Communicating in Moodle

Version 1.8

Notting Hill Housing Group

CONTENTS
CONTENTS........................................................................................................ 2 INTRODUCTION................................................................................................ 4 ADDING/EDITING A BLOG ENTRY ................................................................. 5
WHAT IS A BLOG?................................................................................................. 5 ADDING A BLOG ENTRY ....................................................................................... 5 EDITING A BLOG ENTRY ...................................................................................... 7

ADDING A CHAT ACTIVITY ............................................................................. 8

ADDING A CHAT ACTIVITY TO YOUR COURSE.................................................. 8

INITIATING OR JOINING A CHAT SESSION ................................................ 12 FORUMS IN MOODLE .................................................................................... 15

WHICH MOODLE FORUM BEST SUITS YOUR PURPOSE? .............................. 15 TEACHING AND LEARNING FORUMS ............................................................... 16 PARTICIPATION AND SCAFFOLDING................................................................ 16 COMMITMENT AND PARTICIPATION................................................................. 17 STUDENT-CENTRED FORUMS ........................................................................... 17 THE NEWS FORUM .............................................................................................. 18 SUGGESTIONS FOR USING FORUMS ............................................................... 18 GRADING FORUMS.............................................................................................. 19

ADDING A FORUM IN MOODLE .................................................................... 20

SEPARATE AND CONNECTED WAYS OF KNOWING....................................... 24 FORUM TYPES ..................................................................................................... 25

VIEWING A FORUM ........................................................................................ 26 ADDING A WIKI ACTIVITY ............................................................................. 28

WHAT IS A WIKI? ................................................................................................. 28 WIKI TYPES .......................................................................................................... 28 ADDING A WIKI TO YOUR COURSE................................................................... 29

CREATING AND MANAGING WIKI STRUCTURE AND CONTENT ............. 34

FORMATTING TEXT ............................................................................................. 35 SAVING PAGE CONTENT .................................................................................... 35 PREVIEWING PAGE CONTENT........................................................................... 36 DISPLAYING IMAGES IN A PAGE....................................................................... 36 MONA LISA:.......................................................................................................... 39 THE LAST SUPPER:............................................................................................. 40 2

LINKS .................................................................................................................... 41 HISTORY ............................................................................................................... 41 ATTACHMENTS.................................................................................................... 42 WIKI ADMINISTRATION ....................................................................................... 42

INTRODUCTION
Communication tools are fundamental to Moodle. In this course we will look at how to set up and use Blogs, Chats, Forums and Wikis to make your Moodle courses more dynamic and to encourage staff participation and interaction.

Iain McCulloch Learning & Development Team

ADDING/EDITING A BLOG ENTRY

WHAT IS A BLOG? The word 'blog' derives from a contraction of the term 'web log'. Blogs are a form of online diary or journal and are used by millions of people around the world for self-expression and for communicating with family and friends. Blogs are usually organized as a chronological series of postings created by the author of the blog. Blogs usually are written by one person, although there is no reason why a blog cannot be authored by a group of people. Blogs in Moodle are user based - each user has their own Blog. Administrators, teachers, and students can create Tags. Administrators can create site level tags, teachers can create Course level tags, and students can create their own list of tags. When a blog entry is created, the user can select which tags they wish to associate with the new entry. Multiple tags can be selected. Users can also select who they want the blog entry to be available to (subject to the limitations set by the blog visibility site setting).

ADDING A BLOG ENTRY Adding a blog entry in Moodle is easy. First navigate to your Moodle personal profile page and then click on the Blog tab . The steps for adding a new entry are as follows: . The Blog entry page will

1. Click on the "Add a new entry" text-link open:

2. Write your entry and give it a title. 3. If you want to attach a file, click the Browse button, find the file on your computer, and click Open. Be sure your document is smaller than the maximum attachment size. 4. Choose who you wish to publish the entry to i.e. who may see the entry. There are three options: a. Yourself (i.e. your blog entry is a draft) b. Anyone on your site c. Anyone in the world 5. If you wish, select appropriate official tags for your entry and/or add one or more user defined tags. 6. Click on the "Save changes" button .

EDITING A BLOG ENTRY You can edit your blog entries at any time. If you wish, you can change the publish option from yourself to anyone on your site. The edit window is opened by clicking on the edit text-link at the bottom-right of the blog entry.

You may also delete the blog entry if you wish by clicking on the delete textlink at the bottom-right of the blog entry.

The next topic introduces Moodle Chat activities which allow participants to have real-time synchronous discussions, and explains how to create a Chat activity for your course.

ADDING A CHAT ACTIVITY

Chat activities in Moodle allow participants to have real-time, synchronous discussions online. This can be a useful way for students to gain a broader understanding of each other and of the topic being discussed. Chat rooms are used in quite a different way from the asynchronous forums considered earlier. The Chat module in Moodle contains a number of features for managing and reviewing chat discussions.

