Moodle 4.5 | Overview

This guide offers a comprehensive overview of Moodle 4.5, highlighting its new features and functionalities that enhance user experience. It covers essential tools for course management, including the Dashboard, course organization, and grading systems, making it invaluable for both instructors and students. By familiarizing yourself with these updates, you can streamline your course navigation, improve engagement, and effectively manage assignments and resources. Viewing this guide will empower you to maximize your use of Moodle 4.5.

Faculty Center for Professional Excellence

Moodle

The Dashboard

The Moodle Dashboard is your starting point within Moodle. \ Upcoming events are now shown at the top of your Dashboard and include all items with due dates such as assignments, forums, and quizzes. \ Search for courses in the entire Adelphi Moodle catalog via the "Search courses" bar in the Basic course search section.\ \ If you do not have access to that course, you will not be able to access but only view the public course details.

Course overview will let you search for courses that you have direct access to. You are also able to filter your view to choose the type of course, sort by last course accessed instead of by course name, and choose to display your courses in a list, as shown here, or in a card-like format.

The Filtered course list displays the course category that your Moodle course belongs to. If you click on a semester folder, it will open and display the courses you have access to.

Further down the block drawer, there are additional blocks available, such as the Timeline, which shows due dates, and upcoming activity dates. A Tech Support block which includes the Help Desk phone number, email address and hours of operation. And a Library block which contains links to the library website among many other useful tools.

On your course main or home page, you will see action buttons that can be opened and closed, such as the "Open course index" button, located on the left-side of the screen. And the "Open block drawer" button, located on the right-side of your screen.

Blocks

This block drawer has some of the same, but also different blocks than are available on the Dashboard.

The My Tools block is particularly useful to interact with Participants and Gradebook. \ \ Please note that a student will not see the Gradebook Setup link, the Update Dates link, which is another way to edit course assignment due dates and quiz open-close dates, as well as the Compose Email links. These are reserved for those with TEACHER or TEACHERS roles. \ The Calendar shows relevant due dates in a default format and you can import or export to external sources such as Google Calendar.

To add additional blocks, click on the "Add a block" link to open the pop-up window which lists all of available blocks to add. \ Some of the available blocks to add are shown here

Click the "Edit mode" button to open your Moodle page's editing features.

Editing Sections

Clicking on the pencil icon, allows you to edit the name of the section

Type in the section name as you want it to appear, hit ENTER or RETURN on your keyboard when finished to save the change.

Click on "Add section" link to add a new section to your course; these will appear as the next sequential number with the word "Topic" preceding it

The "Edit" menu for sections is accessed by clicking on the three vertical dots

Once the edit menu is opened, we can see the options available to edit a section, add a subsection, as well as highlight, move, duplicate, hide or delete a section.

Subsections are a new feature available in Moodle 4.5, ONLY in the Flexible Sections Course Format - we will show you how to change this setting later in this presentation.

The new subsection added will appear again, as the next sequential number with the word "Topic" preceding it. Here we added a previous subsection titled "Assignments & Activities."

Subsections appear in the course index within a box (the yellow outline is for demonstration purposes only) and with a drop-down or collapsible down icon 🔽

Course Format

To ensure your course format allows for subsections, navigate to the Settings tab on your course page and open the "Course format" area in the settings where you can choose your course "Format" from the dropdown menu.

"Flexible Sections" is a new format that allows for the subsections. By Default, new courses created in Moodle bring you to the "Kickstart format" where you can select to Import a Course, or start with a template provided. Please note, that ONLY Admins are able to see the "Kickstart format" option in this list.

By checking the setting "Show top section title" field, your course will have a familiar layout to what was previously used in the "Collapsed Topics" format. You can choose whether sections and activities are displayed in the course index (this is recommended) You can check the "Display back link in activities" field to allow for easier navigation on your course page and also ensure that the setting field "Accordion effect" is left unchecked, this allows for the "Expand all" link to show on the course page. \ Click "Save and display" to return to your course when you are done making changes to the course settings.

On the main course page, "Expand all" link now will open each section and subsection.

Click on the "Collapse all" link to close these sections - please note, that you may choose to HIDE sections from students until a specific date, to assist with the organization of your course page

Adding an Activity

A new feature in Moodle 4.5, is an improved function to "Add an activity or resource," now available throughout the course page, simply click on the icon to open the Activity picker pop-up window screen - please note, edit mode must be toggled on for this to appear. \ Choose an activity or resource to add to your Moodle page. You can also search for an activity or resource and star activities and resources that you frequently use.

You can also "Add an activity or resource" by clicking on the larger "+ Add an activity or resource" button, found at the end of a section or subsection.

