Moodle goes social with the new "Board" activity!

Add a bit of social media flair to your course by creating a Board activity. When you add a Board, learners can share text, images, web links, and YouTube videos. They can even "like" or rate them if desired. And this activity can also be used as a brainstorming or resource collecting tool for learners working on a group project!

1. To add a Board to your course, turn editing on and choose the section where you want the Board to appear. Click on Add an activity or resource and select Board from the Activities tab.
   
2. Add a Name for the Board and provide any instructions in the Description textbox.
3. Open the Board settings options area.
4. Add a six-character (hexadecimal) code for the background color (see samples below or look for more options). #E8E8E8 is the light gray shown in the examples that follow. (Be sure to include the # sign to introduce the number.)
5. [OPTIONAL] Upload a background image (portrait orientation works best). See samples below or look for free images at pixabay.com (our favorite image site!).
6. Indicate if you want any participants to be able to rate the posts made by their peers and select Hide column headings if desired.
7. Next, indicate if the posts should appear in the order created or be ranked by the number of ratings they receive.
8. To set a due date for submissions, check the option to Limit students posting by date to display the date and time fields shown in this example.
9. Save and display to determine the number of columns and set up column headings.

Your Board will initially look like this (depending on your screen, you may find you can view it best by collapsing the left navigation panel by clicking on the "hamburger" icon in the top left corner):

To provide a title for each column, click (like you mean it!) on the word Heading, then enter a brief label. To eliminate a column, click on the X in the upper right corner. To add a column, click on the plus sign. In the example above, we're providing space for learners to add content in three categories. Content is added by clicking on the plus sign in any column.

Initiating a post displays a text field and three icons for attaching content: a web link, image file, or YouTube video (one type of content per post).

Here's a sample board to give you a sense of how this works (teacher view);

Teachers can remove any posts, students can remove their own. As a teacher, you can Export the content of the Board to a CSV file or Export Submissions to get a complete record of who made which posts when. You can use the latter report as an aid to assigning grades, as this activity does not have a grade component built in.

The student view of the activity looks like this:

Some ideas for different color backgrounds with the color codes indicated (the first one is Raider Red):

And just for fun, here's how the Board looks with a background image:

Hexadecimal codes for colors shown here: 

• Raider Red - #C42126
• Black - #000000
• Green - #006400
• Tan - #FDF5E6
• Blue - #4682B4

Image files from Pixabay:

• glass-items-3219069_640.jpg
• perspective-1306391_640.jpg
• flower-5364305_640.jpg
• lake-6641880_640.jpg
• blurred-1226286_1280.jpg