ADDING A CHAT ACTIVITY TO YOUR COURSE To add a Chat activity to your course, go to the Course Page, and turn editing on. Click on the Add an activity drop-down box in the topic where you want the forum to appear and select Chat:

The settings page for the Chat activity will be displayed:

The available options are described in detail below.

Name of this chat room: The name entered here will be the name that learners see in the course content area on the Course Page. Your learners will click on this name to see the chat room description and then to enter the chat. It is usually helpful if you name your chat room with a name that implies its purpose. For example, if your chat room will be used for communicating with your learners online during office hours, then you might name it Virtual Office. Alternatively, if the chat room is intended solely to give learners a place to socialize or discuss class activities, you might choose to call it Student Lounge. Introduction text: Type the description of the chat here. The description should include precise instructions for students regarding the subject of the chat. The introduction text is intended to welcome learners to the chat and to provide information about the purpose of the chat room. It can be as simple or as complex as you like. It is good practice to let learners know in the Introduction text who will be able to see the transcripts of chat sessions. The Teacher can see every part of any conversation that takes place in a chat room. However, you can choose to make these transcripts visible to learners as well. Next chat time: This sets the date and time of the next scheduled chat session. If you wish to schedule chat sessions for or with your learners, then you can use this setting to

You should be aware that simply setting a date and time here will not restrict access to the chat room at other times; it is just a tool to allow you to communicate with your learners. If you want to make a chat room unavailable, you must hide it from the learners. If you do not wish to set up specific chat times, then you can disregard the date and time settings here and then choose not to publish them in the next step.

Repeat sessions: You can choose any of four options from the drop-down box which allow you to decide how to schedule future chat sessions:

Don't publish any chat times: Select this option if you prefer not to schedule chats for the chat room. If this is chosen, Moodle will disregard any date and time set above for the Next chat time. No repeats- publish the specified time only: This setting will cause only the date and time selected for the Next chat time to be published. The date and time will be displayed on the course calendar as well as when the learners click on the title of the chat room in the course content area. Published chat times could be used to schedule special events or meetings or simply to help learners identify a common time in which they can expect to find other learners in the chat room. At the same time every day: In some situations, you may want to schedule a chat session for the same time every day. If this option is chosen, the scheduled chats will occur at the time you selected above for the Next chat time. At the same time every week: This allows you to schedule a chat with your learners for the same day and time every week. The scheduled chats will be on the same day of the week at the same time you indicated in the Next chat time area above. Save past sessions: This setting allows you to decide how long transcripts of past Chat sessions are kept by Moodle. When two or more users take part in a chat session, a complete transcript of the session is created. If you are concerned about discussions that might take place in your chat room, you may want to keep transcripts for an extended period of time to allow them to be used for documentation. Likewise, you may find the documentation provided by the transcript to be useful for accreditation or evaluative purposes. Everyone can view past sessions: This allows you to decide whether or not to allow everyone to view past chat sessions. Teachers on a course can always view transcripts from chat room sessions. However, you can also make these transcripts available to all of the learners on the course. If you select Yes for this setting, learners can click on the title of the chat room and then view past sessions to see any interactions that have taken place in the chat room.

If you select No here, then only the instructors in the course will have access to the transcripts. If learners need access to a specific transcript though, the instructor can always copy the transcript and share it with learners in the form of a document.

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Group mode: Select the group mode for the Chat. NOTE that this setting is ignored if the Force setting in the Course Settings page was set to Yes. Visible: This determines whether the Chat will be visible to students. If No is selected, students will not see the Chat, although the link will still be visible (but grayed-out) to teachers.

In the next section we will explain how to initiate or join a chat session.

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INITIATING OR JOINING A CHAT SESSION

1. Clicking on any link that contains the name of a Chat activity will open that chat and display the Chat Introduction Text together with a link Click here to enter chat now. If the Chat has next sessions scheduled, the time and date of the next session will also be displayed:

2. If you have chose the option to save past sessions and you are a Teacher on the course, or if you have enabled everyone to view past sessions, then a link in the top-right corner of the screen will take you to these past sessions.

