NECC Session...Moodle Magic: Tricks for Enhanced Course Design

This first BYOL session was turning away participants half an hour before it started…

NECC Program Description

Michelle Moore has always done a great job presenting about Moodle.  Today’s session, focusing on design and layout of courses, should really have some great tips and suggestions.  As she is starting, I see that the way Janine and I have designed our professional development courses follows her suggestions closely.  Here are some tips…some are Moodle tips and some fall into basic web design.

• Don’t write too much in Moodle’s topic heading…just a few words.  The topic heading shows up in the navigation menus, so if there are several sentences it clogs up the navigation.
• Use Headings instead of simply making the font bigger…it helps with accessibility.
• Separate content by adding labels and indenting items.
• Consistency is important!

Michelle highlighted a course module called Book.  Book is like creating a web page, but breaks the page up over several screens.  Navigation is built in, you can search the text, and there’s a print feature.  Pretty cool!  I’ll have to install that on our server.  She went through the process of creating a book…very easy.

Many teachers post PowerPoint presentations…Michelle suggested that the PowerPoint be converted to a Flash file.  That alleviates the problem of students needing PP or downloading the file, or something else that might be a problem.

Here’s another sweet module…Audio Recorder.  The Audio Recorder acts like an assignment.  Students record up to 4 minutes of audio right in Moodle and then the teacher can review that just as if it were another type of assignment.

Another potential module…SPDC Portfolio.

As people ask questions, Michelle has begun to wander away from the topic.  I know that’s very easy to do, I’ve done it myself during presentations.  However, now it’s kind of becoming a Moodle free-for-all.  That’s the way it goes!  The session was very well received.  Obviously, I took away a few nuggets as well.  That Book module looks really good…and recording audio right in Moodle?  Wow!

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