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UL Lafayette Moodle Support
University Computing Support Services
FAQ Revised: Monday 19 June 2006 18:28:22
Table of Contents
- 1. General Information
- 2. General Moodle Questions
- 3. Problems with the grade book, assignments, quizzes, etc.
- 4. Managing email
- 5. Additional sources of information
1. General Information
- 1.1. What is Moodle?
- Moodle is a Learning Management System (LMS) used to provide a web site
where students can download resource materials and interact with activities established
by their courses' instructors. Moodle originally was an acronym for
Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, but everyone
now just calls it "Moodle".
- 1.2. How do I use Moodle?
- Users, both students and faculty, access Moodle via a web browser
(Mozilla, Firefox, Netscape, Internet Explorer, etc.) on any platform (Sun workstation,
PC, Mac)
with Internet access. Login to Moodle (either directly using http://suze.ucs.louisiana.edu/moodle/ or
via the ULink portal http://ulink.louisiana.edu).
You will need to provide your UCS id as the username, and then provide your password.
After your first successful login, you will no longer be asked for your username
and password when you connect to Moodle via the portal.
- 1.3. What if I do not have an Internet Service Provider?
- Dial-up access to the Internet is provided by the University. From the Help
Desk web site (http://helpdesk.louisiana.edu), click the link STEP-UP. This
service is provided by the Student Technology Fee.
- 1.4. What is a UCS Account? Where do I find assistance with these services?
- UCS (University Computing Services) provides computing resources to all
UL-Lafayette students and departments. This includes email, webmail,
web page space, personal disk space, academic disk space, access to UNIX workstations, Moodle,
compilers in various languages, remote dial-up connections to the Internet,
and many academic application software packages. Access requires the
activation of a UCS account.
Go to the UCS Help
Desk web site (http://helpdesk.louisiana.edu) for information.
- 1.5. How do I navigate within Moodle?
- Moodle is organized as a web page per course, with a front greeting page.
There are generally three columns on a page; the left and right columns
generally offer automatically-generated information, with the large middle
column used for the course content prepared by your Instructor.
When the browser cursor hovers over something clickable, you will often
see an informative box pop up to confirm what clicking there will perform.
You enter a course by finding its listing at the left of the screen,
under My Courses, and clicking on the name. If you do not see your
course listed, ask your instructor if they have created the course yet in
Moodle, and added all their students to the course. If you add a class late,
there is a possibility that you were not enrolled in the class when everyone
else was enrolled. Also, some cross-listed courses may appear under a different name.
Your browser's forward and back buttons will often work fine, unless you
try to resume a form submission! There is a locator sequence near the top
left part of your screen, which begins with Home (i.e. the
Moodle front page). Any part of this sequence (save the last) is clickable,
to get you back to an earlier page.
When you are finished, please click on Logout
and, if you want to hide your username from the next user of that browser,
exit the browser.
2. General Moodle Questions
- 2.1. Moodle won't let me log in. What could be the problem?
- You must give the same username and password that you give to ULINK. Your
username, also known as your CLID or UCS login ID, is printed on your student
ID card. If you connect to ULINK first, then Moodle will only ask for your
username and password once, the very first time. Recall that Blackboard
allowed you
to change your password to a Blackboard-only value; such a password won't
work with Moodle.
The system is case sensitive. It recognizes the difference
between an upper case letter and a lower case letter. Make sure the CAPS LOCK
key is off. If your problem persists, please contact the Helpdesk
in Stephens Hall Room 201. Also, see question 2.2 below, which addresses
browser settings that can affect your ability to login to Moodle.
- 2.2. What can I do when my web browser doesn't work right with Moodle?
- If you have enabled Cookies, Java-script, and Pop-ups, and still have problems,
next check for any firewall or web proxy that might be running on your
computer. We have seen both Norton and Zone-Alarm firewalls, and the
Privoxy filtering proxy, cause problems. Also, older versions of web browsers
may not handle CSS HTML correctly, resulting in lines overlaying each other.
If your problem is that only one topic is being displayed, you might have
accidently clicked on the small square icon in the top right of the topic
box. This causes the icon to be replaced by a double-square icon, and only
that topic to be displayed, even across Moodle sessions! Just click on the
double-square icon, and you'll get back to the default display of all
topics (the icon will change to a single square).
- 2.3. Moodle doesn't list any of my classes. What is wrong?
- If you logged in successfully (as indicated by your name appearing in the
top right corner) but no My Courses listed, it is probable that either
none of your instructors have put their courses on Moodle yet, or they have
not added you as a student yet. This latter possibility often happens during
the drop/add period, until the enrollment stabilizes. The best thing to do
is to ask your instructors to add Students again, if they are indeed using
Moodle for your class.
- 2.4. I use Moodle for a video-based course; how can I change my password?
