What Is A Course Management System

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

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LOGS, QUE SE PUEDE TENER UN CONTROL EN EL ACCESO AL CURSO DEL ESTUDIANTE. CUANTO TIEMPO HA ESTADO TRABAJANDO, Y CUANTO TIEMPO CON CADA RESOURCE.

WHAT IS MOODLE?

Moodle (Modular Object Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment) supports short and large learning communities, e-learning in schools and enterprises, different learning and teaching styles, collaboration and communication. It is used by over 50000 learning communities with beyond 9 million users, in over 200 countries, in almost 80 countries. It is a free source; it means that people do not have to pay nothing to enrol in the courses that it offers. It is important to know who takes care of Moodle; it is a core team of developers, at Moodle headquarters in Australia and also hundreds of community volunteers. [1] 

Moodle is an educative platform that is selected by several Spanish schools with the aim of give distance teaching. Moodle is also known as a Course Management System (CMS), as a Learning Management System (LMS) or as a virtual Learning Environment (VLE). In short, it can be said that it is a computer system that has a virtual environment of teaching and learning. [2] As time goes on, Moodle is improving and because of that there are many versions of it (1.9, 2.0 and so on).

Moodle is designed to support a style of learning called "Social Constructionist Pedagogy". Its style of learning is interactive. The social constructionist philosophy believes that people learn better when they interact with the learning material, construct new material for others, and interact with others about the material. Moodle enables people some material not to interact with (test pages, web pages, images etc), some material to interact with (assignments, questions, lessons, quizzes etc) and also some kind of activities where students interact with each other (chats, forums, glossaries and wikis). [3] 

The main goal of Moodle is to facilitate teachers the best tools to promote the learning. There are several ways to use it:

As it is an open source, the courses can have a limit of students or not. The limited courses are usually the ones that belong to schools or universities for instance.

Many institutions are used to use Moodle as a learning platform whereas other ones use it just as a complement to the face-to-face learning and teaching. The latter one is known with the name "blended learning".

The majority of the users of Moodle like to create and participate in activities like forums or wikis that allow them to create "communities" and also to freely express their self as well as explain their doubts about a topic. However, some users prefer the use of Moodle to offer contents to their students and also to evaluate them through quizzes and assignments.

What is a Course Management System?

A Course Management System is also known with the initials CMG. CMSs are web applications that are accessed by using a web browser. The server can be located anywhere in the world such as, universities, schools or departments. It is possible to access to Moodle from anywhere with an Internet connection. It is available for teachers as well as for students.

CMSs give educators tools to create a course web site and provide access control, so, only enrolled students can view it. Moreover, it offers a wide variety of tools that make courses more effective, some of them are: an essay way to upload and share materials, online discussions, chats, quizzes and surveys and also there is the possibility to review assignments and record grades. Each section is useful to get different results and practice different skills.

Why could be important to use a CMS?

Even if traditional teaching and learning is still effective, this new way of teaching and learning opens new possibilities that weren’t possible some time ago. It is possible to use just CMSs or combine face to face meetings with this type of education. In the book "Using Moodle" written by Jason Cole, the latter one is called "hybrid" courses.

One of the positive points of this kind of web sites is that online discussions give many students the opportunity to express themselves in ways they couldn’t do in an in-person class. Some students are shy and they are not used to speak in class or maybe they have problems with the language and because of that they become insecure. In those cases, they have the opportunity to think about questions, answers, doubts and so on and they can begin an online discussion to clarify their doubts, which is available for students as well as for teachers.

Moreover, as students are becoming more familiar with technology, it is not a problem for them to get material from the Web. On the contrary, it is really useful because they can access the latest information at any time and they can make all the photocopies they need or they want of each material.

It is important to highlight that Moodle has many features: uploading and sharing documents, creating content online HTML, online discussions, grade discussion and participation, online chat, student peer review, online quizzes and surveys, online gradebook, student submission of documents, self-assessment of submission, student workgroups, lessons with paths and student journals and embedded glossary among others. Later on I will explain the use of each of these features to have a deeper view of them.

