This page shows you how you might choose to implement the expectations from the Moodle Baseline and Baseline+ in your own course.

Structure

Present activities and resources in a meaningful, clearly structured and sequenced way - e.g. chronologically or by theme. Typically each Moodle section represents a topic, which may cover one or more weeks of study.

Use headings - Use Section Headings for each topic area and use heading styles within labels, books and pages to maintain consistency across sections and so students can quickly identify where they are.

Provide section overviews - Provide a description in each section to introduce the topic or set of resources / activities.

Clearly group and label items within a section – Bring together common elements, use labels to provide common sub-headings across sections to help students navigate.

Use Groups and Groupings to give different views and information to specific groups of students, where needed.

Minimise cognitive load - Avoid overloading the front page by placing content off the main page in Pages, Books, Folders,Lessons and hiding unused items. If your front page is still long consider using Tabs format, or the Course Menu block to aid navigation.

Include blocks to aid navigation- Suggested blocks include Activities, Latest News, Recent Activity, Library Resources, Library Search, Course Menu and People.

Further information on structure, navigation & clarity.

Aim for high standards of usability and student (and colleague) experience - As a Moodle editor you're also an interface designer.

If you have a lot of documents you might want to consider either:
- placing them within a folder; or
- linking to them from a Moodle page.
If your course is long, you can avoid the "scroll of death" by changing your course layout to tabs format or by changing the course layout to 'show one section per page', so students only see one section of content at a time.
Lynda.com (free to UCL people) has a short course on Writing for the Web. You can dip into this rather than taking it sequentially. Relevant parts include '1. Write for Fast Reading', '2. Don't Tease: What's in it for Me?', '4. Front Load Your Content', '6. Provide Detailed Information and Useful Images', and '7. Actively Manage Your Content'.
Concise overview of user experience from usability.gov
Concise set of visual design principles from usability.gov

Further information on structure, navigation & clarity.

Orientation

Explicitly signpost all online and offline activities in a logical and consistent manner and explain how they align with each other. Further information on signposting.
Identify compulsory and recommended resources and activities to help students keep track of the tasks they must complete.
Provide an indicator of effort such as activity timings, video lengths, or page counts for resources, to help students understand how long they need to spend on each task. This also helps staff to consider the effort of compulsory weekly activities, to ensure they do not extend beyond the total time students are expected to spend on independent study each week.
Provide a Course Overview within the 'Course Summary' in the course settings. This should define who students contact to request access to the course. This appears when you do a search in Moodle. The course description can either be copied to the top of the course or added to the left or right columns using the 'Course Summary' block.

Internal Student support for students:

External Student support:

UCL subscribes to Lynda for online training in software, creative, and business skills. You can link directly to relevant training and students access it by using the organisational URL www.ucl.ac.uk to log in at http://www.lynda.com/
Box of Broadcasts, a personal recording service and media archive, is freely available to students

Further information on student support.

Further information on inducting and supporting students.

Communication

Have you defined how students should expect to communicate in Moodle (e.g. forums, messages, email):
- how do students ask the tutor questions?
- how do students seek support from administrators?
- how will staff communicate with students?
- how to reduce the number of emails from Moodle, if they want to?
Ensure the contact details of key course staff are visible on the Moodle course homepage - this is a requirement of the Moodle baseline.
Ensure the People block is on the page to allow students a social presence and to see who their peers and tutors are.
Upload an image for your personal icon (in your Profile) and encourage your students to do the same - they are particularly helpful when scanning contributions on Discussion forums.
Refer to things consistently using the same terms.

Set up some form of virtual meeting space for students prior to commencing a course.
Keep in touch with students during their out of campus activities (hospital placement, field work, etc).
Students can choose to receive one daily email at 5pm from Moodle forums - and as of June 2015 daily digest emails (as opposed to individual Moodle forum emails) will be the default setting for all staff and students - but you can change this back if you want to.

