Be aware that all students are automatically subscribed to the announcements (formerly news forum) in your course, so it is an easy way to communicate with your whole class. Students will receive announcements posts as an email, and will also be able to view them within Moodle. Students are unable to post or reply to announcements posts. If you would like for them to be able to do so, create a separate Forum under Add an activity. With this knowledge in mind, do the following:
Click announcements on your course homepage.
Note that the forum activity enables asynchronous threaded discussion between students and faculty. In a forum, participants can post comments and share content (files, videos, links, etc). Forums can be graded using whole forum grading, making it easy to award points/credit for student participation. Before creating the forum, consider these online discussion strategies in our Tips for Teaching Online, and then do the following:
Note that with Quickmail you can send messages to one or many students. You should remember that students are unable to send messages through Quickmail. To send a message, do the following:
In the top right corner of your course, click turn editing on.
Under add a block (bottom left), select Quickmail.
Choose individuals or groups to receive your message.
Understand that Moodle Chat allows for text-based synchronous chats with others in the course. (Contrast this with Moodle Forums, which offer text-based asynchronous chats with others in the course.) Potential uses include hosting scheduled office hours or meeting real-time with your class when not everyone has broadband internet access to support video conferencing. To utilize this feature, do the following:
Note that you can have remote class discussion with web conferencing software. However, you should think very carefully about potential student equity issues (e.g. lack of access to connectivity or hardware) and the logistics of different time zones. When possible sessions should be recorded and made available. You can upload to Kaltura and add captions. After considering this, you can access the following resources:
Note that user pictures are periodically uploaded from Banner. If you have loaded a different picture into Moodle it won't be overwritten, but if you have deleted your picture from Moodle, your Banner ID picture will be re-uploaded in the next sync. After considering this, do the following:
In order to change your preferred name in Moodle, follow these instructions to change your preferred name in The Heart/Banner Self-Service. These changes will automatically update Moodle. Note there may be a slight delay, as Moodle only updates Banner information every few hours.
Log into Moodle then click your name in the top right of the screen.
Choose profile → edit profile (from the gear icon).
Click the edit button in the user details area.
Scroll down to the personal pronouns section of the edit profile page.
You may enter your pronouns in the box.
Click update profile to save your changes.
If you wish to change your personal pronouns in The Heart/Banner, click these instructions.
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