Activity Modules

Moodle contains a wide range of activity modules that can be used to build up any type of course.

Assignments

Assignments allow the teacher to specify a task that requires students to prepare digital content (any format) and submit it by uploading it to the server. Typical assignments include essays, projects, reports and so on. This module includes grading facilities.

Chats

The Chat module allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion via the web. This is a useful way to get a different understanding of each other and the topic being discussed - the mode of using a chat room is quite different from the asynchronous forums. The Chat module contains a number of features for managing and reviewing chat discussions.

Choices

A choice activity is very simple - the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to vote on a direction for the course; or to gather research consent.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is useful in the initial stages of a task, for example for gathering a range of ideas or finding out what students already know collectively.

It's useful to set some ground rules for cognitivefactorying, which can include:

Everyone's contribution is valued, and no comment or criticism is given until all the contributions are listed;
Everyone has the option to participate, or not;
Wild ideas are as welcome as sober ones in the ideas-generating stage;
Everyone's idea must be expressed in a single sentence or using keywords.

Database Activity

The Database module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited, including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things. You may be familiar with similar technology from building Microsoft Access or Filemaker databases.

FLV Player Activity Module

The FLV Player Activity Module is comprehensive wizard for deploying Flash video as activities in Moodle courses. It allows users to set all of the parameters supported by Jeroen Wijering's FLV Player.

FLV Player Activity Module Developed by Matt Bury - http://matbury.com/

FLV Player Developed By Jeroen Wijering - http://www.longtailvideo.com/

Help Files Index

Feedback

With this module you can survey your students with a custom survey.

Forums

This activity can be the most important - it is here that most discussion takes place. Forums can be structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in a variety for formats, and can include attachments. By subscribing to a forum, participants will receive copies of each new posting in their email. A teacher can impose subscription on everyone if they want to.

Glossary

This activity allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary.

The entries can be searched or browsed in many different formats.

The glossary also allows teachers to export entries from one glossary to another (the main one) within the same course.

Finally, it is possible to automatically create links to these entries from throughout the course.

Hot Potatoes

This module, the "HotPot" module, allows teachers to administer Hot Potatoes quizzes via Moodle. The quizzes are created on the teacher's computer and then uploaded to the Moodle course.
After students have attempted the quizzes, a number of reports are available which show how individual questions were answered and some statistical trends in the scores.

Journals

This module is a very important reflective activity. The teacher asks the student to reflect on a particular topic, and the student can edit and refine their answer over time. This answer is private and can only be seen by the teacher, who can offer feedback and a grade on each journal entry. It's usually a good idea to have about one Journal activity per week.

Labels

This is a not a true activity - it is a "dummy" activity that allows you to insert text and graphics among the other activities on the course page.

Lesson

A lesson delivers content in an interesting and flexible way. It consists of a number of pages. Each page normally ends with a question and a number of possible answers. Depending on the student's choice of answer they either progress to the next page or are taken back to a previous page. Navigation through the lesson can be straight forward or complex, depending largely on the structure of the material being presented.

Adding a New projectodule

Purpose: This module is based on the philosophy that students learn best when driven not by a content syllabus, but by self-selected, purposeful projects. A project usually involves research into a topic. The research can be presented in a file format or as a face-to-face presentation. Files can include both text and images, and can be uploaded as websites, essay documents, powerpoint slides and other formats.

It is intended that group and peer work be integrated into the learning design. Groups can be formed, by the teacher or by the students themselves, Students can do assessments of their classmates and these ratings averaged for consideration.

Tasks: There are five different tasks that can be chosen for a learning sequence. Some of these tasks must be built in strict order. Others can be repeated and arranged flexibly. A typical project will include the following modules in this sequence:

Brainstorm (to collect a list of topics)
Signup (to select a topic as an individual or as a group)
Submit (to hand in a file for assessment)
Schedule (of a face-to-face appointment, usually for a presentation)
Assessment (of either a submitted file or a scheduled presentation)

Note that after a Signup task with group work has been created, it appears as two tasks.

Options include:

just a brainstorm and signup for a face-to-face task;
multiple submit modules to handle multiple drafts of an essay or other file; Required modules are only that a Brainstorm task and a Signup task be created.

Authoring: This module is actually five modules built into one authoring package. Thus there are many screens for both creating (authoring) and viewing the tasks. As a teacher, you can switch between student view and teacher view of each task. You will need to design each task separately, so at first it may seem like a long sequence of separate screens. However, after a full project is built it will be relatively easy to modify a new one based on a past version. The easiest way to learn how to build a project is to upload a course full of sample projects into your moodle site and try one. You can copy one you like into your course and modify the dates, instructions, and criteria.

Version Note: This is version 1.0 of the projectodule. Some functions were planned but are not yet implemented at this time. You may see these future features crossed out or shadowed as you use the module. This was built as an engineering project of Sreedhar, Rohin, Tushar, Andrew and YJ of the University of Melbourne. This team has contributed this code for the benefit of open-source learning. We hope for further development of features such as: gradebook integration, activity report integration, special blocks with project links and "Best 10" ratings, extended assessments, public/private archives and other ideas submitted by the Moodle community. Please visit http://moodle.org in the developers forums to contribute your ideas. Those who can donate programming time are especially invited. Please contact Don Hinkelman at hinkel at sgu.ac.jp to get involved in these efforts.

Questionnaire

The questionnaire module allows you to construct questionnaires (surveys) using a variety of question types, for the purpose of gathering data from users. It is based on phpESP, and Open Source questionnaire tool. See http://phpesp.sourceforge.net

Quizzes

This module allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers. This module includes grading facilities.

Resources

Resources are content: information the teacher wants to bring into the course. These can be prepared files uploaded to the course server; pages edited directly in Moodle; or external web pages made to appear part of this course.

SCORM/AICC Packages

A package is a bundle of web content packaged in a way that follows the SCORM or the AICC standard for learning objects. These packages can include web pages, graphics, Javascript programs, Flash presentations and anything else that works in web browsers. The Package module allows you to easily upload any standard SCORM or AICC package and make it part of your course.

Surveys

The Survey module provides a number of verified survey instruments that have been found useful in assessing and stimulating learning in online environments. Teachers can use these to gather data from their students that will help them learn about their class and reflect on their own teaching.

Turnitin Tool

Wikis

A Wiki enables documents to be authored collectively in a simple markup language using a web browser.

"Wiki wiki" means "super fast" in the Hawaiian language, and it is the speed of creating and updating pages that is one of the defining aspects of wiki technology. Generally, there is no prior review before modifications are accepted, and most wikis are open to the general public or at least to all persons who also have access to the wiki server.

The Moodle Wiki module enables participants to work together on web pages to add, expand and change the content. Old versions are never deleted and can be restored.

This module is based on Erfurt Wiki.

Workshop

A Workshop is a peer assessment activity with a huge array of options. It allows participants to assess each other's projects, as well as exemplar projects, in a number of ways. It also coordinates the collection and distribution of these assessments in a variety of ways. The Workshop module is contributed by Ray Kingdon.

Index of all help files