Book Image

Moodle 4 E-Learning Course Development - Fifth Edition

By : Susan Smith Nash
Book Image

Moodle 4 E-Learning Course Development - Fifth Edition

By: Susan Smith Nash

Overview of this book

Moodle 4.0 maintains its flexible, powerful, and easy-to-use platform while adding impressive new features to enhance the user experience for student success. This updated edition addresses the opportunities that come with a major update in Moodle 4.0. You'll learn how to determine the best way to use the Moodle platform’s new features and configure your courses to align with your overall goals, vision, and even accreditation review needs. You’ll discover how to plan an effective course with the best mix of resources and engaging assessments that really show what the learner has accomplished, and also keep them engaged and interested. This book will show you how to ensure that your students enjoy their collaborations and truly learn from each other. You'll get a handle on generating reports and monitoring exactly how the courses are going and what to do to get them back on track. While doing this, you can use Moodle 4.0’s new navigation features to help keep students from getting “lost.” Finally, you'll be able to incorporate functionality boosters and accommodate the changing needs and goals of our evolving world. By the end of this Moodle book, you'll be able to build and deploy your educational program to align with learning objectives and include an entire array of course content.
Table of Contents (18 chapters)
1
Part 1: Getting started
5
Part 2: Implementing The Curriculum
14
Part 3: Power Tools for Teachers and Administrators

Defining a block

Blocks are great tools because they help you cluster content for easy use, and they can be organized around learning goals. Blocks are plugins that arrange chunks of text and links. They can be added to the side of a page in Moodle and can remind you of what a sidebar breakout looks like in a printed textbook. A block usually displays information in a small area in one of the side columns. For example, a block can display a calendar, the latest news, or the students enrolled in a course.

You can administer plugins from the Site administration site by going to Plugins:

Figure 12.1 – Where Plugins appears in the Site administration menu

Blocks help keep students on task. They can also include links to parts of the course and thus act as navigation bars. It is important to keep in mind that not all instructional designers or course designers like using blocks, and some even consider them a bit anchored in the past. Those who do not like...