3. Clicking on the Click here to enter chat now link will take you to the Chat Window:

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The Chat window has three distinct areas as indicated on the screenshot above. 1. The Chat Pane: All Chat messages are shown here, with the name and profile picture of participants in the chat displayed to the left of each entry. 2. The User Pane: Contains a list of names and profile images of everybody currently in the Chat area. This list includes those who are not actively participating in the Chat. 3. Input Field: This is where Chat messages are entered. A variety of inputs are automatically recognised and displayed appropriately in the Chat Pane. Chats can be made more interesting for participants if they personalise them. Several options are available to make chats more colourful and allow participants to personalise their contribution: Smilies : Any smiley faces (emoticons) that you can type elsewhere in Moodle can also be typed in here and they will be displayed correctly. For example, entering :- ) in the input field will display in the Chat Pane. Links: Internet addresses will be turned into links automatically. Emoting: You can start a line with /me or : to emote. For example, if your name is Jane and you type :laughs ! or /me laughs!, then everyone will see "Jane laughs!" Beeps: You can send a sound to other people by hitting the "beep" link next to their name. A useful shortcut to beep all the people in the chat at once is to type "beep all". HTML: If you are familiar with HTML code, you can use it in your text to do things like insert images, play sounds or create different coloured and sized text.

In order to participate in an active Chat, simply type your message text in the Input Field and press the enter key on your keyboard:

The message will then be displayed in the Chat Pane together with any responses from other participants:

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As you can see whenever a participant enters or leaves the chat this is indicated in the Chat Pane together with the time that they enter or leave:

When participants are shown in the User Pane as being present in the Chat area it is possible to get their attention by sending them an audible beep (always provided that they have sound enabled on their computer!). To do this, simply click on the beep link adjacent to the participants name in the User Pane:

When you are finished in a chat room simply close the window to leave and end the session.

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FORUMS IN MOODLE
Forums can contribute significantly to successful communication and community development in any online environment. In an educational setting forums may be used for a wide variety of innovative purposes, but probably the most significant are teaching forums and student forums. This section will discuss the variety of forum types available in Moodle and some of the ways that these may be used to enrich the learning experience (the News Forum has already been introduced in the earlier course Introduction to Moodle).

WHICH MOODLE FORUM BEST SUITS YOUR PURPOSE? Moodle has four kinds of forums: 1. 2. 3. 4. A single simple discussion Standard forum for general use Each person posts one discussion Q And A Forum

Which of these best suits your needs for a particular activity can be difficult to decide. It is often helpful to consider how you might best lead such a discussion in a face-to-face environment. Would you throw the question out to the class and sit back to observe their answers? Perhaps you would break them up into smaller groups first and ask them to discuss the topic with a partner before bringing their answer back to the main group? Maybe you want to keep them focused on a particular aspect of a question and ensure that they do not digress? All of the above approaches are valid and all can be useful, depending on your desired learning outcomes. All can be replicated using Moodle forums. A standard forum for general use is probably most useful for larger discussions which are guided or monitored by you or for student-led social forums. You do not need to make a new posting for every reply in each topic although you may find that a significant amount of time is required to identify common threads amongst the various discussions and weave them together to form a coherent whole. Providing overall remarks for particular topics can also be a key aspect of monitoring and directing a discussion. An alternative approach could be to ask your students to summarize discussion topics at agreed points (perhaps once a week or when a thread comes to an agreed conclusion). This learner-centred approach is perhaps best used only after the online community has been established and you have demonstrated the desired summarizing process. A single simple discussion is most useful for short or time-limited discussions on a single subject or topic. This kind of forum can be very productive if you wish to keep students focused on a particular issue. Each person posts one discussion offers a happy medium between a large discussion and a short, focused discussion. A single discussion topic per person allows students more freedom 15

than in a single discussion forum, but not as much as is offered in a standard forum where every student can create as many topics as they wish. Successful forums of this selection can be active, yet focused, as students are not limited in the number of times they can respond to others within a given thread. Q and A forum is, as its name suggests, best used when you have a particular question that you wish to have answered. In a Q and A forum, the tutors post the question and students respond with possible answers. By default, a Q and A forum requires students to post at least once before they can view other students' postings. After the initial posting, students can view and respond to others' postings. This feature allows equal initial posting opportunity among all students, thus encouraging original and independent thinking.

TEACHING AND LEARNING FORUMS When you decide to use a discussion forum as an activity in an e-learning environment you will still need to allocate time to managing the activity in order to make it successful. If your goal is to encourage discussion, the forum will only work if: a.) Participants feel a need or reason to participate and that they will gain something from the experience. Incentives for learning, gathering support, etc. should be explored and encouraged early on in the course to ensure that the purpose of the forum is clear to learners. If you are considering offering grades or marks for participation you should think very carefully about the difference between quantity and quality of discussions in forums. b.) A shared sense of community and purpose can be developed amongst participants. This can be developed either through tutor/teacher initiatives and scaffolding, or through the students/participants themselves depending on the nature and goals of the activity.

