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Moodle: Activating Course Mappings 2023/24

A refresher on activating course mappings:

Course mapping aligns your Moodle page with the correct student cohort. To start, go into Settings, and check that the Portico Identifier box has been filled in with the correct module code. Next, ensure you have Edit Mode switched ON.

Use the < on the top right of the page to open the right hand "drawer". Scroll to the Portico Enrolments block (if it is not there, scroll to the top of the page and add it, using the + Add a Block button). Click View / Edit Portico Enrolments. If this is already populated, that is likely from the previous year. Double check this, particularly if your module has moved term (T1 / T2) as you may need to change this.

To change this, click +add mapping on the right hand side (you may need to scroll across to see this if you have your screen on a large resolution). Search by module code, if a module, or if you need to enrol students from across a department/programme, search for this accordingly and then choose the year/s from the dropdown on the right hand side.

Allow pre-approval and Allow group import do what they say on the tin – if the student is “pre-approved” in Portico then their enrolment into Moodle can take place. Similarly if there are CMIS groups set up in Portico already, to which students can be allocated, these can also be imported straight into the relevant Moodle Groups.

Check Activate Mappings.

Save (if you do not save, it will not be saved!) and the mapping will be activated. Students will be enrolled into the module overnight, not immediately, when Moodle and Portico sync. If students are not visible the next morning, double check the mapping details, and that there are students showing on the module in Portico – if both seem fine, then please contact me as soon as possible to check if there is a wider issue.

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A&H Faculty Research: Student Experience of Continuous Module Dialogue (CMD)

This research project was undertaken by Jesper Hansen (Arena Lead) and Abbi Shaw (Faculty Learning Technology Lead) in partnership with three student researchers (from English, Arts & Sciences, and Information Studies).

It sought to understand students’ experience of, and opinions on, the newly-required Continuous Module Dialogue exercise, under which it was suggested that academics would, at module level, consult students three times per term with a ‘light touch’ to ensure that students could, in the first instance, access their resources, and that, in the longer run, students felt that their voice was able to be heard.

A survey was conducted, to which 113 students from across the Faculty responded, and three focus groups were subsequently held.

Initial findings from the survey are outlined in this summary, shared amongst the Faculty in December 2022: link to access the Initial Findings Report.

The second part of the research generated a final summary, and a brief series of recommendations for carrying out CMD, accompanied by the rationale arising from the research. These were:

Use a mix of open-ended and closed questions (scales, yes/no).

Students had different preferences and as such this research does not suggest any one model as the perfect one. However, students overall agreed that a mix of open and closed questions was to be preferred. There was a general dislike for those evaluations that solely used closed questions.
Some students mentioned that questions regarding tutors’ teaching style should be incorporated in feedback forms, so students can give constructive feedback when they are not happy with the way teaching is structured and organised.

Do not share results of surveys/Mentimeter live on screen in the room.

Some students did not like it when survey results were shown on screen, and this made them not want to engage. They reported finding it uncomfortable and disconcerting, and expressed concern that their responses could be identified by others in the class. Many students did appreciate in-person opportunities to give feedback (as opposed to only Moodle surveys, for instance). Several mentioned academics talking through responses (which were not displayed on screen as they came in) as a positive and immediately rewarding experience of CMD.

Expectations and location

Where CMD is done asynchronously, students stress that surveys should be easy to find. Furthermore, where CMD is carried out across departments, the placement of these should be consistent, e.g. in the same, clearly-labelled section of a Moodle site.

Student expectations of the process should be explicitly aligned with academic understanding and expectations. Where students understand the purpose and value of the feedback (including understanding what it is not for) they are far more inclined to participate.

The full text of this second summary of our research can be read here: link to focus group findings and CMD recommendations.

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Moodle 4.2 forthcoming upgrade: Links and Info

Greetings, all! A quick round-up of links to info and UCL sites about Moodle 4.2:

ETA: The date and time for this upgrade have now been confirmed: 9am. Thursday 27th July.

Moodle 4.2 Preview Site: https://4-demo.preview-moodle.ucl.ac.uk/ all staff can log in, and check any 2022/23 Moodle page to see how it will look in Moodle 4.2. Please note: this is NOT the forthcoming Moodle 4.2 site, and nothing that is done to, or changed, on these pages will be retained, it is for information only.

Moodle 4.2 Wiki: https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/MoodleResourceCentre/Moodle+4.2+Pre-release+resources – links to training courses, self-paced learning, FAQs and more info from the central Moodle team.

