Category: Instructions

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Moodle trainings in spring 2020

Welcome to Moodle trainings and clinics!

In English:

More trainings and advanced courses are in Finnish, see here.

Enrollment and more information in SAP Suffeli Learning.

NB. If you wish to have training in English or in some other topic please contact moodle@helsinki.fi.

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You can now check code with a CodeRunner plug-in

A CodeRunner question type for checking code has been installed on Moodle. Thanks to the CodeRunner question type, you can create programming assignments associated with quiz activities to be automatically checked. CodeRunner supports the following programming languages: Python 2, Python 3, C, C++, Java, PHP, JavaScript (Node.js), Octave and MATLAB. CodeRunner is suited particularly to introductory courses in programming, when it is important for students to receive immediate feedback on their code and its style, depending on how exact the tests to be entered into the program are. The coding of one’s own testing method is also possible, but this is not recommended for beginners.

In basic use, students enter their own code or program into the answer box for the question, after which CodeRunner runs the test code on a virtual server and compares the outputs of the provided sample code and the student’s code. In the next phase, the use of certain functions can, for example, be restricted, or the student can be asked to write code with a certain number of lines. After creating your own question type, you can also, for example, compare text with the provided sample text, depending on how complex a question type you write.

A workshop related to CodeRunner will be organised early next year to explore question types in more detail. For further information and requests for workshop content, please send an email to moodle @ helsinki.fi.

Instructions for Teachers

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Moodle is updated to version 3.6 on June 26th, 2019

Moodle will be upgraded to version 3.6 on June 26th, 2019, from 8 AM to 5 PM. During this time, Moodle is closed and cannot be logged into. The update may not take the whole day, but the time is reserved as a precaution to prepare for potential update issues and fixes.

Improved Course overview function

This improvement has been waited for: the courses on the Course overview on the Dashboard can now be sorted, starred, and hidden. The view can be just a listing, a pictorial “card” format, or a listing with a course description. You can also add new blocks to your page: Recently accessed courses, Starred courses and Recently accessed items (activities and resources). By default, everyone will see their own Recently accessed courses block. The Timeline can now be found in its own block within the right column. Click the “Customise this page” button at the top right of the page to edit your Dashboard’s Course overview. You can add blocks from the “Add a block” button at the end of the left column.

Read more

New messaging interface

There are new options in the inbox message view: Starred, Group and Private. You can mark your contacts as starred, and their posts will appear on your list. New group communications allow group members to send messages to the entire group. This requires that the function is enabled in group settings. The teacher must also be a member of the group if she wants to send group messages.

For teachers

Easily find duplicated items

Duplicated resources are appended with ‘copy’ so you can easily distinguish between the original and copy.

Download the list of course participants

In the Participants page, you can download the list of course participants for example to Excel. The participant list has been changed so that the last name comes first.

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Group choice: students choose their own group

Starting from January 2019, University of Helsinki Moodle and MOOC feature a new activity called “Group choice”. The Group choice activity allows students to select their own group from the groups defined by the teacher. Groups can be assigned a maximum size and students can be allowed to join more than one group. Students may also be allowed to change the group later. There are many practical applications for the Group choice activity. Below you will find three cases that teachers have already used in their courses.

How to use Group choice

First set up groups for the course. You can then add a Group choice activity by clicking the “Add an activity or resource” button and selecting Group choice from the list.

See more detailed instructions

Case 1: Exercise groups

Group choice activity can be used to let the students enrol themselves into exercise groups.

These exercise groups can be used, for example, in a group discussion by defining Separate groups in discussion forum settings.

Case 2: Scope of course

A teacher can add multiple modules to the same course area and allow students to decide how many credits they want to complete.

The student must click on the selection for the group of his choice and save the selection. In this case, the teacher has defined the groups for the course for 3 credits and 5 credits.

According to students’ choices, the course activities can be hidden or displayed with the Restrict Access setting. In this case, the teacher has defined the activity to be shown only to the group that has selected 5 credits.

Case 3: Visibility of course sections

The third example is a course where the student can choose whether to see all the sections of the course at one time or at the pace defined by the teacher.

This allows you to use a restriction set in the Restrict access setting of the section, where you can set multiple conditions for visibility.

The method described above has been used in Learn Moodle Basics MOOC courses at https://learn.moodle.net/.

As you can see from the three cases, the possibilities of using groups will increase. Above all, Group choice activity saves teachers’ time because the students can enrol to the groups themselves. The Group choice is somewhat simpler to use than enrolment key for self-enrolment and a Group choice can be added to the course even after students have registered for the course.