Student learning and Moodle
Moodle is a learning platform or learning management system (LMS) and is the go-to place for students to access course related information and resources. Moodle provides its own activities such as quizzes however many other UAL platforms can be connected from Moodle such as Collaborate Ultra, Panopto and Padlet so students find everything in one place. Students and staff access Moodle via their UAL username and password.
Course delivery
Many of our courses now have blended elements – that is a mixture of face to face delivery together with online resources and activities. At UAL, Learning Design refers to the conscious way the face to face and online support and complement each other. Learning design is a holistic approach and should not be confused with simply adding some PDF documents and weblinks to Moodle to supplement face to face teaching. I might better be thought of as a framework that considers both modes of delivery that can be harnessed to best shape the student’s learning journey
To explore this topic in greater detail please contact someone from the CSM Digital Learning Team via the Contact Us page.
Preparing courses for the new academic year
Relevant for both academic and course admin staff
The following resources will help your course team to roll over the course to the next academic year. Primarily focused on the student experience, it covers the various points to consider in a checklist, as well provide short video materials to help you organise and disseminate content.
Accessibility recommendations
Moodle accessibility recommendations
There are lots of simple things we can do to make our Moodle pages accessible to all. As well as structure and layout, there are simple formatting techniques as well as guidance for uploaded material and recordings. We have put together a set of recommendations, as well as an auditing tool to help you.
Design and Organisation
Making your page more navigable
The link below serves as a very practical starting point to structuring your Moodle course.
Resources and Activities
Moodle Resources and activities overview
When building your course, Moodle generally identifies this as being either a resource or an activity.
Getting started with resources
Please note: although Hide/Show Content relates to course management it has been includes here as well.
Online Classrooms
Collaborate Ultra and Microsoft Teams both support effective synchronous online teaching
Initially at CSM, Teams was only to be used for staff meetings however numerous tutors preferred the informality of Teams over the hierarchical structure of Collaborate. Course teams can now freely choose which of the two to use however it is recommended to be consistent in your program and use one rather than both. Both systems work slightly differently with Moodle. Collaborate has a seamless integration with Moodle and is arguably easier to administer. Teams is part of the Microsoft eco system but nevertheless can be incorporated into Moodle via links.
Communication / Sign-ups
Contacting staff and students via Moodle
Moodle offers two powerful tools to enable you to contact students and staff . To find out which one is most suitable to your needs please visit the canvas article and video tutorials
scheduling tutorials and office hours
Typically used for tutorial, the Moodle schedular works very much like a booking system enabling students to book pre defined time slots.
Personalising Moodle
In terms of Moodle, there are a couple of very simple things you can do that can have a big impact – and best of all these only need to be done once. One is updating your Moodle profile image which has the additional benefit that it will also appear in Collaborate Ultra. This really helps to nurture a sense of community. Secondly managing your Moodle Forum posts. All forum posts can be combined into a single daily email which really helps to minimise the email clutter.