PARTICIPATION AND SCAFFOLDING One of the great advantages of e-learning is the flexibility it offers participants. However, this does not mean that days or weeks should pass without response and discussion in a forum (unless it is appropriate for it to do so). This is most especially true at the beginning of a course when students and tutors are new to each other and in need of guidance and encouragement. Whilst e-learning generally, and discussions in particular, can support learning that is not always tutor/teacher-centred, your role as teacher is important, especially as an online community begins to develop. It is during these initial stages that your learners can become a community of participants who begin to grow in their understandings of course material and individual contributions to the knowledge construction process. As discussions progress and learners become accustomed to the mechanics, rules and tone of the forums there are ways in which your input can be reduced, thereby helping to foster a

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community that is less dependent on you as tutor/teacher. Even then, however, you will probably want to maintain a presence in discussions although you may choose to be one of many contributors rather than the font of all wisdom.

COMMITMENT AND PARTICIPATION Before you set up forums for your course you need to consider:

Whether you wish to be involved in the forum or if you want the students to lead and own the space. Do you want the forum to add value to the face-to-face environment or have a life of its own in its own outside the classroom? Are you prepared to make appropriate contributions to the discussion in order to: o encourage discussion if students are quiet o help shape ideas if students begin to wander off-task Will your role be defined as discussions progress? Do you intend to explicitly, but gradually, relinquish control of the discussions? Will you encourage and support learners to share control of discussions? (for example you might ask a learner, or group of learners, to summarise contributions to a discussion thread/topic or you might ask particular learners to initiate discussion topics)

STUDENT-CENTRED FORUMS With the growing popularity of social networking software like MySpace , Facebook , and Bebo , learners are leaving school and coming to Further and Higher Education or to the work environment with greater technological sophistication and with new expectations for the learning environment. Reflective and life-long learning have become significant goals in education. Alongside this, student-centred learning and student-centred online spaces have also gained credence in educational and business settings. Effective learning requires access to social and academic networks for both study material and emotional support. In this environment, online learning communities can offer knowledge and support mechanisms and facilitate personal and educational development. Social forums (sometimes called Virtual Cafes or Common Rooms) can be set up for individual courses or for programmes, depending on the needs of the learners. Such forums provide common areas for learners to come together and discuss unlimited topics, including social activities and educational ideas. They are supportive spaces for students. It can be argued that students will experience a greater sense of community within, and a sense of belonging to, an organisation or department having had the experience and convenience of social forums on their course. This could even have implications for learner retention on courses if this is an issue.

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These forums can be highly active, especially in the early part of the course. Careful consideration should be given to how such forums should be monitored. Monitoring can be done by you, as teacher or tutor, or they can be self-monitored by learners. In either case, the same rules and netiquette apply to learners within Moodle as in any other computing environment. The Notting Hill eMail and Internet Policy gives guidance for the acceptable use of computer networks and systems at Notting Hill.

THE NEWS FORUM This was introduced in the earlier course Introduction to Moodle. Every Moodle course automatically generates a News Forum. By default, all participants on a course are automatically subscribed to the News Forum. The name of the News Forum can be changed to something more appropriate to your needs, Important Announcements, for example. This is a useful feature and this forum is often used in Moodle courses to announce exam dates and times, lectures or seminars, as well important information about coursework through the term. It can also be used for special announcements relating to the course over the year.

SUGGESTIONS FOR USING FORUMS It is good practice to begin with a welcome or introductory message or thread in one of your forums. This welcome or introduction from you invites participants, for example, to post some specific details to introduce themselves to you and their peers. This can be your icebreaker or you can have an icebreaker separately. If you have two questions for participants to answer, starting the two strands or topics within the forum itself will both help learners to see where to put their responses, and remind them to answer all parts of your question. Remember that you are communicating in an environment that does not have the benefit of non-verbal communication (verbal tone, eye contact, body language and the like). You may need to take more care than usual over communications in an online environment. You may want to warn participants about this explicitly. Postings to a forum are always written but they can take different forms and you may wish to consider what form best suits the activity. For instance, you might choose to articulate a form of contribution in order to be explicit. Thus you might say: 'This is a think-aloud forum in which, together, we will try to tease out ideas and possibilities' or 'This is a formal forum in which you are invited to share your ideas on (topic)'

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Where you select the latter, you might have already suggested learners plan those ideas offline or in another kind of activity within Moodle. Create a forum where only the teacher can start discussions, but students can only reply. Each thread you start contains an essay-type question (or several similar ones). The students make bullet-point plans for the essay and post them as replies. This can work particularly well as a revision strategy as the students can see how others have approached the same task. Once everyone has posted their plan, you can start a discussion as to which plans seem better and why. Creating a scale to use for rating the posts can be useful so that students can see how helpful other people think their contribution was.

