Tips for creating a dynamic Moodle course that will engage students

These tips are based on a presentation given at the Goldsmith's Teaching and Learning Conference by Andrea Sella
(aka SellaTheChemist from UCL Chemistry). The presentation slides are here : My Learning Landscapes (pdf)

Communication

Ensure students feel like they can contribute to the group!

Rules!

Never answer a question by email (unless it's personal) > you should reply "post this to the forum" Why? Because 359 other students have the same question
Respond to general questions quickly
Respond to course work related questions more slowly or better still with "anyone out there have any suggestions?" > You don't really explain the material until you explain it to someone else.
Post regularly to the Learning Exchange and encourage students to do the same

Tips!

Having a Twitter tag for the module allows for rapid response and comment during labs and in lectures - you can use Tweetdeck to look at these during / after the class
Encourage students to upload a profile picture to make conversations in the discussion forum and elsewhere easier to follow
Allow students to rate posts to highlight the especially useful contributions

The 5 types of forums

Announcements from staff
Admin Q&A - for general questions
Topic specific fora (so staff and students can subscribe selectively - in large groups colleagues can distribute the workload of replying by subscribing to the forum related to their specialisms)
Learning Exchange > where staff and students post links to interesting articles, videos etc.
Wishlist / suggestion box forum? (could be anonymous)

Add dynamic content

Much of this can be automated.

add events to the calendar > you can now import calendars into Moodle using the ical import feature
use the upcoming events block so students get reminders about due dates etc.
add the recent activity block so students see new materials as it's posted
create a student contributed glossary of terms
add RSS feeds to relevant materials (e.g. news, journals and magazine articles)
if you tweet add a Twitter widget to your Moodle course homepage
put pictures on each page

Assessment

develop revision quizzes for students to help them gauge their progress and provide detailed feedback regardless of whether they got the answer correct or not
give a small percentage of the final grade for engaging with the Moodle course activities
High score - games > using the quizzes block
confidence based marking to build virtuous feedback loops into revision.
In addition to revision quizzes - encourage students to use Peerwise to contribute their own questions (add a link to your Moodle course) these questions become a useful source of new questions that can be added to the existing bank for future years
Keeping track of 600 questions (tag them so they can be found again)