A DEEPER OVERVIEW OF MOODLE

First of all, this section will cover the basics of the Moodle interface such as how to create an account, how to personalize the profile and also a first look at a course. After explaining these ideas, different kind of activities of learning and teaching through Moodle are going to be explained.

Next part of the work will begin with the use of ‘forums, chats and dialogues’ which are three ways of communication between students and teachers. Then, ‘quiz’ module will be explained, which is one of the most complex pieces of the system. The next tool is ‘workshops’, which are designed with the aim that students can submit and offer their works just to be reviewed within a structured framework. The following one is ‘assignments and exercises’ where teachers can collect students work (essays, presentations, audio, video clips and so on) and evaluate them. And students can get documents that later they have to submit. The upcoming one is ‘journals’, which have the objective of encourage student self-reflection by requiring the student to write down his ideas and reflections about a subject. Another tool is ‘glossaries’, which is focused on the learning of vocabulary. The next one is called ‘lessons’ and students can learn and at the same time practice what they have learnt through different kind of activities. ‘Wikis’ is "a collection of collaboratively authored web documents" [4] , where students can work together on a topic. The last one is ‘grades and scales’ used to track student scores in a course.

MOODLE BASICS

As it has been explained before, Moodle is free and anyone can access there. There are some courses that are available for anyone and other ones are not. Anyone can get Moodle anywhere if there is an Internet connection. Once you have it, you have to write down the URL www.moodle.org, and you will get it.

How can I access to Moodle

If it is the first time accessing to Moodle, the first thing to do is to create an account before login on it. There are some steps to follow to create an account:

Enter in www.moodle.org and create an account clicking the button "create new account".(see FOTO number)

Once you have clicked it, there will appear a screen with some details to complete: user name, password, email address, name and surname, city and also country. (see FOTO number)

Then, an email will be sent to the email to confirm the account. After that, click on the web link that appears in the email and doing it you will be logged in Moodle.

The main screen

The main screen seen when you first access Moodle is that one: FOTO PAG PRINCIPAL.

It is the moment to familiarize with the interface. As it can be noticed, in the middle of the screen there is presented the updated or important information. Then, on the left side there is a list of courses you are enrolled, site news and some configuration details. On the right there is a calendar just to be organized and there is also a dropdown menu where both students and teachers can change the language of their Moodle instructions and tabs. However, it is important to know that Moodle does not translate user content. If you are teaching a language as English language, you can force your students to use a particular language. Moreover, you can edit your user profile FOTO. You can change your password, the real name, you can upload a photo of your face and so on. So, Moodle provides you with several ways to personalize your experience and share information with other people.

First look at a course

As it has been mentioned before, on the left side of the main screen, there is a list of courses you are teaching or taking as a student. If you click on the course name, you will access to them. FOTO

Teachers that have created a course have different options related to privacy and decisions that just they can have such as category, full name, summary, course start date, enrolment period (how long the student would stay enrolled), groups mode (details about group works: independently or view each other’s work), availability (the control of student’s access to the course), enrolment key (a code each student enters when they enrol in a course), guest access (details about guests in the course such as if they need the key or not to enrol), hidden sections (hide an upcoming topic to prevent students from jumping ahead), show grades (choose if students can show their grades or not), show activity reports students can follow their activity history) and maximum upload size (used to restrict the size of the documents uploaded by the teacher as well as by the students).

When you access to a course, the page will be like that one or at least similar. FOTO

The left column has different sections, such as, people, where you can view the profiles of the other participants and you can also check who is a member of a student workgroup; activities, where are listed the activity types that the teacher has added; administration.

However, the right one consists of three parts. The first one is called "latest news", where are shown the latest items added to the new forums; the second section is "upcoming events", where are listed the events you have created in the calendar; and the last one is "recent activity" where it is possible to see the uploads or the forum postings by the teacher or the students. Finally, there is the action in the middle column. It is the place where teachers add all the content of their courses like lessons, quizzes and forums for students.

The course can be presented in different formats such as by week, by topic or socially. The former specifies the start date of the course and also the number of weeks it is going to run. In the second type of format teachers first have to choose how many topics are they going to cover in the course and after that, Moodle creates a section for each topic. The latest is based on a single forum for the whole course which is useful for more informal courses.