GRADING FORUMS You can use the ratings system to grade learner activities by restricting ratings to teachers only, and then rating all student posts. But be aware that this reports an average of all ratings for a single student to the Moodle gradebook , and not a sum total of the ratings for all posts. If you want your students to make several posts in one forum, then you may find it more appropriate to use an Assignment module to house the Forum grade for a particular block. That grade is then reported to the Moodle gradebook .

Best Practice and Shared Discussions There are a wide range of discussions about the best-use of Forums and Forum assessment in the Teaching Strategies Forum on www.moodle.org

The next section explains how to set up a Forum

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ADDING A FORUM IN MOODLE

Forum activities enable asynchronous discussions to take place between participants on a course. To add a forum activity to your course, go to the Course Page, and turn editing on. Click on the Add an activity drop-down box in the topic where you want the forum to appear and select Forum:

The settings page for the Forum is displayed:

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The various options shown are described below:

Forum Name : The contents of this field become the clickable text-link on the course page. This is a mandatory field. Forum type : select from the drop-down list to determine the type of forum that is to be created:

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The types of forum available in Moodle were discussed in some detail in the earlier section entitled Moodle Forums. An overview in included at the end of this section.

Introduction: The text entered in this area is displayed at the top of the list of discussions on the Forum page. In addition, part of this is displayed in the Forum summary page. Force Everyone to be subscribed: The options in this drop-down list determine whether all participants on a course will be subscribed to this forum:

Read tracking for this forum: If read-tracking has been enabled by the Administrator for all forums on the site, the way in which it will operate for this forum is set by this setting. Maximum attachment size: the setting chosen from this drop-down list determines the maximum size of file that may be attached to a Forum post (if any you can choose the option Uploads are not allowed). Allow posts to be rated: Posts to a discussion may be rated, with the cumulative rating displayed in the Grades area. Click the check box if you want to allow rating of posts. Grade: The Grade drop-down list contains possible ratings and scales which may be used for grading posts. In addition, further scales may be created in the Scales area and these will then be available for selection here.

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Restrict ratings to posts with dates in this range: This setting allows ratings to be limited to the date-range specified in the drop-down boxes below:

Post threshold for blocking: These settings determine any restrictions or limitations that you wish to impose on your learners:

Time period for blocking - This option defines the period in which a student may make the number of posts specified in "Post threshold for blocking". o Post threshold for blocking - This option sets the number of posts a Student may make in the period defined above. Set to 0 to disable blocking. If blocking is disabled, warnings are also automatically disabled. o Post threshold for warning - Students (only) will be blocked from posting after a specified number of posts in a given period - this option is for setting the number of posts a Student may make before receiving a warning. Set to 0 to disable warnings. o Group mode : Select the group mode for the forum.
o

NOTE that this setting is ignored if the Force setting in the Course Settings page was set to Yes.
o

Visible : This determines whether the Forum will be visible to students. If No is selected, students will not see the Forum, although the link will still be visible (but grayed-out) to teachers.

Clicking the Save Changes button will save the settings for the Forum and display the Forum page.

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SEPARATE AND CONNECTED WAYS OF KNOWING Individual posts can be rated using a scale based on the theory of separate and connected knowing.

This theory may help you to look at human interactions in a new way. It describes two different ways that we can evaluate and learn about the things we see and hear. Although each of us may use these two methods in varying amounts at different times, it may be useful to imagine two people as examples, one who is a mostly separate knower (Peter) and the other a mostly connected knower (Jane).

Peter likes to remain as 'objective' as possible without including his feelings and emotions. When in a discussion with other people who may have different ideas, he likes to defend his own ideas, using logic to find holes in his opponent's ideas. He is critical of new ideas unless they are proven facts from reputable sources such as textbooks, respected teachers or his own direct experience. Peter is a very separate knower. Jane is more sensitive to other people. She is skilled at empathy and tends to listen and ask questions until she feels she can connect and "understand things from their point of view". She learns by trying to share the experiences that led to the knowledge she finds in other people. When talking to others, she avoids confrontation and will often try to help the other person if she can see a way to do so, using logical suggestions. Jane is a very connected knower.

In these examples the separate knower is male and the connected knower is female. That is intentional. Some studies have shown that statistically this tends to be the case, however individual people can be anywhere in the spectrum between these two extremes. For a collaborative and effective group of learners it may be best if everyone were able to use BOTH ways of knowing. In a particular situation like an online forum, a single post by a person may exhibit either of these characteristics, or even both. Someone who is generally very connected may post a very separate-sounding message, and vice versa. The purpose of rating each post using this scale is to: a) help you think about these issues when reading other posts b) provide feedback to each author on how they are being seen by others The results are not used towards learner assessment in any way, they are just to help improve communication and learning.