- If you are not enrolled at UL-Lafayette, you are an "external" student,
and were assigned a username of the form ab1234; to change your
password, you should click on your name in the top right of the browser
screen after login. This will display your user profile. Click on
Edit profile and then fill in a new password in the
appropriate box, and finally, click on Update profile.
If you have forgotten your password, email your instructor requesting
a new one; they can access your profile and set a new password for you.
- 2.5. Can I bookmark a course and access the course from the bookmark?
- Yes. Of course, you will be asked to login but then you will be placed at the bookmarked page.
3. Problems with the grade book, assignments, quizzes, etc.
- 3.1. Are there any restrictions on the names of files that I upload or attach to
Moodle?
- Mostly no. We may change this answer as we get more experience with Moodle.
- 3.2. I am getting disconnected while taking a quiz. What is wrong?
- Many ISP's drop a user if they detect no activity for a certain amount of
time. Unfortunately this can occur when you are taking a quiz,
because the time spent without any interaction with the Moodle web server is
considered idle time by the ISP. There are several possible work-arounds for
this problem.
One work-around is to use a machine with an Ethernet connection such as the UCS
workstations in the Conference Center or in Stephens Hall because a student
does not get dropped for inactivity.
Another work-around is to generate network activity at various intervals
by pressing the Save without submitting button.
If, however, a disconnect does occur, you may reconnect to
Moodle and re-enter the quiz. You will receive a Continue the last attempt?
prompt if you have resumed the quiz within the allowed time to complete the
quiz.
A third work-around is for you to generate some Internet activity
periodically, perhaps by manually initiating a pop-email process (check for
new email).
- 3.3. Can I control the feedback I get while taking an online quiz?
- No, because the Instructor chooses when, if, and how to provide
feedback when (s)he designs a test.
- 3.4. How do I check grades?
- You should click on Grades to see your grades in
the current course, provided that the instructor allowed viewing of grades in
the course Settings. Also, email may be sent to you when a grade or
comment is applied to your assignment or workshop submission.
- 3.5. How come my grade is zero for a quiz?
- This can happen if you get disconnected
and thus are unable to click on Submit all and finish. If you
had saved your work periodically by clicking on Save without submitting then your instructor will at least be able to recover some of your answers when the quiz's available-until date has passed, via a regrade.
You should contact your instructor to determine the best way to proceed; (s)he
may allow multiple attempts, or may offer to reset your attempt so you can
retake the quiz.
4. Managing email
- 4.1. How do I send email to other students in my course?
- To send email to ALL the students and teachers in a course, post your message to the
course's News Forum. All the students and teachers in a course are by default
subscribed to the course forum, and will thus receive
an email for each posting. Anyone can, if allowed by the forum parameters,
change their subscription to be just one daily mailing, or just one daily
mailing of posting subjects. Also, a person can suspend all their emailings
by Moodle. The postings are still available for viewing within the forum,
and which postings have been read can be tracked if enabled in the user's profile.
You can send email to an individual by clicking on that person's name
in the Participants listing. This requires that your
browser handle the mailto function.
You can use the Compose mail block on your course page, which
will allow you to select which subset of the course participants are to be
sent email. This block must have been added to the course by the Instructor.
- 4.2. Can I check my email from within Moodle?
- There is no capability to read email from within Moodle. At the time
you activate your computer account at the Help Desk, your university
email account is created. You can read your university
email using Open WebMail, a web based email program. Go to the Help Desk web
site (http://helpdesk.louisiana.edu) and click WebMail.
Additionally, you can have UCS forward all your campus email off-site.
See the Useful Links section of the Moodle front page.
- 4.3. How can I change my email address for Moodle?
- See the Useful Links section on the Moodle front page, for a link
to change your UCS email forwarding. This will get all your UL-Lafayette
email sent to your preferred destination, including your Moodle email.
- 4.4. Moodle is sending me too much email! How can I fix this?
- Moodle does email forum postings to all subscribers. You can modify this
behavior (when permitted by the forum's settings) by editing your user profile.
Click on your name, shown at the top right of the screen, then click on the
Edit profile tab. Finally, select a different Email digest type, or
possibly deactivate email entirely (you then would access forums interactively
to find new postings; the Forum tracking setting might be of interest).
- 4.5. How do I prevent my email information, etc. from being visible to all?
- Edit your user profile (see previous (4.4)) to change the Email display setting.
5. Additional sources of information
- 5.1. What online sources are available?
- The Useful Links section of the front page contains links to
several FAQ documents (including this one). Also, Moodle itself has
contextual help popups, indicated by a yellow circled question mark; click on
this icon to receive help.
- 5.2. Who do I contact for local support?
- Send email requesting Moodle support to moodle@louisiana.edu or visit
the Helpdesk in Stephens Hall.
Please send comments or questions to
moodle@louisiana.edu.
Please send comments or questions to
moodle@louisiana.edu.
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