Moodle Course FAQ's: General Questions

Q. How do I request a course site for a new term?
A. It is not necessary to place a request for a Moodle course site. Sites are automatically created for each CRN and students are enrolled as they register for the course in Banner. Cross-listed courses are automatically combined into a single course site. Please refer to the related link for information on combining multiple CRN's into one course site. This article explains how to copy content from a prior term into a new course site.

Q. How do I find new courses for next term?
A. Courses for the next term are generally made available midway through the current term. To locate them, scroll all the way down to the bottom of your Moodle home page (in the My courses area). Because these courses are unavailable to students, their titles are grayed out. If you don't see a course, enter the CRN in the Search courses field on your Moodle home page.

Q. I'm going to be teaching a course a few terms down the road, but would like to get started on my Moodle course soon. What should I do?
A. Contact the Center for Instructional Support to request a "Future Development" course. Once your actual course is available, you can import the content that you have prepped just as you would a prior version of the course.

Q. Can I remove courses from prior terms from the list displayed in My courses?
A. Unfortunately, we can't control which courses appear on our Moodle home page.

Q. I have two courses with the same name. How can I distinguish between them in my list of courses?
A. You can add a brief description to your course that will be displayed in the My courses list (on the Moodle log in page) of everyone enrolled in the course. Click on the course admin gear, then click on Edit settings and enter text in the Course summary field in the Description options area. Save changes.

Q. How can I tell if I successfully combined my course enrollments after creating a meta course enrollment link?
A. Click on Participants, then click on the admin gear to display a list of options. Click on Enrolled users. Scan the right column to verify that students have been enrolled via the meta course link. Students enrolled in the original course will be "External database" enrolled, while students from the added course(s) will be "Meta-course link" enrolled.

FAQ's: Moodle 3.3

Here are answers to some of the questions we've heard most often since we migrated to Moodle 3.3 at eThink:

Q. How do I find my courses?
A. The best way to locate courses that are not available to you is to use the Search courses field just above the list of My courses that appears on the Moodle landing page. Once courses are made available, you'll see them there, at the top of My courses. Note: Not all courses available to you and students appear in the list in the navigational panel on the left -- we're working on that!

Q. How do I make my course available?
A. The basic process has not changed, just the access point. See these instructions to make your course available.

Q. Can I customize my course list?
A. This version of Moodle does not accommodate customization of your dashboard. See how do I find my courses above.

Q. How can I tell if my course is available to students?
A. You may have noticed that your course name looks "live" in the breadcrumb trail at the top of your course pages, even when you have not yet made it available to students. If your course is live, you'll see it listed in red under My courses in the middle of your Moodle landing page. If not, it will appear in gray text. You can verify that your course is available by checking the course settings set out in this article.

Q. How do I add a user to my class?
A. Adding a user begins with the Participants link in the navigation panel. Here are complete instructions for adding a user.

Q. How do I copy a course from a prior term?
A. See these instructions to copy your prior course.

Q. Why are there two "Announcements" links in my course?
A. One link is a "Moodlerooms forum" and the other is a standard Moodle forum. As long as both forum types are available to us, we'll have both kinds of forums pushed out as Announcement forums. We may decide to revert back to plain forums in the future, but until then, we recommend hiding one of the Announcement links (with editing turned on, open the Edit options and click on "Hide").

Q. Why can't my students find my course?
A. We no longer have a "Courses Available to You" block, so we'll all be relying more on the list of My courses in the navigation panel on the left. If your course is visible to students, but is not showing up under My courses in the panel on the left, follow these instructions to verify that your course start date is correct. We're finding courses that start on 1/8/17 and end three months later... as a result, they aren't displayed under My courses.

Q. How do I change back to the text editor we used to have?
A. The "Atto" editor is the current default text editor in Moodle. Atto was created to provide more accessible content online. Our set of Atto tools includes some advanced functions, but you may be missing some of the functionality of the former editor (TinyMCE). You can switch between these editors very easily by following these instructions for changing your text editor. (We'll have complete instructions for using Atto just as soon as we catch our breath!)

Q. Can I grade a forum with a rubric in this version?
A. Unfortunately, no. Advanced grading options for forums (rubrics, checklists and marking guides) are not yet available in standard Moodle. Those functions were created by Moodlerooms, our former host, and have not been released to the global Moodle community. We can still use those advanced grading methods for assignments, just not for forums.

Q. So, how do I grade forums?
A. In the Grade option area, choose Manual or Rating for the Grade type. Manual scores have to be entered into the gradebook individually, while Ratings are applied via a drop-down menu within each post. If you choose the Rating type, open the Ratings option area and select a rating type -- sum of ratings will total all of the points you assign, highest will record only the highest point value you assign.

Q. Why did my video disappear?
A. If you are seeing a blank space where you had embedded a video prior to the migration, see these instructions for a simple fix.

Q. What's with "Available but not shown on course page"?
A. This is a new advanced feature that you might encounter when you attempt to change an item's status from hidden to visible. See this article on how to make the item visible again and how to use this new feature.