DigiEd Blog: https://blogs.ucl.ac.uk/digital-education/ – the DigiEd blog contains updates on everything the central team is working on, including the latest updates and expectations around the Moodle upgrade.

The Moodle upgrade will happen to the entire Moodle site at the end of July (dates to be confirmed) and no action needs to be taken for the upgrade to take place. You do not need to wait for the upgrade to take place to roll over your Moodle courses, or to start updating them for next year, but once the upgrade has taken place, it’s best to take a look to see if there are any changes or additions you’d like to make ahead of the start of teaching.

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Moodle Rollover: DigiEd Blog information about rolling over for 2023/24.

The staff guide to rolling over module pages: https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/MoodleResourceCentre/M30+-+Preparing+your+Moodle+course+for+the+next+Academic+Year which also contains the link/info for requesting a new Moodle course.

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I hope that covers everything! As ever, please keep in touch regarding any approaches you’re taking to the Moodle upgrade, and if you’d like to discuss creating templates, workflows or any other elements, please drop me a line in Teams or by email. No question too small, strange, or tiresome 😀

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Term 2 Modules: Course Rollover & Mapping Students

Greetings, all! A reminder to all teaching in Term 2 that the Course Rollover process, introduced this year, applies to all Term 2 modules in the same way it did Term 1. To refresh the memory: every taught module will have an individual annual instance in Moodle. There is NO snapshot of last year’s modules: they must remain as-delivered. Do not overwrite 2021/22 modules, only update/change things in the newly-created 2022/23 modules.

Each A&H department has a slightly different setup for module rollover: please check with your Teaching Administrator if you are unsure as to how/when the rollover and mapping activation takes place. If you teach in SELCS, you are tasked with your own module rollover and activating mapping: it is essential you carry this out prior to the start of teaching, as students will otherwise not have access to your course in Moodle.

For central guidance on the Course Rollover, please read the applicable info below:

1) Rolling over a module taught in 2021/22
2) Rolling over a module last taught prior to 2020/21
3) Rolling over a T1 module to be taught in T2
4) If you have a module where the code has changed for 2022/23, you must ensure that you are working in a Moodle page created under this code. Please check for a page with the new code in Moodle, as it may have been automatically created. If you then need to import content from a module with a different code, this can be done via the Import function in Moodle, but do contact me for any support with that. If you cannot find a course with the correct new code in Moodle, and are certain that this is the code you will be teaching under in T2, please follow the rollover process for the old module, remove the suggested alignment/delivery for the existing course code and use the search box to search for the new course code. This is the only situation in which you should change any prepopulated course code or course title.

Ensuring students are mapped to your module:

This process is the same as T1: I have written a quick guide to the process here: mapping students to modules.

Finally, ensure that at least the first two weeks of course content have been populated, and that anything you want enrolled students to see is visible; anything you wish to hide from them is hidden. When your students have been enrolled, and the course status has been changed from Hide to Show (Module page > Administration block > Course Visibility > Hide/Show).

As ever, any issues, grab me on Teams, or email abigail.shaw@ucl.ac.uk 😀

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A&H Faculty Research – Student Experience of Moodle (Changemakers 2021/22).

In 2021/22, the third iteration of our A&H Faculty Research recruited 5 students, including one Project Lead, to carry out research to deepen our understanding of the student experience of Moodle. The main aim was to find out which practices stood out as particularly positive amongst the diversity of student experience. This project led to a conference presentation at RAISE 2022, in Lincoln, and has further been written up into a review of staff-student collaborative research, which has been accepted for publication in the December 2022 edition of SEDA Magazine.

Link to the post containing a video of our student-led report to A&H Module Leads, with a brief summary of the recommendations made: Student Moodle Experience; Moodle Rollover & Recommendations.

Presentation slides for Jesper and Abbi’s report to Arena: The Search for Clarity: A&H Students’ Perception of Moodle.

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A&H Faculty Research – Academic Online Experience in 2021/22

Following on from our work to capture a sense of the Student Online Experience, Jesper Hansen (A&H Arena Fellow) and I then went on to study A&H Academic Online Experience in 2021/22. Over 1/4 of teaching staff responded to our Mentimeter survey, and went on to do an extensive thematic analysis of the responses. This analysis led us to some compelling themes and conclusions, and this piece of research has heavily informed my work as Faculty Learning Technology Lead thereafter.

