Here's how to start editing the course:
1. After you've logged into Moodle and found your course section (hover over the My Courses tab and click ... yes, the TechHelp desk had to guide me toward this bit of wisdom), turn the Edit button on. To do so, click on the orange button on the top right side of the screen. You'll know it's on when the text changes to "Turn Editing Off."
2. The course will be organized into sections, which are essentially the things we understood as "modules" under Angel. The sections will be arranged in a variety of different ways, depending on how the course template was migrated from Angel to Moodle. My colleague Nicola Allain is going to help me figure out how to rearrange the placement of sections in a couple of days so I'll update you as I can.
3. When the Turn Editing button is activated, you'll see a bunch of icons within each section. However, the only section that you'll probably see as open is the one that is currently highlighted. If you click on Edit Settings under the Settings tab, which will be either on the left or right side of the computer screen, and change the "format" from "Onetopic" to "Topics," you'll be able to see all the sections of the course.
4. Here's a quick guide to what the icons mean:
a. The pencil lets you edit the section title.
b. The green arrows let you move the items in each section back and forth horizontally, so you can list them as main topics or subtopics (sort of like the folder within folders approach that we used in Angel).
c. The cross-bar lets you move items within the section. So, let's say the learning contract is the last item in the section and you want it to be the first. Use the cross-bar to position it to where you'd like it to go.
d. The flower-shaped sprocket with a pencil in the middle lets you edit within the item.
e. The X lets you delete an item altogether. This is a permanent deletion, so be careful when you use it.
f. The tiny eyeball (which is so tiny that it barely resembles an eyeball to me!) lets you hide or reveal an item.
g. The tech info folks tell me that the last two items probably won't be used much. They're in place to assign students the role of course assistants and, well, I'm not sure what Personalized Learning Designer is for. If and when I find out, I'll let you know.
As far as I can tell, any changes that you make are implemented automatically. When you leave the course and come back in or when you refresh your computer screen, you'll see the changes.
5. You might want to add articles, web links, or other resources to individual modules. I haven't actually tried to do this yet, but my understanding is that you simply click on either "Add Resource" or "Add Activity" and the program guides you through. Be a little careful for now with "Add Activity" because my understanding is that the Gradebook is much more stringent and less controllable in Moodle than it was in Angel. I'm looking for ways to get around that.
6. If you want to add additional sections (or Modules, if you will) or move sections around, here's what you do:
a. Go to Edit Settings. Under Format, change to Topics. In this case, you need to save the settings by going to the bottom of the page and clicking Save Changes.
b. After you're in Topics mode, the "cross-bar" icon will be your best friend in terms of rearranging your sections, or in terms of moving materials out of one section and into another. So, for example, if the instructor of Hip-Hop America decides that the video lecture by KRS-One fits better with Module 4 than with Module 1, the instructor can move it. Similarly, if the flow of Transformations of the Colonial Experience would work better if Modules 2 and 3 were shifted, you can move the Modules.
c. When you're in Topics mode, you also can create new sections. To do so, go to Edit Settings and under "Formatting Options for Topics format", you'll see a place where you can designate the number of sections you want your course to have. Choose accordingly. To give an example of why you might want to do this, I'll go back to the section of Digital Storytelling that I am working on with Sheila. The course announcements, a semester-long blogging project, and a pile of supplementary readings all were contained in a section labeled Module 1 when they really each needed to stand alone and be at the top of course page so that students would be able to find them. We created three new sections for these items, and then moved the materials to the appropriate places.
The final point I'll make for now: Most of the movement of materials from section to section and the creation of new sections is done by "drag and drop." That can be a bit of a pain because computer scrolling functions often pause mid-stream and sometimes when a hundred people are on the server, it slows down. Just be patient, and be careful. We did find in making some of our changes yesterday that sometimes sections "disappeared" or got automatically renamed before we could get them to their appropriate spots. Nothing got lost, however, as far as I can tell. I finished the initial cleanup of the course this morning on my MacBook and did find that the drag-and-drop was a little easier because I could use one hand to move the scroll bar up and down while keeping the other one on the mouse with the cursor directed to the item or section I was trying to move.
I hope this is helpful. Do post comments if you have questions, or if you have discovered anything else that might be helpful for all of us.
Also, one warning: I don't have access to your sections. The Office of Integrated Technologies hasn't granted us this privilege yet. So if you want me to look at something you have done, I won't be able to do so. I can, however, access the Pristine Master copies of the courses so we can compare notes that way.
Best,
Himanee
