How to make the most of Moodle
Marie Fournier’s French department students called her Moodle ‘a work of art’. The UCLU Student Choice Teaching Award-winner shares her tips.
3 September 2013
Moodle is a versatile learning environment that can be customised to suit the format and needs of any course.
Editing tutors can change the design of the themes to make it look as engaging as possible for students, and everyone uses it in a different way.
My use of Moodle for language classes is fairly simple, but I do try to stick to a few rules:
Clarity of content
Moodle is meant to help students be more efficient in their studies. For that reason, the information posted on Moodle (dates, references, titles of files etc) can never be too clear.
Interaction
Increase interactivity by making more use of the various types of activities, of groupwork and communication tools such as forums, chats and blogs. If students feel more involved and less passive, it makes Moodle a more attractive platform to them.
Appearance
Moodle can be made visually more attractive by using (for instance) colours, different fonts or text sizes, embedding images or videos in the text. The toolbar Toggle enables a lot of editing and designing. Just remember to be consistent in your styling.
Template
Customise your template so it is well adapted to the course and meets the students’ needs.
Balance
It is important to have the right amount of information on Moodle; if we put too much, students get discouraged and won’t bother reading or using it.
Training and resources for using Moodle
Accessible teaching practices: providing access to all using universal design for learning (in Moodle)
Guides to Using Moodle (wiki)