How do I have to add content to a course

The first step is to turn on "editing mode" which allows teachers to add resources and activities to their courses. There are some icons that allow you making changes:

Icon

Function

OJOS CERRADO Y ABIERTO

Show or hide item. If you don’t want that students see some items, you can use this option to hide them.

Delete item. Removes the item or blocks from the course.

Move right or left. You can move items or blocks to the right or to the left.

Move up or down. You can move items or blocks up or down.

Move item. You can move an item to another topic or schedule block.

Moreover, apart from those icons, there are also some dropdown menus like "add a resource" for adding static content (web pages or word-processing documents) and "add an activity" to add activities, for instance, quizzes, forums and assignments.

SOCIAL COURSE MATERIAL

(CHAT, FORUM, GLOSSARY, WIKI, WORKSHOP)

FORUMS

FORUMS are a powerful communication tool, in this case, they are an online message board where teachers and students can post messages to each other at any time and from anywhere with an Internet connection. Conversations are traced through time and readers can review the history of the conversation by reading the page. This type of communication is known with the name "asynchronous", which means that communication doesn’t happen at the same time. It is the opposite of "synchronous" and some examples are instant messaging, face-to-face conversation and chats.

An advantage of asynchronous communication is that students can take their time composing a reply. Furthermore, for learners of a language like English is really helpful this kind of communication because they may have problems with the language or they may be shy, so it offers them a chance to discuss or give their opinion about a topic. In other words, forums are great tools for people that don’t usually talk in class because it is a way to get them to participate.

It is important to know that all the people that take part in a forum discussion have to use the same vocabulary. Each forum can be composed of more than one discussion and when a new user subscribes to a forum, all the posts are immediately sent to the email address of her user profile. Besides, there are different types of forums such as a simple discussion (just one discussion), each person posts one discussion (each student can post just one discussion) and standard forum for general use (there can be more than one discussion and each student can post multiple discussions).

There are several options to customize forums. When teachers create a forum, there are three levels of permission that they can give their students: students can post discussions and replies; students cannot start a new discussion, but they can reply; and, students can read the forum, but they cannot post anything. In addition, teachers can limit the maximum size of their students’ posts if they attach any file.

Moreover, there is the possibility to choose who can rate posts; teachers only, or teachers and students and you can also allow users to rate posts only within a certain date range. If you want to change some details, you just have to click on the hand icon.

How to add a forum

There are six steps teachers have to follow when they are creating a forum in their Moodle course: FOTO

Click "Turn editing mode on"

In the topic or schedule section teachers want to add a forum they have to find the activity menu and select "forum".

Give the forum a descriptive name.

Teachers have to select the forum type they want to use.

Write a descriptive summary.

Choose the options that they want to use for the forum they have created.

How to create a new post

Click on the link "add a new discussion topic…"

Give your new discussion a subject.

You have to choose the formatting type.

You can choose to subscribe to the forum.

You can attach a file. You have to click on "Browse" button, then find the document on your computer and finally click "open". Be careful with the size of the document.

Once you have created the new discussion topic, you have 30 minutes to make changes, delete or post a reply and when the editing time has finished the message will be sent to subscribers’ email. FOTO

Managing forums PONERLO DE OTRA FORMA

First of all, it is really important to manage student expectations. Teachers should let students know how often they have to respond to questions and posts and also how often they are going to check it. Behaviour is another important issue in forums because students may say things that they would never say in face-to-face discussion. To avoid this kind of situations, teachers should make their expectations for student conduct clear in the site. A good way of moderating students’ behaviour would be to take in account their attitude in their grades. In the case that a bad situation gets out of control, it is possible to delete students’ posts and also the forum discussion. Then, the teacher should value the situation and he or she should think about the consequences that they deserve as it would happen in a face-to-face situation.

