Trinity Laban IT Dept
Trinity Laban Moodle Show and Tell FAQ
1. What is Moodle and why is it useful for Trinity Laban students and staff?
Moodle (an abbreviation for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning
Environment) is an e-learning software platform, also known as a Course
Management System, Learning Management System, or Virtual Learning
Environment (VLE). Some typical features of Moodle are:
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Assignment submissions
Discussion forums
File downloads
Grading
Blogs
Moodle instant messages
Online calendar
Online news and announcement (College and course level)
Online quizzes or assessments
Online timetables
Wiki
2. How does the Moodle VLE differ from the existing Student Intranet? Why
exactly is a VLE required in addition to the Intranet for Trinity Laban?
Moodle is primarily a teaching and learning resource, with a strong focus on
‘immediate’ response from staff to students regarding information, content and
enquiries on the site. Moodle is specifically designed for the management of
courses and modules and will therefore also offer the institution the opportunity to
start receiving and grading coursework online, which should benefit both students
and staff in the future.
Moodle is a replacement for the teaching and learning elements within the Student
Intranet. The Student Intranet will become a place for social interaction at Trinity
Laban, with content such as announcements of upcoming Trinity Laban events and
programmes.
As Moodle has been in development more recently, it is aimed at both Trinity and
Laban courses and modules, where previously the student intranet was developed
primarily at Trinity and therefore is currently more Trinity-centric than we would like.
3. What is the URL for the site and what credentials should I use to login with?
You can open the site from any PC with an internet connection using the URL
http://moodle.trinitylaban.ac.uk. The fields to login to the site can be found in the top
right-hand corner and you should be able to log in with your existing Trinity Laban
user name and password. If you find you are unable to login to the site please feel
free to email IT@trinitylaban.ac.uk and we can investigate why the account does not
login successfully. The following is an example of how the Trinity Laban Moodle
home page looks and where staff need to login from:
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Trinity Laban IT Dept
Click on the login link
here to log into the
site. You should use
your existing Trinity
Laban IT account to
log in.
4. What type of content should be used for Moodle and what type of content
should remain on the Student Intranet?
Resources such as course and module specific materials and files, training guides,
course forums, questionnaires and student quizzes should be made available using
Moodle. It is also possible to link to websites to assist with student research or for
the purpose of linking to self-study material.
For more general announcements such as forthcoming shows or events,
noticeboard updates or new job announcements for example, these should continue
to be published via the Student Intranet or if necessary the Home (News Update)
that is sent daily. It is also possible to publish news updates on the Moodle front
page; however, these updates in particular should be specifically for any major
course announcements or changes at Trinity, Laban or both sites, for example if a
short notice room change has been made for a class or lecture, or if an important
coursework deadline has changed or been moved.
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5. How does the structure of the Moodle site work? It looks very complicated.
As previously mentioned the site has been developed to ensure it is used as a
Trinity Laban Institution-wide resource. Therefore, programmes and modules are
available for both the institution’s Music Faculty Programmes and Dance Faculty
Programmes. Under both of these are course categories for each of the various
programmes, this is illustrated by the following screen shot:
Dance Faculty
Programmes for
Laban students
and staff
Music Faculty
Programmes for
Trinity staff and
students
Within each course category are the modules that make up the course. It is within
each course that materials can and should be uploaded for students to access.
Although this may seem like quite a few links for students and staff to have to
access, Moodle works by displaying modules as a ‘quick-link’ on the right-hand side
of the site (see the screenshot below for an example) for any modules students have
previously enrolled in on the site. This means that when they next login into the site
they will immediately see the modules that apply to them down the left-hand side of
the page.
Quick links become
available once you are
enrolled on the correct
courses
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So in summary the site structure essentially is broken down as follows:
Faculty (e.g. Music or Dance) > Course/Programme (BA1, FdA, DDS) >
Module/Component (Critical Skills, Historical Studies, etc) > Module contents and
resources for students (Handbooks, Coursework Specifications)
6. I’ve managed to login to the site successfully, but it seems very limited how
much I can do using Moodle?