Tips

Clicking on the "Bulk actions" link opens the toolbar at the bottom of the page, and opens sections and activities bulk action checkbox:

Once actioned, you can select an activity by clicking on the checkbox next to the title and icon of the activity - here we are selecting a LABEL AREA and the MODULE 1 PAGE titled "OBJECTIVES" \ Once you've selected the relevant activities, choose one of the options

Availability controls whether students can see or access (subject to restrictions) an item.

Duplicate and Delete, will do exactly that, create a copy of those items or remove those items.

Exit the bulk actions toolbar by clicking on the "X" shown here:

Within the Block drawer, there is also a "Mass Actions" block. \ \ To use this block, you need to click the button "Enable bulk editing."\ Once clicked, we can see the checkboxes reappear for each activity, as well as a list of additional items and actions that we can use to edit our course. \ If we need to duplicate or move "Required Materials" activity, under the "Readings & Resources" area, we can check these boxes. \ Use the two dropdown menus to either, "Move to section," or "Duplicate to section"\ Select the section you want to move or duplicate to in the dropdown (we chose Topic 4, the newly created Subsection from earlier) \ Click on the arrow ➡️ to finish the action.

When you open the Subsection, by clicking on the icon arrow, you will see the items within that we moved or duplicated.

Staying on the main course page, the "More" tab has a lot of useful tools; a few notable ones are the Question bank (used for quizzes), Course completion (to be covered in an additional training) and the Recycle bin - if you delete something, you can find it here. In the Recycle bin, you can restore deleted course content, but note that it will be permanently deleted after 14 days.

Reports

The "Reports" tab also has a lot of great tools to use. One to note during your course set-up and editing is the "Dates" link

Here you can view ALL dates related to your course, including start and end date (with time), reminders for forum announcements, reminders to students to view pages and resources.

Open and close dates and times for Quizzes, Assignment due dates, and other activities that have Timing settings can be edited on this page:

Submissions

New to Moodle 4.5, Assignment activity types will have a slightly different layout when setting up the activity. Note that there is a "Submissions" tab now to view ALL assignments submitted by students.

A "Grade" button is still shown at the bottom of the Assignment main page. That takes you to a Grading screen where we can "Change user" Add a grade Add feedback comments Add additional files And where we can also view statistics about the submission. The top-left corner of the page has useful links to View all submissions, return to the Assignment mai page, or to return to the course main page By clicking on "View all submissions" You are brought to the NEW Submissions tab screen we mentioned before.

The "More" tab has useful links as well:

A common feature is an "Override" where a student might need an accommodation for an extended amount of time to submit an assignment, beyond the due date, or if a student needs to take an exam outside of the scheduled class session or duration of time.

To add, click the button "Add user override"

Here you can search for a student and adjust their assignment or exam timing details, such as open dates allowing submissions and due-dates, as well as time limits a student has to complete or submit an assignment or exam. Click "Save" to return to the Assignment

The "Settings" tab may also be used to update details such as assignment name, the description of the assignment, to select whether you want to "Display description on course page" or not, upload additional files, adjust availability settings and to choose what type of uploads are permissible.

The Grade section can be adjusted so that a newly created assignment is moved to its appropriate category in the Gradebook or if an assignment is amended and needs to be placed in a new category. Max grade points and the grading method, such as rubrics, can be adjusted from this area.

Ensure to hit either of the "Save" buttons when you are done editing these settings.

If you are using a rubric or want to change the grading method, click on the "Advanced grading" tab

Here we can see a dropdown menu to change the Active grading method, as well as to create a new grading form or a rubric from scratch, or to create one using a template.

Course Management

Drawing our attention back to the main course page, the Course Management button is another useful shortcut that helps you navigate your course. - View users, manage groups, and enrollment methods - View your Gradebook, view a User report, or setup your gradebook - Manage student course completion settings and conditions - Course tools to backup, import/export your course or materials

In the Gradebook, the default screen displayed is the "Grader report" - with EDIT MODE ON, you will see a screen similar to the one below. Should you have a grade item that can be entered, the box will display open. This dropdown menu opens to show a variety of screens, including the Gradebook setup. You can search for a student using the "Search users" box or filter by groups if applicable, or filter by name.

Some LABEL AREAS will need to be cleaned up; you can locate these errors by looking for these icons and text in the course index\ \ Click on the title in the course index to bring you to the item on the course page.\ With edit mode on, click the three vertical dots to open the edit menu and click "Edit settings" to change the "Title in course index" field to how you would like to show it on the course index.\ \ Click the "Save and return to course" button - this helps with navigation back to where you were on the main course page.\ \ Now we can see the title in the course index has been changed.

Stay tuned for upcoming [FCPE Workshops](https://www.adelphi.edu/events/?filters[tag]=faculty-center-for-professional-excellence) and additional training materials for Moodle 4.5

Moodle 4.5 | Overview

Faculty Center for Professional Excellence