Moodle Training Courses

Moodle is an open source platform for educators to develop and manage courses online. It started out as a screen capture application but it has since evolved to integrate screen capture and post-processing tools targeted at both the educational and information multimedia development marketplace.

Moodle is a modular system based on plugins, which are a bit like Lego blocks that you can assemble in various ways to build whatever you need. Plugins are available for different kinds of content, and there are plugins for collaborative activities. For example, a Workshop plugin can manage a full peer assessment process, so you can get hundreds of students accurately grading each other’s assignments.

By adding tracking and reporting capabilities, as well as the ability to add more plugins from the community or even ones you write yourself, and you can build some excellent education environments.

Key features of Moodle:

• Simple Dashboard
• Progress Tracking
• Instant Messaging
• Badges
• Built-in Calendar

These are just some of the features available in Moodle, but of course, there are many more.

Have you ever wondered why the Dummies books are so popular? Well, it’s probably because so many of us are self-taught, using Google to find out how to use a function, or we are shown how to use software by someone at work. Although this can be useful, it also means we tend to spend a lot of time with trial and error, or we are just picking up somebody else’s bad habits. Trial and error, unfortunately, involves a lot of error, and the bad habits you pick up will probably be passed on to the next person, so soon they spread across the business, meaning entire teams can end up working inefficiently. At this point, you might head to the bookstore or do an online search to find a Moodle for Dummies book to help solve some of those tricky issues. That’s a step in the right direction, and we sometimes use reference manuals ourselves. The problem is that trying to learn by trial and error may cost you many times the cost of a good training course.

Our Moodle courses are designed to target the key features and tools included in the various applications to help you get back to work and apply them right away.

A training course with Keystroke Learning can set you up to take full advantage of your software. We want
Moodle to work for you, not the other way around. We also make a point of passing on the best of our knowledge and experience to help you save time in your daily work. We know lots of shortcuts for your software applications,
and we want you to know them as well.

Typically, one of our experienced trainers will walk you through the features and functions of the software, then you will try them out on your own, with tips and guidance on getting the best out of the features. We also encourage participants to ask lots of questions to help you get the most out of your learning experience.

You’ll receive a manual to take away at the end of the course, as well as exercise files so you can practice later, or just to jog your memory when you need.

Yes, by using the course layout feature, you can control how your Moodle course appears to learners. These special features are unique to Moodle. For example, you can change the full name of the course and the short name of the course appearing in the navigation bar. You can change the format of your course, meaning you can decide how the resources and activities are displayed. The course layout feature also allows you to choose how you would like to display the resources.
The following formats are available:

• Weekly format – as the name suggests, the weekly format displays sections as weeks.
• Topic format – the topic format gives you numbered topic sections you can apply titles to.
• The social format – creates a big message board for discussions and is useful for learning and teaching situations that are more free form.
• The single activity format – If you just need to add one particular item such as a SCORM package or a quiz, the single activity format would be the most suitable choice.

In Moodle, you have access to several reports that can tell you what your learners have been doing in their course/s and when.
To access these reports just click the More link in the gear menu.
There you will find the logs, live logs and activity reports, the course participation report and additional reports if enabled by your administrator.

The following reports are available:

• Competency breakdown reports – allows you to view the competencies of each student in your course, along with their ratings.
• Course activity reports – these show the number of views for each activity or resource. It can be viewed by managers, trainers, and non-editing trainers.
• Participation reports – generate a list of who has participated in an activity and how many times. Can be filtered by role, group or action.

When statistics are enabled for a site, graphs and tables of user activity can also be generated.

Moodle’s lesson activity is a series of pages which give your learners the opportunity to make interactive choices within a Moodle course. Learners beginning a lesson activity will see an introductory page with one or more buttons. The buttons they choose determine the path they will go on. This gives each learner the opportunity to go on their own unique learning journey.
To begin, go to the Add activity or resource link in the section you want and click lesson.

You can check on progress at a glance with the choice activity. The choice activity enables you to set up voting options with an option button. A learner can then choose a specific option. This feature can be used in several ways; from facilitating decision
making, to testing a learner’s understanding of a subject, or to take a poll.

You can see the responses by using the view responses link. You can also take control of the choices feature by making selections for learners who fail to do so themselves.

You can start setting up choices from the gear menu in the top right corner of your Moodle page.
In the section where you would like to add your choices, click the link add an activity or resource. This opens the activity chooser, where you can start to set up your options.

Your learning doesn’t stop once you have completed your course. We hope you will continue your experience by taking some time to practice what you have learned and apply it to your own situation and environment.

If we have done our job well, you may be inspired to learn even more by attending another course. If you are looking for something other than Moodle, we have a comprehensive range of courses available for you to choose from. We are here to help, so please don’t hesitate to contact us if you need any further advice.