The Pedagogic Approach to Moodle SNAP Theme Development

Don't Let This Happen

Why Open-book Tests Deserve a Place in Your Courses

Of the many obstacles that web-based technologies present, combating academic dishonesty is among the most challenging. For many it is hard to envision a scenario where a student completes an online quiz (or test) without using their smartphone, tablet, or other device to look up the answers, or ‘share’ those answers with other students. Those of us who use online quizzes have experimented with lockdown browsers, randomized questions, and anything else we can find to try to ‘defeat’ the students in their quest to cheat. One potential solution is worth exploring: open-book testing.


Read more here.

Help Us With Our Digital Literacy Assessment!

We are re-rebuilding our Basic Moodle Training (BMT) course, and have decided to require an initial assessment of instructors' digital literacy knowledge, skills, and abilities. This will enable us to help instructors be able to support their students who seek out answers to basic computer and LMS questions and issues.

We have a good start on a question bank for our BMT Digital Literacy Assessment, but need your help to collect up as many relevant questions as possible. You are the ones in the field, so you should know best what should be in such an assessment, correct?

Click here to access the questions we have developed so far, and feel free to add questions of your own, and/or comment (Insert > Comment) on any that you see. You can also make a copy for yourself (File > Make a copy…).

Thanks in advance!

Moodle Gradebook Student View

Exporting Moodle Course Grades

Whether you use an LMS or not, you do NOT want to be the instructor who failed to keep records of the courses you deliver. If you use gradable items in Moodle, that task is very easy.

First, click the "Grades" link in your course shell Administration block:

Click the "Export" tab:

Click the "Excel Spreadsheet" link:

Keep everything selected, and click the "Download" button:

Your Excel file containing all of the grades in your course will be downloaded to your computer.

From there, we recommend keeping your course grades spreadsheets in your Google Drive, but that's another blog post…

Again, you REALLY want to make sure you keep records of your students' grades.

Knowledge ≠ Understanding

Google Docs Sharing Basics

This blog post covers the basics of sharing of Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides.

You can share a Google Doc (to include Docs, Sheets, and Slides) by right-clicking on the doc in your Google Drive and selecting "Share… Share…"

If you are viewing a doc, you can also click the blue "Share" button in the upper right:

Either method above makes the "Share with others" dialog box:

The simplest and most straightforward way to share the doc is to start typing the name of the person with which you want to share the doc. By default, the doc will be shared with an editing privilege, unless you want a different setting:

Commenting is a handy way to hold a discussion on a document, and viewing is for letting people see, but not edit or comment. Keep in mind that all three sharing privilege settings will allow the recipient to make a copy of the doc that they will own and have full editing rights.

Note the "Notify people via email" checkbox on the lower right is checked by default. That will general an email message to your recipient(s) with a link to the Google Doc you are sharing. If you uncheck that box, they will have to look in their "Shared with Me" section of their Google Drive.

Want to explore more options for sharing? Click the "Get shareable link" feature in the upper right of the "Share with others" and then the little disclosure triangle to the left of "Copy link:"

Click "More…" at the bottom for even more options. Explore what all of those options enable you to do in sharing Google Docs, and you will begin to wonder how you ever got by without these tools and techniques!

If you discover a useful feature or process, be sure to share it in the comments below.

Uploading a Word Document into Google Docs

If you haven't used Google Drive at all, or very much, do yourself a favor and get set up to use all of the doc sharing and editing features by configuring your Google Drive Upload Settings first.

When I mention the editing features of Google Docs, I realize that's one of those things that's easier to understand from practice, rather than reading. Let it suffice to say that, unless you are using more advanced features of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, and PowerPoint), there is a strong chance you can do without those tools once and for all. I have had almost zero use in my personal and professional work for many years now.

So you want to learn how to upload a Word Doc (or, for that matter, an Excel or PowerPoint file) in your Google Drive? It's really easy. First, log into your Google Apps for Education account (that's your LBCC Gmail account). Next, look for the nine little squares (I call it the "Rubic's Cube) in the upper right, and then the "Drive" icon:

A new browser tab opens showing your Google Drive. If you see a prompt across the top of the page offering to "install" Google Drive onto your computer, you can close that out. You most likely won't need or want that, especially if you are working on a desktop machine that's always connected to the Internet.

Ready to upload your first Word Doc? Not so fast: it's probably a good idea to set up some basic folders first. Click the red "New" button in the upper left:

Go ahead and create a few folders, so you can start off being organized… or just jump right in like I did, and organize later.

Ready to upload your first Word Doc? Ok, click the red "New" button again, and then click "File Upload."

If you adjusted your Upload Settings (see the top of this post), your Word Doc will be uploaded, and converted to an editable Google Doc format on-the-fly. Double-click on the Doc to edit it, share it, publish it, etc. Welcome to a higher level of functionality in your document workflow!

Importing Grades Into Moodle

Here is the basic process of importing grades from Google Sheets into a Moodle course shell.  Similar processes can be used if MS-Excel is the spreadsheet of choice.  Obtain the CSV file from MS-Excel by performing a “Save as” and selecting “CSV (MS-DOS) (*.csv) in the “Save as type:” drop-down.