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References In case you're interested, here are some references to papers by the authors who originally developed these ideas:

Belenky, M.F., Clinchy, B.M., Goldberger, N.R., & Tarule, J.M. (1986), Women's ways of knowing: the development of self, voice, and mind. New York. Clinchy, B.M. (1989a). The development of thoughtfulness in college women: Integrating reason and care. American Behavioural Scientist, 32(6), 647-657. Clinchy, B.M. (1989b). On critical thinking & connected knowing. Liberal education, 75(5), 14-19. Clinchy, B.M. (1996). Connected and separate knowing; Toward a marriage of two minds. [In N.R. Goldberger, Tarule, J.M., Clinchy, B.M. & Belenky, M.F. (Eds.), Knowledge, Difference, and Power; Essays inspired by Womens Ways of Knowing (pp. 205-247)], New York. Galotti, K. M., Clinchy, B. M., Ainsworth, K., Lavin, B., & Mansfield, A. F. (1999). A New Way of Assessing Ways of Knowing: The Attitudes Towards Thinking and Learning Survey (ATTLS). Sex Roles, 40(9/10), 745-766. Galotti, K. M., Reimer, R. L., & Drebus, D. W. (2001). Ways of knowing as learning styles: Learning MAGIC with a partner. Sex Roles, 44(7/8), 419-436.

FORUM TYPES There are several different types of forum to choose from:

A single simple discussion - is just a single topic, all on one page. Useful for short, focussed discussions. Standard forum for general use - is an open forum where any one can start a new topic at any time. This is the best general-purpose forum. Each person posts one discussion - Each person can post exactly one new discussion topic (everyone can reply to them though). This is useful when you want each student to start a discussion about, say, their reflections on the week's topic, and everyone else responds to these. Q And A Forum - The Q & A forum requires students to post their perspectives before viewing other students' postings. After the initial posting, students can view and respond to others' postings. This feature allows equal initial posting opportunity among all students, thus encouraging original and independent thinking.

More development of forum types is expected in future versions of Moodle. The next section looks at viewing forum discussions.

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VIEWING A FORUM
What you can see under the introduction text to the forum depends on which of the three options you chose in the Forum type field when creating the forum. If you chose A single simple discussion, you will see the text you entered in the 'Forum introduction' space while creating the forum as the first post of the discussion. There will be a heading, which is the forum name, the information about the author and the date of the first post. Below you will find the replies that have been posted (if any).

You can choose how replies should be displayed from the options in the drop-down list on the top-left of the screen:

You can display a discussion in any of four ways:

Display replies flat, with oldest first - the discussion is displayed as one line. The chronological order will be from the oldest to the newest. Display replies flat, with newest first - the discussion is displayed on one line. The chronological order is from the newest to the oldest. Display replies in threaded form - only the post starting the discussion is displayed in full. Replies are reduced to headlines (including information about the author and date) and are organized chronologically. Moreover, replies are shifted to the right so that all replies to the same post are aligned. Display replies in nested form - all posts to the discussion are displayed in full. Replies to posts are reduced to headlines (including information about the author and date) and organized chronologically; Replies are aligned in a similar way to that used to display replies in nested form.

If you chose Standard forum for general use, you will see the introduction text in a separate space above the discussion field, in which you will see the information such as the title of the discussion (which means the forum's title), its author, the number of replies and the date of the last post.

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With Each person posts one discussion the view is essentially the same as in the previous case, Standard forum for general use. The only difference is the 'Add a new discussion' option. You will see the text you entered in the 'Forum introduction' space while creating the forum when viewing a forum page together with any discussions that have been started.

In all cases, above the introduction to the forum you will find options concerning subscription to the forum as well as the 'Update the forum' button and the 'Jump to' field, with which you can 'jump' to any part of the course.

The next Topic will introduce Moodle Wikis and explain how to set up a Wiki for your course.

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ADDING A WIKI ACTIVITY

WHAT IS A WIKI? A wiki is a collection of collaboratively authored web documents. Essentially, a wiki page in Moodle is a web page that everyone in your class can create together. They can do this directly in their browser window, and they dont need to know HTML. A wiki starts with one front page. Participants add further pages to the wiki by creating a link to a page that doesn't exist yet. In Moodle, wikis can be powerful tools for collaborative work. The entire class can edit documents together to create a class product, or each student can have their own wiki and work on it with you and their classmates. The name Wiki derives from the Hawaiian phrase wiki-wiki, which means very fast. In fact, a wiki can be a very fast method for creating content as a group. It is a hugely popular format on the Web for creating documents as a group (Wikipedia, the online encyclopaedia is probably the best-known example).