Moodle uses what is known as ‘Roles’ for all users of the site and it’s these roles that
determine how much content each user has access to for the site. By default the
first time any user logs into the site, they will be given the default role of ‘student’. In
terms of being able to edit content of the site the ‘student’ role is very restricted, but
will allow anyone to navigate the site content itself and enrol on courses if
necessary. However, for most academic and administrative staff the role of ‘course
administrator’ should be assigned in order to be able to update course content and
create new modules for existing courses.
7. How do I set myself the ‘role’ of ‘course administrator’?
When you first log into Moodle you will be unable to do this, so if you send me an
email once you have logged into the site for the first time, I can ensure that your
Moodle account is set as a Course Administrator in order for you to be able to add
content to courses and create new modules.
8. Why am I unable to see Trinity Laban curricula descriptors in the Moodle site
itself?
The descriptors (programme, course, etc.) used above are the curricula descriptors
used at Trinity Laban. The descriptors built into Moodle are slightly different but it is
important to understand how they correspond to the Trinity Laban descriptors for the
purpose of retaining the correct structure for the site. For reference below is a
comparison of Trinity Laban descriptors and those used within Moodle:
Trinity Laban Descriptor
Faculty
Course/Programme
Module/Component
Built-In Moodle Descriptor
Category
Sub-Category
Course
NB: Laban also has Sub-components within Components but I'm not certain where
they'd fit within Moodle.
9. I am unable to find the course or module that I am looking for or teach?
If you are unable to find a particular course or module on the site please feel free to
email IT@trinitylaban.ac.uk and I can confirm its location for you or create it if it
doesn’t already exist.
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10. I’ve found the particular course and module that I need to start uploading
content to. How do I go about doing this?
As mentioned at the beginning of this document there is plenty of variety for the type
of material that can uploaded for course modules and to cover them all would be
beyond the scope of this FAQ, so the best starting place in order for staff to do this
would be to use the excellent clear and easy-to-follow instructions from the online
PDF below:
http://edwebsfiles.ed.uiuc.edu/online/facultyorientation/section2/02-Moodle.pdf
11. I’ve started adding materials to my course, but I have since discovered that
any members of staff and students seem to be able to access course content.
Some of the materials are of a confidential or copyrighted nature, so is it
possible to only allow students on the course access to the material?
It is entirely possible to ‘lock-down’ a course so that only students that are enrolled
for that course or module can gain access to the course’s materials. This can be
achieved by opening the course and selecting the course ‘settings’ option from the
Administration frame on the left-hand side. Within the course settings you can set
‘Course Enrolable’ = ‘No’ which will mean no ‘Guests’ or ‘Students’ will be able to
access course material unless explicitly given the role of ‘Student’ for the course.
12. How do I assign specific students to a course to ‘restrict’ my course content?
Provided the students have previously logged into the Trinity Laban Moodle site at
least once, then the role of ‘Student’ can be assigned for them to each of the
courses they need access to. To do this open the necessary course and select
‘Assign Roles’ from the Administration frame on the left-hand side. From the
available Moodle roles click on the link for student and you should then see the
screen as below:
Potential users
are students
registered to
use the Moodle
site but not
enrolled on the
current course
Existing users
are students
enrolled on the
current course
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Click on the ‘Student’ role in the table on this page and then to assign access to the
course select the necessary student names from the ‘potential users’ list in the righthand box and add them to the ‘existing users’ list on the left-hand side using the
arrow provided. This means the assigned students only will have access to these
course/modules teaching materials.
13. Is it possible to link to external Trinity Laban websites from the Moodle site for
teaching purposes?
It is acceptable to link to external websites however, due to Copyright Rulings that
apply for Trinity Laban staff; any links to external sites must be linked so that they
open in a new window separate from the TL Moodle site. This can be achieved
when creating a link for the site by setting the ‘Open In:’ option to ‘New Window’.
This is very important as any content that is linked within the Moodle site, Trinity
Laban can be held accountable for.
