Moodle 2.0 Course Conversion Beginner’s Guide, 2nd Edition

A complete guide to successful learning using Moodle 2

• Move your existing course notes, worksheets, and resources into Moodle quickly
• No need to start from scratch! This book shows you the quickest way to start using Moodle and e-learning, by bringing your existing lesson materials into Moodle
• Demonstrates quick ways to improve your course, taking advantage of multimedia and collaboration
• Requires no prior knowledge of Moodle, even experienced Moodlers will find this useful for converting ‘paper’ resources and face-to-face lessons into Moodle

In Detail

Schools, colleges and universities all over the world are installing Moodle, but many educators aren’t making much use of it. With so many features, it can be a hassle to learn – and with teachers under so much pressure day-to-day, they cannot devote much time to recreating all their lessons from scratch.

This book provides the quickest way for teachers and trainers to get up and running with Moodle, by turning their familiar teaching materials into a Moodle e-learning course.

This book shows how to bring your existing notes, worksheets, resources and lesson plans into Moodle quickly and easily. Instead of exploring every feature of Moodle, the book focuses on getting you started immediately – you will be turning your existing materials into Moodle courses right from the start.

The book begins by showing how to turn your teaching schedule into a Moodle course, with the correct number of topics and weeks. You will then see how to convert your resources – documents, slideshows, and worksheets, into Moodle. You will learn how to format them in a way that means students will be able to read them, and along the way plenty of shortcuts to speed up the process.

By the end of Chapter 3, you will already have a Moodle course that contains your learning resources in a presentable way. But the book doesn’t end there- you will also see how to use Moodle to accept and assess coursework submissions, discuss work with students, and deliver quizzes, tests, and video.

Throughout the book, the focus is on getting results fast – moving teaching material online so that lessons become more effective for students, and less work for you.

What you will learn from this book

• Incorporate your existing handouts, worksheets, and other resources into Moodle courses
• Quick methods to make your Moodle courses engaging, attractive, and fun
• Fast ways to add multimedia to your course, or incorporate existing sounds and videos
• Using Moodle as a repository for departmental guidelines and documentation
• Move marking online! See how students can submit their assignments straight into Moodle, for you to mark assess on the computer – no more backbreaking boxes of assignments to lug to and from school
• Use forums and messaging to keep in contact with students when it’s convenient, rather than having them call into your office during your breaks or preparation time
• See how you can make your course a completely online experience – dispensing with face time all together

Approach

With clear instructions and plenty of screenshots, this book provides all the support and guidance you will need as you begin to convert your teaching to Moodle. Step-by-step tutorials use real-world examples to show you how to convert to Moodle in the most efficient and effective ways possible. Moodle Course Conversion carefully illustrates how Moodle can be used to teach content and ideas and clearly demonstrates the advantages of doing so.

Who this book is written for

This book is for teachers, tutors, and lecturers who already have a large body of teaching material and want to use Moodle to enhance their course, rather than developing brand new ones. You won’t need experience with Moodle, but will need teacher-access to a ready-installed Moodle site.

Teachers with some experience of Moodle, who want to focus on incorporating existing course materials will also find this book very useful