Fachhochschule Nordwestschweiz

Five things you probably didn’t know about Moodle Plugins.

The M in Moodle stands for Modular, and one of the great benefits of Moodle is that if its many standard features aren’t enough for you, you can search over a thousand additional plugins to find what you need – for free!

Quick overview on Quiz
Happily, the Plugins directory is very well organised so if, for example, you are a fan of the powerful Quiz module, it’s easy for you to sift through the different question types, formats, reports and more. Did you know, for example, that you can require students to agree to a plagiarism statement before they begin a quiz, in a similar way to assignments? You can do this with the “honesty check” quiz access rule plugin.

Extending the power of the teacher with Availability conditions
Recent improvements in availability conditions have encouraged developers to contribute in this area too. Perhaps you have a course accessed by users with different native languages and you want an easy way to restrict activities in each language. Did you know about the Restriction by language plugin which lets you do just that? Read more about availability condition plugins here.

Update your course format
Most Moodlers are happy with Moodle’s standard weekly or topics course format, but if your users are particularly keen on Facebook or Twitter and you think having a more social media-like course might motivate their learning, you can have just that with the Socialwall course format. Explore the many useful contributed course formats here.

Gamification for engaging courses
Along with the social side of learning, gamification of courses is very popular these days. Did you know you can add a Level Up! block, allowing students to gain experience points and level up in their courses? Check out other handy blocks here.

What else is on offer?
A ‘local plugin’ is one that doesn’t fit into a particular area such as quiz or block. Did you know there is a local Moodle welcome plugin which sends a welcome message to a new user and alerts the admin at the same time when a user creates an account? Being made to feel welcome when you first join a course is good for your motivation, and it’s yet another example of how Moodle plugins support successful learning.

This article is taken from Moodle. 23.06.2018

Moodle 3.5 has arrived, and we are currently testing it for compatibility with existing plugins.

An interesting feature that existed back in Moodle 3.1, but which seemed to mysteriously have disappeared was stealth topics. Moodle never admitted that this was a feature, in fact the developers considered it a bug and removed it from the application version 3.3 onward.

After considerable lobbying Moodle have agreed to reinstate this feature, but as an official feature this time. It is hoped that it will appear in one of the regular upgrades in 3.5 over the forthcoming weeks.

In the HT Moodle we have added two new formats which you may like to experiment with:

1. Grid format
2. Buttons format

Grid format allows you to create a course based on a series of tiles to form your menu, whereas Buttons format allows you to create a course based on buttons, numerical, alpha or roman numerals. You can also create subsections etc.

For further information please send an inquiry to Paul Raper who will be glad to explain these features in more detail.

As of May 25th 2018, the new GDPR law will come into force across the whole of the European Union.

Moodle has in its latest upgrade to 3.5 taken some measures to address these new regulations and it maybe worthwhile just taking a few moments to read through them so that you are clear about what they mean to yourself here at the FHNW.

I have made a link to the relevant Moodle page here.

Also, there is a link to an interesting guide on the subject here.

For anyone who is interested in learning how to make the most of Moodle, Moodle are running a MOOC called Learn Moodle starting on the 18th June 2018.

To register, login here: learn.moodle.net.

A new guide for students starting at the FHNW Hochschule für Technik has been developed.

The intention is for the guide to work together with the new e-learning portal and to give the students a “heads up” on what they can expect to find, and how to get started.

It has been produced in both German and English, the latter aimed mainly at overseas students visiting us here.

A link to the guides can be found here:

• Student e-learning guide German
• Student e-learning guide English

Moodle 3.5 is here and looks to include a whole range of new features.

If you would like to take a look, I can give you access to the Development version on Digitally Learning or you can access a test course via the LTI link in the HT active Moodle.

We want to give our students the best possible start when they come to the university, and this also includes introducing them to the e-learning tools available.

As with the lecturers, the range can seem fairly daunting, and so we have developed a three pronged approach to the task.

1. a simple flyer in German and English – a sort of quick start guide
2. the website which takes them from basic login tasks through to more sophisticated issues such as how to submit work for assessment
3. a Moodle course that asks them some fairly simple questions to see who has looked at the site and knows where to find things

Please also take the tour and give us feedback on your thoughts.

As yet, the site is not live to students, and the Moodle questions are still in development, but that means that if you have any ideas, they can still be integrated into the program.

The plan would be to go live for the start of semester in September.

I will keep you posted as the site and Moodle part develops.

You can go and look at it here

Sehr gerne möchte ich Sie auf die Veranstaltung Von Hochschule zu Hochschule. Plagiatsprävention stärken. Herausforderungen meistern am 18. April von 9.30 – 16.00 Uhr an der Pädagogischen Hochschule FHNW am Campus Brugg-Windisch hinweisen und einladen.

Setzen Sie an Ihrer Hochschule bereits eine Plagiatssoftware ein oder stehen Sie vielleicht vor der Entscheidung, ein entsprechendes Tool anzuschaffen? Was sind die rechtlichen Dimensionen die hierbei beachtet werden müssen? Welche Strategien versprechen bei der Implementation einen erfolgreichen und nachhaltigen Einsatz? Welche didaktischen Szenarien sind beim Einbezug von Studierenden denkbar? Wo sind möglicherweise die Grenzen einer Plagiatssoftware und was sagen die Prüfberichte eigentlich aus?

Diskutieren Sie die didaktischen Anforderungen und strategischen Überlegungen im Hochschulfeld. Lernen Sie Personen aus der nationalen und internationalen Hochschul-Community kennen und tauschen Sie sich untereinander über Ihre wertvollen Erfahrungen (Good Practice) aus.

In der Mittagspause wird ein Marktplatz stattfinden, an dem unter anderem die beiden Plagiatssoftware-Anbieter Turnitin und PlagScan vertreten sein werden.

Anmeldungen sind ab sofort per Mail an elearning.ph@fhnw.ch möglich.

Mehr Informationen findet Ihr unter http://www.digitallernen.ch/weiterbildung/e-labor/programm-e-labor-09032017/

Sehr gerne können Sie die Einladung an Interessierte Ihrer Hochschule weiterleiten.

Es würde mich sehr freuen, Sie am 18. April in Brugg-Windisch begrüssen zu dürfen.

Herzliche Grüsse

Oliver Lang

 

Moodle and H5P

As we all know Moodle is open source, and so for that matter is H5P. Further, there is a plugin for Moodle developed by the H5P developers which allows you to display content that you produce using H5P on your Moodle pages.

Whilst at this point in time the Main FHNW Moodle platform does not have this plugin installed, the HT Moodle platform does.

This means that you can login to the HT Moodle, setup any H5P content you like, and then share it on the FHNW Main Moodle using LTI – Learning Tool Interoperability.

News on some Turnitin developments.

There is now an additional feature that we have available to us through Turnitin, LTI Moodle integration.

LTI, or Learning Tool Interoperability, allows platforms to communicate with each other via single sign on. This means that if you now want students to submit work for checking via Turnitin straight from Moodle, you can easily do so. Learn more here.

Clearly the advantages of this are evident in that students can no longer complain that they are being asked to register with multiple sites.

Should anyone wish to know more about this process, they should contact me.

A New Service on the way from Turnitin

Authorship Investingation is a new service that is soon to be available through Turnitin.

Upto now it has only been possible to check whether a student has copied work from somewhere else, but Authorship Investigation should soon enable academic staff to check whether or not a student has contracted someone else to write their work.

An individuals writing style is unique, and so in brief the system compares the writing styles of the student with the writing style of the submitted work.  If one differs significantly from the other, then there is a good chance that the work has been “Contracted”.

To find out more, read here.