Moodle gives the user different tools in which to communicate with learners and staff members. In this section, you will be shown some of those tools you can use to benefit the learner experience. Before using some of these tools think about how you could incorporate some of these ideas into your 'SOW's and inform students of how to use these tools effectively.
Messaging your students
Moodle has facilities to allow both individual and group instant messaging directly in the interface. Messages can be sent to an individual user, a selection of users or a group inside a module. The ability to send a message can be found in many places throughout the interface of Moodle. When users are sent a message they will be notified immediately through an email, a notification on the Moodle Mobile app or through the Moodle interface.
For lecturers, the best way to send messages to students is through the module participants list.
To find out how you can do this please click here
Forums
- A social space for students to get to know each other
- For course announcements (using a news forum with forced subscription)
- For discussing course content or reading materials
- For continuing online an issue raised previously in a face-to-face session
- For teacher-only discussions (using a hidden forum)
- A help centre where tutors and students can give advice
- A one-on-one support area for private student-teacher communications (using a forum with separate groups and with one student per group)
- For extension activities, for example, 'brain teasers' for students to ponder and suggest solutions to
For more information click here.
Chat
The chat activity module enables participants to have text-based, real-time synchronous discussions.
The chat may be a one-time activity or it may be repeated at the same time each day or each week. Chat sessions are saved and can be made available for everyone to view or restricted to users with the capability to view chat session logs.
Chats are especially useful when the group chatting is not able to meet face-to-face, such as
- Regular meetings of students participating in online courses to enable them to share experiences with others in the same course but in a different location
- A student temporarily unable to attend in person chatting with their lecturer to catch up with work
- Students out on work experience getting together to discuss their experiences with each other and their lecturer
- Younger children using chat at home in the evenings as a controlled (monitored) introduction to the world of social networking
- A question and answer session with an invited speaker in a different location
For more information click here
Feedback
The feedback activity module enables a teacher to create a custom survey for collecting feedback from participants using a variety of question types including multiple choice, yes/no or text input. This can be used as a quick activity to get a response about what has been delivered and how? Or about a particular idea raised in a session.
Feedback responses may be anonymous if desired, and results may be shown to all participants or restricted to teachers only. Any feedback activities on the site front page may also be completed by non-logged-in users. This can be useful to gauge how well things have been delivered or engaged with.
Feedback activities may be used
- For course evaluations, helping improve the content for later participants
- To enable participants to sign up for course modules, events etc.
- For guest surveys of course choices, school policies etc.
- For anti-bullying surveys in which students can report incidents anonymously
For more information click here.
Scheduler
The scheduler activity helps you in scheduling appointments with your students.
Teachers specify time slots for meetings, students then choose one of them on Moodle. Teachers in turn can record the outcome of the meeting - and optionally a grade - within the scheduler.
Group scheduling is supported; that is, each time slot can accommodate several students, and optionally it is possible to schedule appointments for entire groups at the same time.
For more information click here
