Most faculty at Swarthmore use Moodle to share files and an increasing number are taking advantage of activities such as electronic submission of assignments, pre-lecture quizzes, and course evaluations. Students are definitely using Moodle frequently.  More than 1500 unique people have logged into Moodle in the last day and almost 2000 people have accessed Moodle in the last week.  This includes students, faculty, staff, and TriCo students taking Swarthmore classes.

As the number of people using Moodle increases it may make sense to take advantage of additional features that Moodle provides.  There are a number of activities in Moodle that aren’t well known but may be handy for classes.  Here are four examples that could save time or allow you to do more with your course.

Attendance

Moodle has an Attendance activity that can be used to keep track of student attendance and participation.  It is quick and easy to take class attendance or assign participation points.  A summary report makes it easy to see student attendance for the semester.

See instructions for setting up the attendance activity.

WordPress Site

Many faculty have found it useful for have a WordPress site to share student work or post group projects.  It is possible to quickly create a class WordPress site from within Moodle and the students in the class will automatically have access to post to the site.

See our instructions for adding a WordPress site to a course.

Piazza forums

Piazza is a website that offers question and answer forums for classes.  Students can ask questions and receive answers from their classmates or professor.  It is possible to create a link to Piazza from within Moodle.

Our help site has instructions for creating a link from Moodle to Piazza.

Student folders

There are a number of methods to share student work with a class.  The Student Folder activity is one of the easiest ways to allow students to upload a file to a Moodle course for viewing by the entire class.

View the step by step instructions for adding a student folder to your course on our help site.

Questions?

As always, if you have any questions or would like to know more, please contact your Academic Technologist.

Ashley Turner (aturner2) – Humanities

Doug Willen (dwillen1) – Social Sciences

Andrew Ruether (aruethe2) – Natural Sciences and Engineering