The themes identified:

– Perception of Online Teaching
– Online Teaching as a Threat
– Online Teaching as Enhancement

More than anything, this survey served to demonstrate, as with the student experience survey, the breadth and variety of experience across the Faculty. The only consistent finding was, indeed, inconsistency.

To read our full report, visit the following link: Academics’ Experiences of Online Teaching in Arts & Humanities.

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A&H Faculty Research – Student Online Experience

Since 2020, I have been conducting iterative Faculty-level research with the A&H Arena representative, Jesper Hansen. This post outlines the first part of this project: a quick look at the A&H student experience of online teaching and learning during the first part of Emergency Remote Teaching (Hodges, Moore, Lockee, Trust & Bond, 2021).

The full report regarding the research, and the development of the resulting Faculty recommendations, can be accessed here: Link to Student Online Experience Report.

We wrote a short reflective submission regarding this report for the 2021 UCL Education Conference, which can be read here: What do we take with us? Recommendations and reflections on research into Arts & Humanities students’ online experience.

Overall, this research formed a baseline of student voice, and a snapshot of sentiment at a particular moment in our Faculty, which has continued to support my work, and inform future iterations of our research.

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Moodle: Managing your Course Dashboard

Your Moodle Dashboard is the page you go to when you log into Moodle from https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk –  it contains, supposedly, Recently Accessed Courses, and a full list of all the courses you are enrolled on under Course Overview. However, you may have noticed that Recently Accessed Courses sometimes lies, and that it can be quite complicated to locate a particular course, and, indeed, since the Moodle Rollover, to locate this year’s instance of the course.

I offer the following tips:

  1. “Star” the modules you most use (e.g. those you’re teaching/marking on this term). To Star a module, locate it in the list in your Course Overview section (if you are on a great many courses, select View All, and try searching on the page for the module). Look to the right hand side of the module (you may need to scroll across a little, depending on the size of your screen) and click the three dots. Select Star this Course. This will bring the module to the top of your Course Overview list.

  2. “Remove from view” courses you are no longer teaching on / need to view. This option is just beneath the Star this Course option, as above. This does not remove the course from anyone else’s view, only your own dashboard, and you can easily access these courses again by changing the Course Overview view to Removed from View. This will also not unenrol you from those courses.

  3.  Use specific searches to find the precise instance of a module. From your Home page, the Course Search block on the right hand side allows you to enter the module code and year (e.g. ELCS0044 22/23 – in that format) to find the precise instance of a module you’re looking for (as long as nobody changed the defaults!). Note: This search will not work in the Global Search (the magnifying glass at the top of the page) – that search space is for content and resources within modules.

 

 

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CMD: How to Link to your Mentimeter in Moodle

To share your presentation in Moodle, you’ll need the direct URL from Mentimeter. You’ll find this via the “Share” button in the top right corner of your presentation. Copy the voting link. In Moodle, go to Add an Activity or Resource, and select URL. The name you give the URL will be the text the student needs to click on.

When linking, ensure that your Mentimeter has been changed to Audience Pace, from the default, Presenter Pace. Presenter Pace: useful in-room when students are responding “live”. Audience Pace: students move through the questions in their own time as they answer them (useful in-room or asynchronously).

To change pace, from your Mentimeter, go to Settings, and select the pace you want. Give the page a second to automatically save (visible just above).

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Activate Mapping: How to enrol your students into Moodle from Portico

Students need to be “mapped” from Portico into Moodle. We use an enrollment block to do this. The advantage of using Portico mapping, rather than any other method, to enrol students onto your module is that Moodle and Portico sync on a nightly basis, so any students who enrol/unenrol will henceforth be automatically updated. This method is recommended for all taught modules in A&H.

The above screenshot illustrates a module where the mapping is not active.

  1. Turn Editing On in the module. Scroll down to the Portico enrollments block on the right hand side.
  2. Click View/Activate Mappings.
  3. If no cohort information is present, click the little “add mapping” words to bring up a search box. Put your module code in the Search box and select your cohort.
  4. Check the mapping/s on screen contain the correct cohorts for this module. You do not need to check the additional boxes next to the cohort around pre-enrollment and group mappings.
  5. Tick Activate Mappings and (crucially!) select Save mappings.
  6. Once Moodle syncs with Portico overnight, your students will all be enrolled.

UCL Wiki guidance on Portico Mappings

If anything untoward happens, or these instructions don’t suffice, do feel free to get in touch with me, abigail.shaw@ucl.ac.uk. Alternatively you can log a ticket with ISD: itservices@ucl.ac.uk