11 Tips to Improve Your Moodle Course in 3 Minutes

1. Save Syllabus as PDF: Video (1:36)

Students and the Instructor don’t have to download it every time they click on the syllabus.
Students can’t make changes to the syllabus.
Can save PDF and Word in Moodle to have both. Make PDF main file.
Just save your Word syllabus as a PDF in Word and drag to “Drop files to attach, or browse” in Moodle

Move syllabus under “Syllabus” section in the course.
Move other activities under “Activities”
Move resources like videos or links under “Resources.”
After importing, move imported resources from the bottom of the section.
The organization will make your course easier for students (and you) to navigate.
To move an item, click the arrow pointing right located underneath the item in Moodle. Then click on the appropriate “Move Here” link.
You can move more than one item by click additional arrows rather than “Move Here.”
You can click on a week on the left to move an item to somewhere on that week’s page.

Renaming activities to meaningful names or to the appropriate week helps students navigate through your course and reduces confusion.
Helps you auto-link which will be covered in another topic.
To rename, click the “Edit Section” or Pencil icon underneath the object you want to rename.
Add context to make the assignment obvious.

Use auto-linking to link activities and resources within the description.
Auto-linking works anywhere in your Moodle course.
For example, you could have a “Cengage MindTap” tool in “Start Here.” To use autolinking, type the exact word “Cengage MindTap” elsewhere in your course. Moodle will create an automatic text link to the tool.
Make sure your autolink is spelled exactly the same as your named tool. It must also include the same spaces and punctuation, although the case of the characters does not matter.
Use it in Announcements, it works there too.

We added placeholder/boilerplate text throughout the hybrid template. Please delete it to replace with your directions or leave it blank. Check your whole course.

You can add an image you have the rights to or find on free sites like unsplash.com or pixabay.com.
Edit the page element where you want to add the picture by clicking “Edit Section” or the pencil icon.
Place your cursor approximately where you want the image. You can float the text around it.
Click the image icon. On the next screen, click “Browse repositories”.
Choose the “Upload a file” tab on the left.
Select “Choose File” and find the image you want. Add it by clicking “Upload this File”.
On the next screen adjust size (300-500 width is usually good), alt text (required if there is information in the graphic such as a chart or table), and the Alignment drop-down.

If your course does not have a seated master, then it rolled without a cover image.
You can click the “Add cover image” or “Change cover image” buttons at the top right of the screen to change the cover image.
Select the image you want to use from your computer.
An image width of 1200 and a height of 200-300 work the best but Moodle will crop any image.
Because the sizing of the image is dynamic, you cannot exactly place how your picture will display.
Abstract images work the best. It’s difficult to line up text in the image.

Click on an Assignment, Quiz, Discussion, and add description. You can include directions for students such as number of pages, citation expectations, assignment prompts, due dates, etc.
You can also click the check box below description and display the description in the “week” in Moodle. This way, students don’t even need to open the assignment to see the instructions.
Go to the grade section of settings to change the grade to the correct point value. The default is 100 points.

To help students view their grades in order, arrange the gradebook in chronological order.
It can help you when completing grading, too.
It will not work with categories.
Use the gear menu and select “Gradebook setup” from the “Course Administration” drop down or click on “Course Dashboard” then “Gradebook” then the “Setup” tab.
To move an item, click the up/down arrow ( ) next to the item you want to move. Then click in any of the dotted line boxes before or after other items.

The Collaborate tool is located in every week. All of the Collaborate tools point to the same Collaborate lobby for your course. We recommend making Collaborate sessions for your course needs.
You can create as many sessions as you wish and you don’t have to use the end date.
For more information on using Collaborate, refer to the videos on the Collaborate Guides Page