment has been delayed for some reason, and you want to give the student immediate access to the course content, or if the student is in a category that won’t appear in Banner – for example, teaching assistant or auditor. If you need to add a student to a course manually, you can follow the instructions for adding a Teaching Assistant to your course – although you would most likely choose the “Student” status for an auditor or for the student who needs to be enrolled in your course immediately. - I would like students to discuss course-related topics in an online forum, so I changed the name of the News Forum/Announcements at the top of my course. For some reason, though, students can’t post to that forum. What did I do wrong?
Moodle created the News Forum as a way for faculty members to post announcements to students. Those announcements appear in the “LATEST NEWS” block at the top-right of the page, as well as in the News Forum itself. Announcements posted to the News Forum are also emailed to all students 30 minutes after you save the announcement. By design, the News Forum is for faculty posting only, and students cannot add messages to the News Forum. If you want to create a space for on-line student discussions, you need to click on the “Add an activity or resource” link at the bottom-right corner of a topic block and choose “Forum” among the list of available activities. The “Standard forum for general use” tends to be the most appropriate type of forum for student discussions.
For basic Moodle assistance, please contact the Tech Desk at 570-577-7777 or techdesk@bucknell.edu. For more advanced questions, contact Leslie Harris.