Navigating Moodle:

Getting around in Moodle is very straightforward, and there are a number of different features to help you navigate. Try them out and see what happens.

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The Basics

1. Bread Crumbs - Just below the banner with the course title, you should see a line with various links such as

• The first element PLC refers to the whole moodle site. Selecting this will take you back to the moodle home page which contains the complete list of moodle course sites.
• The second element DS101 is a short name that refers to the current course site. Selecting this will take you to the homepage of your course.
• The third element Books refers to the type of resource or activity you are viewing. Selecting this will display a list of all the Resources for the course.
• The final part About Digital Storytelling is the title of the resource or activity currently being viewed and has a different colour to indicate this.

2. Jump to - Inside the book and other Moodle activities, you will see a drop-down menu on the upper or lower right that allows you to jump to various parts of the course.

3. Logging Out - There are two easy ways to log out of the course site. Near the top of the screen you will see and at the bottom of the screen you will see a logout link. In both cases, clicking on (Logout) will log you out of Moodle.

Roles in Moodle

In Moodle, there are six default levels of access:
 

1. The Administrator, who has access to all courses and determines the look of the entire site. The admin can also put messages of general interest on the Moodle login page. All Moodle users receive these messages in their email. The admin creates courses and user IDs.
2. The Course Creator is a kind of super teacher who has the right to create courses.
3. The Teacher has full control within his/her course(s) for course building, management and for teaching, but cannot create student IDs.
4. The Nonediting Teacher has no editing rights. This means they can teach using the course and its tools, but they cannot change the tools or course materials.
5. The Students can use Moodle for learning purposes only, most of the options open to teachers remain hidden to them.
6. Guest access is limited to seeing, but not touching.

To elaborate, the Teacher’s access includes:
 

• Controlling the course settings, including the enrollment key
• Adding and removing tools or activities in the course
• Enrolling or removing students
• Adapting the deadlines and grading scales for the different activities
• Supervising and evaluating student activities and coaching the students
• Posting group and course events in the calendar

Icons in Moodle

Editing Icons

Other Icons

The face in profile means that Guests may enter a course

or The key means that users will have to know an enrollment key to enter a course.

Blocks

The rectangles on the right and left sides offer many different kinds of information. Your instructor is in control of which blocks appear on your course page, and can add, remove, or reorganize blocks at any time.

1. People block contains a list of all the Participants in the course. It also has Edit Profile, where you can edit your description and picture.
2. Activities block contains all the forums, assignments, quizzes, and other activities within the course, organized by type instead of by topic or week as on the content column.
3. Search Forums block allows you to search all forums in the course.

4. Administration block contains links to Grades and Edit Profile.

5. Latest News block shows the messages posted in the News Forum.

6. Upcoming Events block shows the next few events listed in the calendar.

7. Recent Activity block shows any changes, including assignments added, forum posts, and resources, virtually anything an instructor has added to the course, listed from most recent.