The best way to import a spreadsheet of your students' grades into Moodle is to first download your Moodle gradebook as an Excel spreadsheet. This will give you something to build on in Excel that will map back to the Moodle gradebook.

Begin with your Moodle course enrolled with students and Moodle assignments in place.

1. In your Moodle course Administration block, click on the Grades icon.  From the Grades screen, click on the Export tab.  Next, select the “Excel spreadsheet” link below Export.  
   
2. In the Options box, select the “Include feedback in export” if you want the spreadsheet to include columns for grade comments.  Typically, one will want all assignments to be exported, so ensure that all items in the “Grade items to be included” box has those items you want.
   
   
   
   At the bottom of the page, click the “Submit” button.
   
3. On the next screen, select the “Download” button to download the MS-Excel spreadsheet to your computer.
   

You now have a spreadsheet that is nicely matched to your Moodle gradebook.  This will make importing your grades much easier and save time by having Moodle create a template, pre-populated with your assignments and students.

Moodle will allow two types of files to be imported into the gradebook: 1) CSV which is the default, and 2) XML.  This procedure only deals with importing CSV files.

1. As a logged in editor of a Google Sheets grade sheet, click on File → Download as → Comma-separated values.  The file will download to your internet browser default location (often the “Downloads” folder).
   
   
2. As a logged in editing instructor in Moodle, navigate to your course that is awaiting grades.  In the Administration block, click on the Grades icon.  From the Grades screen, click on the Import tab.
   
3. Upload the saved CSV file into the dash-lined rectangle area either by dragging and dropping the file from the computer file manager, or by browsing for the file by clicking on the “Choose a file...” button.  Wait until the green status bar disappears and only the full file name is shown (see image below).  Click on the “Upload grades” button to proceed.
   
   
   
4. This next screen is a preview of the CSV file and allows one to correctly map the columns in the CSV to the Moodle gradebook.  Verify that the preview looks correct.
   
5. LBCC students login to Moodle using their LBCC provided student eMail address.  This is Moodle’s “Username”.  In the “Identify user by” box, ensure that the data is as follows:
   Map from → “LBCC Email Address”
   Map to → “Username”
   
6. In the “Grade item mappings” box, select which assignments you wish to upload.  The column to the left, and in bold text represents the grade column header found in the CSV file.  Match bold text header to the drop-down list of gradebook column headers found in the Moodle gradebook.  NOTE:  Depending on how the spreadsheet was created, these headers may not match as they do in the above image.  Be extremely careful that these columns match, or you may end up with grades imported into the wrong column.  
   
7. When all grade item mappings have been selected, click the “Upload grades” button located at the bottom of the page.  Grades can be ignored if desired; not all items must be mapped.
   
8. If there was a problem with the mappings, an error will usually occur right away and provide a small error message that you must troubleshoot.  If the process is taking some time, that usually means that the grades will import successfully.  Be patient and wait for the “Grades imported successfully” message to appear.

Online Form -> Fillable PDF -> Online Form

Let your imagination run wild with this:

Fillable PDF Form Creator from JotForm Form Builder on Vimeo.

How To Force a Copy of a Google Doc

You probably know you can share a Google Doc with varying levels of privilege. The default setting is “Can Edit,” but there are two other settings, as well:

Those are great, but what if you need to share a Doc (or Sheet, or Slide) in a way that will let the other person(s) view only, but also optionally make a copy for themselves? You can tell them to click File > Make a Copy…

… but you know someone will eventually not understand that, and have issues with that step.

What if there was a way to force them to copy the Doc before they could even see it… maybe with a special link that will take them to a page that looks something like this:

Funny thing is, this little trick so so easy, you will wish you had thought of it first. All you need to do is:

1. Share the Doc (via the button, in any context: editing, commenting, or just viewing) with the person on the other end, and then copy the link in your browser address bar.

2. Look for the word “edit” at the end of the URL:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11V9qEndTXVmnVEvtZMRk0cQefcdF5TxwqFQSvVlIcjE/edit

3. Replace it with “copy,” and send that to them:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/11V9qEndTXVmnVEvtZMRk0cQefcdF5TxwqFQSvVlIcjE/copy

BOOM - it really is that easy!

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NOTE: Have you ever seen a long URL link the ones above in an email message, and it didn't work when you clicked on it? That's usually because part of the URL was wrapped down to the line below it, breaking the valid link. A great way to avoid that is to shorten the URL via a tool like bitly.com.

16 Signs of a Learning Culture

Read this interesting blog post, and then consider this:

How would you describe the learning culture here at LBCC? And by "learning culture," we are talking about not just our students, but also college employees. And by "college employees," we are talking about all college employees, because we are all contributors in the business… no, the MISSION of facilitating other people's learning so they have more abundant lives. What does it say to our students and our communities if community college employees are reluctant - even just passive about nurturing their own personal learning, growth, and development?