Moreover, teachers should encourage student participation and the key would be to integrate them with the course goal that for sure are different from students’ ones. In addition, teachers should have a grading strategy for student participation, otherwise it is probable that they will limit to read and not to write down something. Moodle has great tools to create and manage graded forums. In the case that there are a lot of people enrolled in the course, it should be a good idea to make small groups and assign groups of students to small discussion groups.

Forum usages

There are unlimited ways of using forums and kind of activities, but the following ones are the most common ones:

Interviews: there are two strategies teachers can use to motivate students participating in this kind of activity. Students have to prepare interesting questions and it can bring some problems. So, to avoid it, it is a good idea to invite an expert as a regular participant and talk with him. If someone is reluctant to this idea, teachers can create a forum in which students have to submit questions for an interview with an expert and after that they can vote on the best questions. Then, teachers should send it to the expert and he or she would answer as soon as possible. After getting the responses, teachers should post them in the forum and in that way students have the opportunity to answer again; creating a discussion.

Debates: teachers can make groups of students on different sides of a topic. Each group should think about different reasoned arguments defending their side of the issue. Arguments must be supported by evidence. The grade will be based on how well they give reasons and support their arguments.

Frequently asked questions: it is usual to answer the same questions about assignments, grades or difficult concepts more than three times because students do not pay enough attention to their classmates’ questions. So, it could be a good idea to create a forum where students can write down their questions and the rest can take a look at it, not to repeat the same questions every time. Doing that teachers do not have to repeat constantly the same answers.

Reading study groups: the first step is to create groups of three to five. Students have the responsibility of discussing a reading. Each person of the group has to post a question about the reading and the other members of the group have to answer the questions. It makes students to read the assignment and also to think more deeply about it.

Social forums: this kind of activity is really useful to get to know each other. It gives people the chance to talk together without being graded. Teachers can start these forums with some fun questions just to break the ice. Furthermore, instructors can ask each student to post an introduction about them, getting to a conversation.

CHATS

CHATS are communications tools that allow teachers and students to communicate in real time, using instant messages. In order to communicate with the other members, everyone has to be logged in at the same time. It is possible to create just one session for the entire course or set up repeating sessions for various meetings. Furthermore, it is important to set a time that suits everyone to log in. It creates entries in the course calendar that remind people to log in for the chat at certain times Even if the teacher sets chat times, Moodle does not restrict access to the chat, so, it is always open.

How to create a chat session

Clock "Turn Editing Mode On"

There will appear a menu and teachers should select "chat" from "add an activity".

Give the chat room a name and provide directions on how to use the room.

Set the time for the first chat session in the "Next chat time".

Set the options for the chat room. There are four options: ‘don’t publish any chat times’, I mean, it is always open; ‘no repeats’, which means that it is used just once; ‘at the same time every day’ meaning that it is a daily chat at a certain time; and, ‘at the same time every week’ which is a weekly chat.

Click "Save Changes".

Chat usages

The key to a successful chat is good moderation. It could happen that all the people that take part of the course talk at the same time. If it happens, for sure that almost all the participant would loss the point. To avoid this situation, teachers should set some rules and if the conversation starts to get out of control, teachers should try to bring students back to the main topic.

Apart from a complement to face-to-face teaching and learning, chats could be the main way of giving lessons. It could be that the teacher gets sick and the only chance to take over the lessons is through chats.

Chats can offer different activities and those are two of them:

Online office hours: There are people that combine studies with work and it is impossible for them to take office hours. In those cases, it is a good opportunity to use the chat room and contact teachers to ask questions about their doubts about an assignment or a lecture for example.

Group chats: each group can have its own chat and they can communicate just the members of each group.

DIALOGUES

DIALOGUES are a private communication channel between two people that can be student-to-teacher or student-to-student communication. Teachers can also create one dialogue for the entire class. It is up to the teacher, depending on his or her goal.

How to create a dialogue

Click " Turn Editing Mode On"

Select Dialogue from the Activity menu.

Teachers should write down an introduction text.

There are some options that teachers should set when they create a dialogue: "delete closed dialogues after (days)" allows teachers to close a dialogue once they are finished; "type of dialogue" in this option teachers should select if it is a teacher-to-student or a student-to-student dialogue; "allow more than one dialogue with the same person" which determines if you can have more than one conversation with the same person or not; and, the last option is "mail default" which selects if the mail notifications should be mailed to the participants or not.