WIKI TYPES It can be difficult for those new to the idea of a Wiki to visualise it. It can be helpful to think of the front page of a Wiki as a structured table of contents. Each link on the front page takes you to a page for that entry. In essence a Wiki is organised by its links. To complicate life still further, there are three wiki types in Moodle: Teacher, Groups, and Student. In addition, like any Moodle activity, a wiki has the Moodle group modes: "No Groups" "Separate Groups" and "Visible Groups". This leads to the following matrix of nine possibilities:

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Group Mode Wiki Type No Groups Separate Groups There is one wiki for every group which just the teacher can edit. Students can view the wiki of their group only. Visible Groups There is one wiki for every group which just the teacher can edit. Students can view the wikis for all groups.

There is only one wiki which only the Teacher teacher can edit. Students can view the contents.

There is one wiki per group. There is only one There is one wiki per group. Students can change the wiki wiki. The teacher and Students can view and edit the of their own group only. They Groups all students can view wiki of their own group only. can view the wikis for all and edit this wiki. groups. Every student has Every student has their own Every student has their own their own wiki which wiki, which only they and wiki, which only they and their teacher can edit. Students their teacher can edit. Students Student only they and their teacher can view and can view the wikis of other can view the wikis of all other edit. students in their group. students in the course. Unless you chose to force the group mode on the course settings page, it can be set with the groups icon on the course home page after the wiki has been created. NOTE: Teachers can always edit every wiki in the course

ADDING A WIKI TO YOUR COURSE To add a Wiki to your course, go to the Course Page, and turn editing on. Click on the Add an activity drop-down box in the topic where you want the Wiki to appear and select Wiki:

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The Wiki settings page will be displayed:

The basic options are described in detail below. Name: The name entered here will be the name that learners see in the course content area on the Course Page. Your learners will click on this name to access the Wiki. It is usually helpful (though not essential) to name your Wiki with a name that implies its purpose. This is a mandatory field. Summary: The text (and any other content) entered her will appear on the Wiki summary page which is the first page that course participants see when the click on the link in the course content area. This is a mandatory field. [The Wiki summary page can also be accessed by clicking on the Wiki link in the Administration Block on the Course Page.] Type: The type of Wiki Teacher, Groups, or Student. (See table above). Group mode: This setting, combined with the Type setting above, define how the Wiki will be configured for your course. (See table above). Visible: This determines whether the Chat will be visible to students. If No is selected, students will not see the Chat, although the link will still be visible (but grayed-out) to teachers.

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Advanced Settings Clicking on the Show Advanced button in either the General Settings, or Optional Settings will display additional configuration options for your Wiki. NOTE : In most cases, staff at Notting Hill will be able to use the default Wiki settings when they need to create a Wiki for their course and so will not need to concern themselves with these advanced settings.

General Settings

The additional settings are shown with a green asterisk:

The extra configuration options are: Print wiki name on every page: If set to Yes, the name of the Wiki page will appear as a link on every page.

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HTML mode: This determines how HTML tags are to be treated by the Wiki.

o No HTML: All Html tags will be ignored. Formatting can only be achieved by using WikiWords o Safe HTML: Some HTML tags are allowed. o HTML only: WikiWords do not work in this mode. All formatting is achieved by using HTML. o Allow binary files: If you allow binary content (such as images), you have two possibilities: 1. You can upload and use images on wiki-pages. When editing a page, an upload form will be displayed for uploading images. After a successful upload, an image code is displayed that you can embed in your pages using square brackets. For example: [internal:// myimage.gif ]. 2. You can attach files to a Wiki Page which can be displayed by the attachments action. The size is limited to the setting made in Moodle. o Wiki auto-linking options: In certain situations, you may not want automatic linking based on CamelCase words. If this is so, check this box to disable CamelCase linking. WARNING -- CamelCase is a standard wiki feature. Disabling it may cause any imported wikis to work incorrectly. Use this feature only if you are absolutely certain you do not want CamelCase linking. o Student admin options: Where students are allowed to edit a Wiki, the selected options from this list will be available to students from the Administration drop-down list in the Wiki.

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Optional Settings The additional settings are shown with a green asterisk:

Page name: If you want the name of the first page of the wiki to be something other than the wiki name, you can specify it here. This name will become the first page of the wiki for every created instance of this wiki. If you leave this field blank, the initial page name will be the wiki name, unless you select a page in the 'initial page' field. Choose an initial page : This is content which can be initially loaded into the Wiki. If you want your own initial content, create it as text-files, and upload it to a directory in the course files area. Then select one of the files as the initial page. All the pages in that directory will become content for each new wiki structure created for this wiki, and the selected page will be the first page.

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CREATING AND MANAGING WIKI STRUCTURE AND CONTENT

When you create a new Wiki in Moodle and click on the Save Changes button the content and structure of the Wiki are saved. The Wiki page will be displayed:

The screenshot above will be similar to your new Wiki if you have not selected the Choose an Initial Page option on the settings page. Clicking the View tab will display the page content. If your page does not yet contain any content, clicking on the View tab show the same as if the Edit tab had been clicked.

