You can see examples of the Moodle tools that help you to use Moodle as a communication hub on UCL Moodle: https://moodle.ucl.ac.uk/course/view.php?id=218
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Your presence in Moodle
- Make your posts and messages stand out so people can see at a glance who is communicating? Do you want to:
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- provide an immediate visual cue about your identity (a profile picture)?
- Forums - need-to-know info and discussion
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- find it helpful if your course communications to be recorded in one place, for reference
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- The News Forum is a special type. Only course staff can initiate messages and those are always emailed. Keep this channel free for need-to-know, mission-critical information about the course.
Groups - targeted communications
Do you want to:
- communicate with different sub-groups of students?
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- automatically assign students to their groups when they first enter your course area?
- have different cohorts share an area and selectively show different links to different cohorts?
Version control - avoiding misinformation
Do you?
- have documents which change frequently or regularly e.g. handbooks, reference documents?Do you:
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- want difficult course terms to link to your course Glossary?
- want to use other media than text in your course documents?
Hot Question - eliciting questions
Do you want to?
- enable students to pose questions which others can see?Do you want to:
- get students generating questions in advance of their seminar, lecture, or tutorial?
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- optionally, allow anonymous questions from reticent students?
- Choice - asking a question
want to gauge opinion on something?
Do you:
- want to collect information about something in particular?
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- have something to give away or to sign up for, on a first-come-first-served basis?
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- Blocks - orientation, navigation, alerts, updates and more
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- Give some extra help with navigation and orientation?
- Offer some extra tools for students?
Scheduler - convenient meeting arrangements
- Make it easy for students to see when you're free, and take a slot on a first-come-first-served basis, individually or in groups?Do you want to:
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- Avoid having to administrate this yourself?
- Be able to see who's coming to see you when, without returning to a piece of paper you left on your door for them to put their names on?
Glossaries - clickable jargon-busting
Do you?
- think that students are sometimes hindered by difficulties grasping core course concepts?Do you
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- have to answer some questions repeatedly?
- optionally, want students to be able to collaborate on authoring definitions?
Calendar - just for your Moodle course
Draw attention to course deadlines?
Do you want to:
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- Example: See the Calendar and Upcoming Events Blocks here on this Moodle area.
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- Example: See too the Calendar documentation at moodle.org.
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Chat - real time text communication
Do you want to:
- arrange an online drop-in session where you'll be around to join in with a chat?
- provide an always-on space for your students to chat in?
- make the transcripts available for future reference?
Conditional release - to access x, first do y
Do you want to:
- Direct students' attention to something in particular before they proceed on to the next thing?
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- Make time-bound information disappear on a certain date?
- You can make access to a given Moodle activity or resource contingent on students having fulfilled certain criteria elsewhere.
Blackboard Collaborate and BigBlueButton - rich online meetings
Bb Collaborate and BigBlueButton are alternatives for web meetings from your desk (or wherever) which need a separate session - for now just be aware that you can
hold web meetings with voice, video and chat.
they can be one-to-one, seminar, or larger
they can be recorded for posterity.
UCL also offers a bookable video conferencing service.
Reports & Logs - implicit feedback from students
Do you want to:
- get feedback on how a certain resource or activity has been used over time?
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- get a sense of last minuteness on the part of students?
- easily contact students based on participation (e.g. to remind them to do something)?
RSS Feeds - bringing the outside in
Do you want to:
- highlight Moodle Forum discussion topics by displaying them on the course homepage?
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- promote news from, say, your departmental website, your discipline's professional body, a journal, or a blog?
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Questionnaire - input from students
Do you want to:
- collect data from your course area participants in the form of a questionnaire?
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- be able to download the data for analysis?
- There's a Moodle Questionnaire tool which allows you to ask different types of questions, view the responses in different ways, and download them as a spreadsheet.
Opinio
If you want to use Question branching or require people outside of UCL to answer a questionnaire you might like to use UCL's survey tool called *Opinio: httphttps://www.ucl.ac.uk/isd/services/learning-teaching/e-learning-staff/e-learning/-core-tools/opinio
* Note: Opinio requires you to import student lists and send out the link via email or by posting it on your Moodle course page. If you use the Moodle questionnaire students access it via the Moodle course homepage, like any other activity.