Moodle Design Tips

(Originally posted 5/12/11)

I ran into this slideshow which gives some simple and effective tips for designing a Moodle page. Note that this assumes that your page is in Topics view.

http://www.slideshare.net/michelledmoore/teaching-with-moodle-best-practices-for-course-design-i-moot-11

Here are just three key points from the slide show that are right on:

1) Use Moodle more as a launch pad to content, not to create the content itself. There are lots of great resources out there, as well as tools for you to create your own good-looking material. What Moodle provides is the link to these resources and the ability to build conversations (forums) and assignments (activities) around them.

2) Use Activity reports to find out who is accessing resources and how often. Did you know that you can find out exactly who has (and who has not) visited that great link that you provided? Click Reports in the Administration block to try it.

3) Let students get involved in developing the page. For example, build a class glossary or database that the students contribute to.

I'd love to sit down one-on-one with anyone who'd like to work on Moodle course design. Just let me know what works for you.