Student groups are used, where relevant, to target information to the appropriate audience.

Further information on communication.

Assessment

Further information on electronic submissions.

In one place which students can easily find, provide, link to, or signpost the aspects below. In Moodle, the Description of the Assignment, Quiz or other activity (which can be found in its Settings) could be a good place for these. If you have a lot to say here, then let students know early on that they may have to scroll down the page to submit their work.

Key dates

Check that the deadline for a piece of work is obvious to students.

Once a student has clicked on the Assignment's link Moodle and Turnitin display the due date(s) by default.
Minimising duplication of information saves time. Entering due dates in one place - the assignment settings - should help avoid undue work preparing your Moodle area for the next student intake.
On the front page of a Moodle course area, enabling the Upcoming Events block is one way to make Assignment deadlines more conspicuous - this automatically displays information about Moodle activity deadlines.
Students and staff can also see key dates (like assignment deadlines) from across all their Moodle courses in their My Home page Calendar.

Assessment criteria

Students are assessed with criteria with which they are familiar while they work on their assignment.

One way is to link to or signpost these these from the Description of the Assignment.
Another is to create a marksheet (Moodle Assignment and Turnitin both allow these) or attach an existing one, and set it to display to students.

The value or weighting of the assessment

Ensure students are aware of how this assessment relates to the overall scheme of assessment.

If this includes a weighting, you can set this in the Moodle Gradebook and direct students' attention there.
You can link students to the course handbook (and if the handbook is in Moodle Book form, you can link students to the precise section).

Materials as needed

To avoid disorientation, provide, link to or signpost all the materials students need to carry out the assignment. These might include:

Cover sheets.
Mark sheets.
Workbooks.
Alternative questions or essay titles.

When to expect feedback and how to find it

Gibbs and Simpson (2004) note circumstances under which feedback makes a positive difference. Delaying or eliminating numeric marks makes students more receptive to feedback;Moodle Gradebook allows this.

TESTA (2012) advocate that "Feedback should be timely in that it is received by students while it still matters to them and in time for them to pay attention to further learning or receive further assistance". This timeliness depends on students knowing when feedback is available. Since neither Moodle nor Turnitin alert cohorts of students automatically, staff need to alert students. Ways with technology include:

Via the News Forum of that particular Moodle area; students receive these messages by email, and you could enable the Latest News block to display most recent messages on your Moodle area's front page.
If you have a course Twitter account, post there when feedback becomes available. Again, you can display this in a sidebar block on your Moodle area front page.
One way to provide feedback to all which allows students to benchmark themselves without taking undue staff time is to offer cohort-wide feedback. This can be in text or other media, and students can be alerted via the News Forum.

Instructions

For online submission ensure students know how to upload work, confirm that their work has been successfully uploaded, and where and when to expect feedback and marks.
Where possible, rather than writing your own step-by-step instructions (which you will need to maintain with each upgrade) link students to those produced by ELE, such as this for Turnitin and this for Moodle Quizzes. Your suggestions for improving these are welcome.
If the Moodle or Turnitin assignment's Description field is long, then make students aware that they may need to scroll to the point of submission.

References

Gibbs, G. and Simpson, C. (2004). Conditions under which assessment supports students' learning. Available from: Learning and Learning in higher Education, Issue 1. Available from: http://www2.glos.ac.uk/offload/tli/lets/lathe/issue1/issue1.pdf
TESTA, 2012. Principles of assessment. Available from: http://www.testa.ac.uk/index.php/resources/best-practice-guides. Accessed 9 Nov 2014.

Further information on assessment.

Resources

Further information on providing electronic resources.

Further information on incorporating Twitter and RSS feeds to provide context to students.

Cross platform compatibility

Accessibility

Intellectual property

Student Active Participation

Quality Assurance

If you choose to use Moodle for programme or module evaluations, this is what they might look like:

What could your Moodle course look like?