Course settings are accessed through the Administration Block. It contains some very important features that instructors control including:
- Allowing student access to your course
- Choosing the format of the centre block (for example: weekly or topic)
- Changing the number of weeks/topics
- Choosing the theme (background colour skin)
- Change the language
It is the instructors responsibility to know and use these settings. For instance, when a course shell is created for you, the default setting is that students cannot access the course. It is up to you, as the instructor to allow students access. See the tab below: Availability: Allow Student Access.
View an orientation video on Course settings (approx 6 minutes), by selecting the video image directly to the right. In addition, we provide written documentation below.
Selecting Settings under the course administration block will open a new window. The first three entries cannot be changed. They are administered through the Banner system.
- Full Name: The name that students will select to enter your course. This setting is defined by semester, department, course number, and CRN Example: 201005 SOCW 527 (31380)
- Short Name: A shorthand way that the UVic Moodle system refers to a course. For example: 20100531380. It is combined with the Course ID number.
- Course ID Number: The number of a course is used when matching this course against external systems. This unique ID is used for automatic enrollments into your course.
However, there are many settings that you can decide upon. The following tabs review each of these important settings.
With any course setting changes you make, always remember to select the Save changes button at the bottom of the page.
General
Summary: Allows you to write a brief description of your course. We highly advise you to keep this description brief
Format: The two most popular formats are Weekly and Topics
- Weekly: The course is organised week by week, with a clear start date and a finish date. Each week consists of activities.
- Topic: The course is organised into topic sections. You can add a title to each topic block.
Course Start Date: If using the weekly format this will affect the display date of the weeks in your centre block area. The first week will start on the date you set. This setting will not affect courses using the topics format.
This setting does not automatically open the course for student access!
Hidden Sections: This option allows you to decide how the hidden sections in your course are displayed to students. By default, a small area is shown (in collapsed form, coloured gray) to indicate where the hidden section is, though students still can not actually see the hidden activities and texts. If you choose, these can be completely hidden, so that students don't know sections of the course are hidden from them.
News items to show: If you add the Latest News side block to your course, you can indicate how many news items you would like to show in the block. The default is one.
Show gradebook to students: If using Moodle Grades, make sure this setting is set to yes.
Activity Reports: Activity reports are available for each participant that show their activity in the current course. As well as listings of their contributions, these reports include detailed access logs. Instructors always have access to these reports, using the button visible on each person's profile page, and also through the administration block. It is only is you wish students to see their own report that you may wish to set this to, yes.
Maximum Upload Size: This setting defines the largest size of file that can be uploaded by students in this course. we recommend you leave it at the default, as this size is the largest.
Force Theme: You have a wide variety of themes to choose from. A theme is essentially a colour or department defined skin that your course will take on. The default is the UVic blue theme. You may wish to experiment with the variety of themes available.
Is this a Meta Course? This setting cannot be changed. A meta course is a cross-listed (joined) course. For more information, please see: Using Metacourses
Groups
If using groups within your course, group mode can be defined at two levels:
Course level (this setting): The group mode defined at the course level is the default mode for all activitiess defined within that course. You must also create groups for your course this this setting to take effect.
Activity level: Each activity that supports groups can also define its own grouping mode. If the course is set to force group mode then the setting for each activity is ignored.
It is not necessary to change the default setting No groups, even if you are planning on using groups in your course. You have the opportunity for every activity within your course to decide whether to use groups or not.
Availability: Allow student access!
Availability: Allow your students to actually enter your course.
By default all courses created in Moodle, are not available to students. It is the instructors responsibility to change this setting to make this course available to students, using the drop down menu.
If you require a non-UVic affiliated person to access your course, we recommend that you follow the procedure for Affiliate Netlink Creation and then enrol them as Grad-auditing student into your course.
| < Prev | Next > |
|---|