Click and save changes.

Dialogue usages

Dialogue can be a useful alternative to email because you can save all your correspondence just in one place which can be very helpful not to lose conversations.

GLOSSARIES

Vocabulary is an essential part of a language. As it is known, each field has some specific vocabulary or technical concepts and it is important to be aware of that. This tool gives people the chance of learning new vocabulary developing glossaries in a course.

There are two different glossary types: the main one and the secondary one. In the first one can be edited only by teachers, whereas the secondary one can students can write entries and comments. Glossaries can be located anywhere in the course sections.

Teachers that want to create student-built glossary, it is better if they start it with some definitions in order to students have a model to work from. It is possible also to create categories to organize the glossary entries.

Apart from that, it is interesting to know that it is possible to print the glossary list. So, if students have to learn the words or definitions by heart or if teachers prefer to correct it in paper, there is an option to do it.

How to create a glossary

Click on "Turn Editing Mode On".

Select "Glossary" from the "Add activity" menu.

Give a name to the new glossary page.

Write a description of the glossary.

Teachers can choose the options they want to use, for instance: the number of words or definitions students will see, the glossary type, give students permission to edit glossaries or not, allow comments on entries or not and so on.

Click "Save Changes".

Then, to add an entry teachers have to click on the name of the glossary name and click on "Add a new entry". Now it is the moment to start writing.

Glossary usages

Learning vocabulary is a big challenge for students. Students that start learning a language are going to learn new words that represent new ideas and concepts. However, more advanced students usually use this tool to improve to make definitions and also to learn other new words. There are different activities to get it, for example:

Collaborative glossaries: it is very useful because students can create their own glossary list. When students create their own list and they decide what words define, it is more probable to remember it. Moreover, they can select the words, concepts or definitions that they do not understand.

If the class has a big number of students, teachers can create groups and assign to each group the responsibility of making the glossary list per chapter, lesson or per week. And, the rest of the classmates have to comment on their list.

Credit for word use: it is important to learn vocabulary, but also to practice it in real contexts. Because of that, it is an activity where students are going to use the words that they have created. They are going to use them in forums, and teachers can see if they are practicing or not and also if they are doing it correctly.

It will be part of the mark, and to be more "enjoying" teachers are going to give one credit to students that use any word from the list and two credits to the correct use of it.

WIKIS

A wiki is a collection of collaboratively authored web documents. It got his name from the Hawaiian term "wiki wiki" which means "very fast". [5] It is very fats in creating content as a group because it is easy to use. Instead of being a central editor, it is like a community that edits and develops its own content. The whole class can edit a document together or create a collection of web pages. This means that it is a collaboratively work.

There are several types of wikis:

No groups

Separate groups

Visible groups

Teacher

It is a single wiki. The teacher is the only one that can edit it, and students can view it.

Each group has a wiki. The teacher can edit it but other groups cannot view it.

Each group has a wiki. The teacher can edit it. The members of the other groups can edit it.

Groups

There is one wiki for the entire class. Students can edit it.

There is one wiki per group. The students that are part of the group can edit it. The rest of the students cannot view it.

There is one wiki per group and the members can edit it. Other groups can view it.

Student

Each student has its own wiki. He/she and the teacher are the only ones that can edit it.

Each student has its own wiki and he/she can edit it. The students that are part of his/her group can edit the wiki as well.

Each student has its own wiki and he/she can edit it. The rest of the students can view it.

How to create a wiki

Click "Turn Editing Mode On".

Select "wiki" from the "Add an activity" menu.

Give a descriptive name.

Describe the purpose of the wiki and also the expected result.

Set the appropriate options.

Upload an initial page.

Click "Save Changes".

Wiki usages

Group lecture notes: this kind of activity is very useful to students that miss an important point during a lecture. Thanks to this tool, all the students have the opportunity to share their notes and also to distinguish the important information from the examples.