14. I’ve heard that Moodle can support online grading. Is this true?
One of the other big advantages of using Moodle is that online grading is built into
the tool. This will allow students to submit work online for it to be marked and
graded by academic staff online and then these marks can be made available to
students to receive online as well. This potentially makes submitting work and
receiving grades more convenient for students as they no longer have to be onsite in
order to do this. For staff, all submitted work is online which reduces the necessity to
carry around paper-based assignments for marking.
15. Online grading sounds promising but how can staff and students be sure this
is secure? Is it for example possible students can view each other’s work
once submitted to the site?
As online grading is an integral part of Moodle, you can be assured it is a secure and
safe practice and other HE institutions are already using Moodle in the same manner
to do this.
Use of the site is customised specifically to each student once they have logged in.
All students will be assigned the ‘role’ of ‘student’ for the site and will, on top of only
being able to access courses they are specifically enrolled in, only have access to
any work submitted by them or view grades received by them. Only members of
staff that have been setup as a ‘teacher’ for specific courses will have the ability to
view all documents submitted by ‘students’ of that course.
The link below covers how the online submission process works in more detail:
http://w3.yorksj.ac.uk/PDF/Online%20Assignment%20Submission%20in%20Moodle
JAN11.pdf
16. Is it possible to enable external examiners to have access to online student
assignment submissions in order to allow ‘2nd marking’ for assignments?
At present there are two methods that would allow an external examiner to assess
pieces of work submitted for online student assignments:
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Method 1 (Preferred Method)
It is possible to print off assignments from the Moodle site, when they have
previously been submitted for marking; therefore, if a sample of individual student
assignment’s are required, it is still entirely possible to print a sample of them off so
that they can be sent via post to any external assessors. It is also possible to
downloaded the submitted student’s piece of work and send it to the assessor via
email.
Method 2
If an external examiner requires access to mark a student assignment online, they
will first need to login to the Moodle site. A Moodle account has previously been
created with the Role of Course Administrator specifically for this purpose, the
details of which can be requested by email from IT: IT@trinitylaban.ac.uk.
Using this account the external examiner can log into the site and update
marks/comments on assignments as necessary. It will be the responsibility of staff
to direct the external marker to the correct location on the Moodle site of the
assignments after they have obtained the above account login. This can be
achieved quite easily be emailing the link to the page on the Moodle site that
contains the submitted assignments, however, it is important to note that any
comments an external assessor may add for assignments may overwrite the original
markers comments, hence, why method 1 is the preferred method for external
marking.
Once the 2nd marker has made their changes then the assignment can be made
publicly available to the student again.
Both of the two above methods do however seem to create a bit of ‘additional’ work
for those involved, so I have currently contacted our Moodle site provider ULCC
(University of London Computing College), to approach them about however other
Institutions handle external marking, and I will inform staff of any further details
about this once I have received a response from them, but in the meantime the
above methods will support this process successfully.
17. Are there any useful websites I can take a look at to find more information
about using Moodle?
Please feel free to take a look at some of the following websites which have more
comprehensive information about Moodle which is beyond the scope of this guide:
Moodle Homepage – The home site has a wealth of info on Moodle, its background
and it’s development. A fair bit of the material is aimed at the technical side of
things for Moodle, so please don’t be too put off by this, but there is also info on the
site which should be useful for Academic staff as well. Their forums are also useful
if you are trying to do something but not quite sure how to go about it.
www.moodle.org
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Documentation page on the Moodle site – In particular please view the Teacher
Documentation link which also features further useful links aimed particularly at
Academic staff
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Main_Page
Online PDF document explaining how to build a new course using Moodle this is a
great starting point for new users trying to add content to a course so I would advise
most staff to start off here
http://edwebsfiles.ed.uiuc.edu/online/facultyorientation/section2/02-Moodle.pdf
University of Bath website – Contains very useful FAQs answering questions about
how assignments work with Moodle amongst other useful info
http://moodle.bath.ac.uk/faq/content/8/242/en/how-do-i-grade-and-give-feedback-toassignments-submitted-on-moodle.html
Online PDF which explains in-depth the online grading process from setting an
assignment for students, through the grading process and back to students
receiving their marks:
http://w3.yorksj.ac.uk/PDF/Online%20Assignment%20Submission%20in%20Moodle
JAN11.pdf
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