Tag: Moodle

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A&H Module Lead & Teaching Admin #3: Digital Accessibility

Please find below the links, presentation, resources and discussion from the 11th October 2023 session on Digital Accessibility.

UCL Accessibility Policy

UCL Accessibility Hub – UCL policy, advice, resources and guidance to support both staff and students.

UCL Accessibility Fundamentals – basic guidance to improve everyday accessibility when creating resources.

Ben Watson presents on Digital Accessibility

Link to Ben Watson’s PowerPoint presentation slides.

Ben Watson and Abbi Shaw in conversation: Use of Reading List, accommodating students with SoRA, generative and assistive AI discussion.

UCL Reading List – supported by the Library.

Colour Contrast Checker – a really useful resource for checking accessibility of text on backgrounds.

The video Ben mentions on using GenAI to support non-academic tasks.

Forthcoming Digital Skills Development sessions – including multimedia, podcasting, and more, and, most relevant here, creating accessible Word documents.

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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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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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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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Digital Accessibility: A&H Module Lead & Teaching Admin Session #2

1. UCL Head of Digital Accessibility Ben Watson’s presentation on Digital Accessibility, what it is and why it’s important, the concept of microkindnesses, minimum actions we can take to create accessible digital content first time, and the Accessibility Report in Moodle.

[Zoom recording, captioned, 38 minutes]

 

2. UCL Accessibility Policy, PDFs, Transcripts: a brief roundup [5 min].

 

UCL Digital Accessibility Training, Support and Resources

Courses provided by ISD Digital Skills Development on how to create accessible content and courses on assistive technology.

UCL Guides to Creating Accessible Content – from email, to live sessions, documents and more.

UCL Short Course on Digital Accessibility – 3-hour, Moodle-based, self-paced course.

Further Resources

InYerFace – a gamification of the most appalling aspects of the inaccessible web. (mentioned in webinar)

Simplifying Content Accessibility – Kent University webinar by Huw Alexander (mentioned in roundup video)

W3C Web Accessibility Initiative – extensive open access collection of standards, guidelines and resources.

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In need of fresh IDEAs?

Last year I and colleagues from Digital Education and Arena collaborated on this resource which looks at ideas for digital engagement – a broad variety of activities, scaffolds, academic and assessment literacy exercises and suchlike.

If you’re curious for strategies for group work, outlines of the workload involved in trying new tools and activities in Moodle, or simply wanted to remind yourself how many different strategies and tools you already use in your teaching, follow the link below…

Inspirations for Digital Engagement Activities

An academic reflection on the use of IDEAs for PGTAs/early career academics by Leo Havemann and Silvia Colaiacomo (Arena).

 

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A&H Module Lead & Teaching Admin Session #1: Student Moodle Experience; Moodle Rollover & Recommendations.

  1.  How do A&H Students Experience the VLE?

This UCL ChangeMakers student-led research project was presented at the 2022 RAISE Conference. The recording below is of a slightly abbreviated version, presented as part of the Moodle support and orientation workshop for A&H Module Leads and Teaching Admin, held on 13th September 2022.

How students experience the VLE (presentation slides).

Recording of the presentation, featuring Jesper Hansen (Arena for A&H), Nadia Golotchoglou (SSEES) and Marta Ramió Comalat (English).

2. Moodle Rollover, Preparing for the Start of Term: Recommendations Arising from this Research

The rollover process creates annualised instances of taught modules. In most A&H departments, the rollover process has been centrally organised, but in some, this is the responsibility of module leads. If you have been tasked with rolling over your module and need further guidance on it, it can be found here: Link to Moodle Rollover Guide 2022/23  If you are unsure as to whether you need to rollover your module yourself, please check with your departmental administrators.

Recommendations arising from our research: a list in the briefest possible form. To hear me talk through this list in depth, please listen below:

    • Moodle Recommendations:

      • Everything on a module page should be intentional, and of use to the current student cohort. Leave anything that is not relevant to the current cohort that you may wish to bring in in the future in last year’s instance of the module.

     

      • Use consistent naming conventions for all documents. Avoid default strings of numbers.

     

      • If organising Moodle by week, include calendar dates in titles along with Week 1, Reading Week, etc.

     

      • Ensure assessment details and inboxes are clearly signposted, and are not hidden in weekly content.

     

      • Use Conditional Release (“Restrict Access” feature) to release content by week, or to cascade activities. State that this is in place. Link to Conditional Release How-To.

     

      • Make the module handbook clearly available in Moodle, and ensure it is up to date.

  • Resource and Library Recommendations

      • Use Reading List to ensure students access the correct versions of resources, and to keep the Library informed of current module requirements and use statistics. UCL Reading List Home and Guidance.

     

      • Use links to university databases, rather than downloading papers and uploading the PDFs.

     

      • Work with a Subject Librarian to check the accessibility of essential PDFs and documents in your course, and ensure the most appropriate versions are used. Who is my Subject Librarian?

     

      • Mark reading and resources as Core/Essential and Optional/Further as appropriate. Use the UCL Guide to Reading List Best Practice to ensure you and your students are getting the most out of the platform.