Brainstorming: it is easy and very used in pieces of paper, but it is also possible to do it in a wiki. Students have to write down their ideas related to a topic and they can link them to other pages with further information.

WORKSHOPS

A workshop provides a place for students in a class to see an example project, upload their individual projects, and see and assess each other’s projects. [6] The activities done in that tool can be graded by students and by teachers. Moreover, it enables teachers to create very specific assessment criteria for the graders and also to set deadlines. There is determined the maximum points that each student can get. Due to teachers, it is helpful for students to upload an example of the work they have to do.

Apart from that, there is an option that allows resubmissions, which means that students can replace a previous submission with a new one and all previous submissions are retained. The system keeps the highest grade of all the assignments submitted by each student.

How to create a workshop

Click "Turn Editing Mode On".

Select "workshop" from the "Add Activity" menu.

Add a title and a description.

Select the maximun grade for the workshop assignment.

Choose a grading strategy: no grading; accumulative grading, which calculate the submitting students’ final grade; and, criterion grade, where is created a set of statements used to rank the assessment.

Teachers have to decide if they allow resubmission or not.

Determine the number of peer reviews a student must perform.

Choose if students have to do self-assessment or not.

Set a maximum upload size for an assessment.

Set the deadline for submission.

Click "Save Changes".

Workshop usages

First of all, teachers have to think about how are they going to organize their workshop. There are different creative ways of using this tool:

Intermediate steps:

Presentations and performances: most teachers use this type of activity to assess written work, even if it is not the only skill that can be practiced.

3. INTERACTIVE COURSE MATERIAL (ASSIGMENTS, JOURNALS, LESSONS, QUIZZES)

3.1 QUIZZES

Teachers are not inside the heads of students, so, they cannot know what is going on in their mind, always related to the studies. Teachers give explanations in class, but they do not know if their students understand it or maybe they lose the point. There is way of knowing it, and it is by quizzes. Teachers can create quizzes with different question types, such as, ----------------------that give them critical information about student performance. An advantage of online quizzes is that it is possible to score it for 10 times or more for each student. In other words, -------------------------. Apart from an advantage for students it is also really helpful for teachers because it makes their work easier.

Quizzes have two primary components: the quiz body and the question pools. The former one is what students see in the moment that they take the assessment. There can be some questions chosen manually or at random. The latter one (pag72)---------------------------------------------------------.

How to create a quiz body

When teachers create this part of the quizzes, they are creating a container for the questions and setting rules for interacting with the quiz. [7] There are some steps teachers have to follow to create a quiz body: FOTO

Click "Turn Editing Mode On".

Select "quiz" from the add menu.

Give a descriptive name to the quiz in the editing page.

Write an introduction including any special instruction for taking the quiz.

Choose opening and closing dates for the quiz.

Choose the options you want to use: "time limit" that determines how long students have to complete the quiz; "shuffle questions"--------------; "shuffle answers" ------------; "attempts allowed" is an option to set the number of times a student can take a quiz; "grading method" is a method that can choose which score is recorded; "after answering, show feedback?" it will show students if answers are right or wrong when they submit their quiz for grading; " in feedback, show correct answers" it gives teachers the possibility to show students the correct answer; "allow review" it allows students to review past quizzes; "maximum grade" is where you can choose the highest possible mark for each quiz; and, the last one "require password" teachers can set a password to enter in each quiz.

Click the continue bottom.

Questions for a quiz

Quiz questions are created in the "question-editing" section. In that part of the menu teachers can create, categorize their questions and after that they can add them to the quiz body they have just created. Categories are used to organize the questions for the course. There are several question types teachers can create, for instance: FOTO DE CADA TIPO

Multiple-choice: teachers can create single- and multiple-answer questions. They can also add pictures in the questions and select a grade percentage to individual answers.

True/False: it is a simple multiple-choice question with only two possible answers that are true or false.

Short Answers: this kind of questions requires the student to give an answer. The answer can be a word or a phrase. Teachers have to fill in the answers they are going to accept.

Numerical: Numerical questions are like shot-answers questions, but teachers create questions with an equation. So, in this case students give a numerical answer.