Clicking on the Edit tab

causes the editing options for the page to be displayed.

Enter text into the text area as required. Text may be formatted using the HTML editor, directly using HTML code (unless No HTML was selected in the HTML Mode setting), or using Wiki formatting. The standard Moodle formatting tools are available at the top of the text area:

Navigation between Wiki pages is achieved by a series of links that you create within the text area. These page links are created by entering text in one of the following formats: CamelCase Words capitalised and joined without spaces. [Page1] surrounding text by square brackets. 34

Clicking on a link created in this way will open the page that it links to if that page already exists. If the page doesnt exist, the text-link to the page is displayed with a question mark after it when you view (or preview) the page. So, for example:

Clicking on the ? will create the new page.

FORMATTING TEXT If you have changed the HTML mode in the advanced settings to something other than HTML only then you can use an alternative markup formatting system to format your text. This system provides an extensive set of tools for formatting Wiki pages. Further details of these markup tools can be found at the ErfurtWiki web site. A few examples will be given here to demonstrate: !heading !!heading ''emphasis'' (two pairs of single quote marks) __bold__ #Rangers #Aberdeen #Hearts #Celtic heading (H1) heading (H2) emphasis bold 1. Rangers 2. Aberdeen 3. Hearts 4. Celtic

One advantage of using this method of formatting is that, once learnt, it can be used to create and format Wiki pages very quickly. More information on Wiki markup can be found on the Moodle.org site.

SAVING PAGE CONTENT Content added to a Wiki page is saved and displayed by clicking on the Save button.

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PREVIEWING PAGE CONTENT If you wish to preview the page content before saving (highly recommended), click the Preview button. The page is shown as it will be seen in its final form with the text entered into the text box below:

DISPLAYING IMAGES IN A PAGE If you wish to allow images and other content to be displayed in your Wiki you will need to set the Allow binary files advanced option to yes in the Wiki settings. In this case, the additional field and buttons shown below will be available when the Wiki page is displayed in editing mode:

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Either enter the path to the file or browse to locate it on your system. When the correct path is displayed in the field, click the Upload button to upload the file. A new browser window will open to confirm that the upload was successful when the upload is complete:

The new window contains the text of the link that needs to be inserted into the text area. Copy and past the link into the text box where the image is to be displayed:

Click on the Save or Preview buttons to view the page:

Further links can now be added to create new pages for the Wiki. In this example we will create pages for the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper:

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When this page is saved, clicking on the "?"s next to Mona Lisa and Last Supper will allow us to create the Wiki pages for those entries:

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MONA LISA:

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THE LAST SUPPER:

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LINKS

Clicking on the Links tab target this page.

at the top of the Wiki page will display all links that

HISTORY Clicking on the History tab being viewed: will display a list of versions of the page currently

Information about the page status and modification is displayed for each page together with links to perform further operations. Version: This displays the version number of the current Wiki page. Clicking on the number will cause the current version of the page to be displayed. The extra links act as follows: Browse: displays the current version of the Wiki page. Fetch-back: opens the current version of the Wiki page in editing mode. Diff: Clicking this link will show the page with differences from the previous version highlighted. Author: The name of the person who created the Wiki page is displayed as a link, together with the persons associated user-profile image. Clicking on either of these will display the persons profile. Created: This shows the day, date and time that the first version of the Wiki page was created. Last Modification: This shows the day, date and time that the current version of the Wiki page was created. References: This lists Wiki pages and any other files that are linked to this page. For the current version of the page these will appear as clickable links.

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ATTACHMENTS

The attachments tab is only displayed if Allow binary files was set to yes in the advanced settings of the Wiki settings page. Clicking the link displays the attachment options for the page together with a link allowing you to view any attachments that have already been made to the page.

WIKI ADMINISTRATION As you and your class develop your Wiki you may find that pages sometimes become orphaned, or that you need to manage your learners contributions. Fortunately, the Administration drop-down menu provides you with the tools that you will need to keep your Wiki running smoothly:

Set page flags: Page flags are the properties that can set on a per-page basis. Each page can be set with different permissions. Remove pages: The wiki engine automatically tracks pages that aren't linked from anywhere else (i.e. a page that was created and then the link to it was later deleted) and empty pages. This tool allows you to remove such orphaned wiki pages, which can't be reached through the ordinary wiki interface. Strip pages: While the wiki engine tracks changes, it stores ALL old versions in the database. To make it easier to follow what has happened to the data, you may occasionally want to delete all the old versions and just keep the current one. Revert mass changes: This tool allows you to roll-back changes to all pages in the Wiki if a particular student (or Teacher!) makes a mess of many pages in the wiki.

Further help on How to Wiki can be found on the Moodle.org site

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