Group Work

Group editing functions can also be useful if all of your students contribute regularly. Trainers can divide the students into groups and assign the groups work on various activity types. Also, it is possible to create different group assignments that allow students to work in larger teams for some assignments and smaller teams for others. For many activity types, you can specify whether students should do the work in groups or individually.

Tests and Evaluations

If you give final grades for a course, you can grade all of the activities and even use different grading systems (e.g., percentages from 0 to 100 or legacy school grades with plus and minus scales). The Administration | Grades menu shows an overview of completed activities and average grades of your students. Students only see their own grades. When you are grading activities, you can optionally provide feedback, which Moodle will mail to your students.

Simple tests include multiple choice questions, and in a language course, for example, you could test vocabulary. Moodle even does a little math, so you can create problems in which numbers vary automatically and Moodle calculates the correct answers according to a formula you supply. When you create test questions, you can group them in a pool from which individual tasks are selected for a test. Moodle automatically grades simple tests, but for more complex tests, you assign grades manually. Teachers can grade collaborative work as well, such as a glossary or other team activities.

Conclusions

Moodle is a highly complex e-learning system – understanding its features and using them meaningfully takes some practice. Having said this, it is quite easy to make a start. If you already have a traditional website with simple content collections, you can transfer them easily into the Moodle system and add interactive elements as needed. If you intend to put Moodle to serious use, the Moodle website has numerous tips [5].