Matching: it is a standard two-column matching question. The first column contain the questions and, the second one, all the possible matching answers. This type of questions is useful to prove students’ understanding of vocabulary as well as their ability to match examples to concepts.

Random Question: -------------------------------------------

Random Shot-Answer Matching: --------------------------------------------------

Quiz usages

Quizzes are a powerful tool to diagnose students’ level of understanding, but it takes some work and practice to saw its effectiveness. First of all, it is important to select the best questions types and also good questions.

There are some ideas about effectiveness to point out. One of them is that teachers would ask directly to their students about the aims of the course. In that way, teachers have the opportunity to know if students are conscious of what they have to learn through the course and at the same time they will demonstrate if they are getting them. Another idea is to ask many questions about each important issue in the class. It is also interesting to include different skills in the questions in order to determine where students are having problems. The last point is that teachers should prove their questions just to saw of they are useful or not.

Here are some ideas for quick quizzes teacher can use as part of their assessment strategy:

Chapter checks: reading is a really important skill students must be good at. Sometime teachers set as homework a reading activity or maybe just to read a text, then to complete in class the exercise. Usually students do not read it and they go to class with any idea about it and they just copy the answers. In those cases, teachers cannot evaluate their comprehension level and they cannot help them to get a great mark in the reading exam. Because of all that, this type of quiz is really helpful to know the level of each student.

Teachers can assess a specific reading and then prepare a multiple-choice test, or they can make a mini-test about the material covered in class. Doing that, they can notice their students’ problems. It encourages students reading to do the quiz well and it also gives an overview of how well they can understand the readings.

The mini test should have a limited time to finish it and the rule is that students can take it only once. Teachers can randomize the question and the answer order to prevent that students share answers.

Test practice:

Data gathering: teachers normally are not sure about what students find difficult, what students find so easy, what doubts they have, if they have understood anything and so on. A good way to check it could be by means of this activity type which is similar to a chapter check. It has a limited time to be done and they can take it just once. Then teachers would correct the answers. The aim of it is that students will prove if they have understood or not the explanations of the teacher.

ASSIGNMENTS

ASSIGNMENTS is a simple and flexible method for collecting student work that you want to grade. Students can upload any type of digital content such as essays, presentations, photographs, small audio or video clips and so on. Or you can just create some assignments similar to the "real world" ones. Once teachers have created an assignment it would appear in their course’s main page as well as added to the calendar.

After students have uploaded their files, teachers can check it clocking on the assignment name in the sections list. It is possible to see the date and the time that students submitted it. Moreover, teachers have to download the files in order to correct them.

When teachers have finished with the grades, students can comment them in two ways: they can click on the assignment link or they can click on the grades link.

How to create an assignment

Click on "Turn editing Mode On".

Select ‘Assignment’ from the Add menu.

Give a name for the assignment.

Describe the assignment in the description area.

Choose the assignment type: offline or uploaded file.

Teachers choose the grade scale they want to use.

Set the maximum size for a file upload.

Set the due date and time for the assignment.

Click "save changes".

Assignment usages

There are two basic assignment types: offline assignment (manual columns placed in the grades module) and upload assignment. The former one is useful for recording grades for "real-world" activities such as presentations, class participation, or any other non-digital performance. However, the latter one is used to collect essays and other kind of student work.

EXERCISES

EXERCISES are similar to assignments, but in this case, students can assess their own work.

How to create an exercise

Click on "Turn editing Mode On".

Select "Exercise" from the "Add an activity" menu.

Give a name.

Teachers should set the options for their exercise.

Click "Save Changes".

Exercise usages

There are three phases: set up phase, allow student assessment and submission and show overall grades and league table. In the first phase, teachers should upload the description of the exercise because in that case, they have to upload the instructions in a separate document. It is possible to upload several files for the description, but it could be confusing. In the second one, students can perform self-assessments and they can also upload their work for grading. It is important to remind students which are the goals of their work. In the last phase, teachers can show the students’ marks.

As students have the guide of what how they have to evaluate their work, once they have teachers’ evaluation, they can practice self-criticism and it would help them to improve their work.

