Moodle terms

Workshop

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.

Books

is a simple multipage study material

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. This 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.

HTML page

This sort of resource makes it easy to develop a complete single web page within Moodle, especially when you are using Moodle's WYSIWYG HTML editor. The page is stored in the database, not as a file, and you have a lot of freedom to do almost anything you like using HTML, including Javascript.

Standard forum for general use

is an open forum where any one can start a new topic at any time. This is the best general-purpose forum.

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.

Lesson

This 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.

Q And A Forum

This forum requires students to post their perspectives before viewing other students' postings. After the initial posting, students can view and respond to others' postings. This feature allows equal initial posting opportunity among all students, thus encouraging original and independent thinking.

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.

Database Activity

This 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.

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 categorized database, and can be re-used within courses and even between courses. Allows 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.

Questionnaire

This module allows you to construct questionnaires (surveys) using a variety of question types, for the purpose of gathering data from users.

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.

Directory

This resource can display a whole directory (and its subdirectories) from your course files area. Students can then browse and view all those files.

A single simple discussion

is just a single topic, all on one page. Useful for short, focused discussions.

Choices

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.

Text page

This type of resource is a simple page written using plain text. A number of formatting types are available to help turn your plain text into nice-looking web pages.

Files and web pages

This resource type allows you to link to any web page or other file on the public web. It also allows you to link to any web page or other file that you have uploaded into your course files area from your own desktop computer. Normal web pages are simply displayed as they are, while multimedia files are dealt with more intelligently and may be embedded within a web page. For example, MP3 files will be displayed using a built-in streaming player, as will movie files, flash animations and so on. There are many options for displaying your content in popup windows, framed windows and so on. In particular, if your resource is a web application or other type of content able to accept parameters, you can choose to send information to your resource such as the user's name, their email, the course they are currently in, and so on.

Assignments

allows 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.

Resources

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.

Wikis

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.