PUEDO INVENTARME UNA TABLA DE SELF-ASSESMENT TIPO LA DE JAVI

JOURNALS

Journaling assignments are a perfect tool to make students write down their thoughts and reflections about a subject, normally related to the course. The use of this tool is also useful for student self-reflection and responsibility. Most of the students do not have experience in writing journals, so, it is important to motivate them and to try to stimulate their thinking. It cannot be forgotten that it is very personal and, also that it is a channel of communication between teachers and students.

Moreover, students should be integrated with the objectives of the course just to be more effective. As it is said in the book "Using Moodle" written by Jason Cole, journals entries are visible only to the instructor and the student who wrote them.

How to create a journal

Click "Turn Editing Mode On".

Select "Journal" from the "Add Activity..." menu.

Give a name and a summary.

Teachers have the possibility to grade the assignment. If they choose to grade them, they have to select the grading scale they want to use.

Select the number of days that the journal is going to be available.

Once it is created, it is possible to star creating entries clicking the button "start journal entry".

Journal usages

There are various activities to be done with journals, such as:

One-minute responses: it is an easy way to get informal feedback from students about a lesson or a topic. Questions can be related to specific content, their feelings about the class or a test, their way of perceiving some aspect of the course, and so on.

Brainstorming, drafting and pre-writing: usually teachers are worried about the writing level of their students. It is an effective way of practising writing because it is a safe space to do it. In addition, students can write first like a mind map where all the ideas are coming out, then they can write a draft and finally the neat version. Teachers can see the process of the writing and evaluate all of it.

LESSONS

Lessons provide students information and questions. Almost always the lesson is not very long and at the end it always has one or a few questions about the information given in the lesson. The aim is that students understand the lesson and that they get the correct answer or answers. If they make the questions correctly, they advance into the next topic. But, in the case that there is an incorrect answer, there are two possible options: they have to repeat the questions to prove if they have understood it or they ------------------------------------------------------------.

It is important that lessons have a logical order because it is easier for students to get well the ideas. Moreover, lessons can be graded or ungraded, even if this tool is not used to test students’ knowledge. Besides, there is the option to determine a time limit to complete the lesson. In the moment that students start the lesson, a timer will be visible and if students do not finish it before the time is over, will not count towards in their grade mark. There are several questions types to use in this tool, such as, multiple-choice, true/false, short-answers, numerical and matching.

How to create a lesson

Click "Turn Editing Mode On".

Select "lesson" in the "Add an activity" menu.

Give a name.

Select the maximum grade to complete the action.

Teachers have to select the options they want to use like if students can retake the lesson or not, the number of pages shown and so on.

Set the availability and the deadline.

Click "Save Changes".

Lessons usages

There are two basic lesson types: branching quizzes and flash-cards that are very easy to use.

Branching quizzes: it consists of organizing sets of questions around different topic or concepts related to the course. Each branch has a number of pages with some information and also with some test questions. The main-branch page looks like a mind map.

Flash cards: it allows students to practice recalling definitions as an initial step toward learning how to communicate in a new field. [8] 

Even if this kind of lessons are very useful, there is a creative lesson usage which is called "simulations and case studies".

Simulations and case studies: it is based on students’ decision. There is a series of pages to follow. The first page should introduce a situation and it should have many details. Then, the other pages would have some questions related to the situation and students have to take their own decisions choosing one of the possible answers. Depending on their answer they are going to pass to a different following page.

GRADES AND SCALES

Grades and scales are options for assessing students work. It is important to track them and calculate their grades and Moodle has a tool to get it. Even if Moodle comes with one scale by default, it is possible for teachers to create their own one. The activities grades are shown in a table like the one below:

Activity

Maximum grade

Grade

The marks from the grades table are automatically added to the grade book where all the scores are collected. It is possible to download the grade book and to modify it.

Scales are a non-numeric way of evaluating students’ performance. [9] With that method, when teachers have to put the mark of their students, they give them a word or a small phrase instead of giving a number. Words and phrases should be meaningful, that is, students have to understand what and you referring to and it has to be useful for their improvement. Good and bad are some examples of the words teachers can use.