Supplemental

• Are you looking for turnkey Moodle course components? This resource-based course is designed and deployed with you in mind: the Instructor teaching in Moodle.

• When you click the link to the course, you will be asked for a password: alacarte.

• You will be enrolled in the "Faculty Observer/Importer" role, which allows you to import any or all of the contents of this course into your own teaching course (see the "À La Carte process" in Step #4). 

• Explore the various ready-to-use resources and activities, and make a note of any (or all) of those you can use in your own teaching course(s).

• Feel free to post comments or suggestions in the "Comments" block on the right side.

• Your enrollment will expire after 90 days of inactivity.

A typical scenario: You want and/or need to create a new course, or recreate one that was shared with you by another instructor, but rather than patching it with band-aids, it would make more sense to just start from scratch. Don't  fret - if you have your learning content collected somewhere, along with some ideas for discussion activities, assessments (maybe even some quiz questions), etc., that means you are already halfway there! We on the Moodle team have a lot of experience in this area, and we are happy to consult with you in any/all of these aspects of Moodle course design:

• aligning your graded activities with your syllabus

• creating a framework of weekly resources and activities that can be easily duplicated from week-to-week (or topic-by-topic), so that your course has a consistent and predictable flow for you and your students throughout the term.

• configure the settings of all of the resources and activities in your course so they behave the way you want and need them to

• configure "if this, then" functionality: a given resource or activity can only be seen and acted upon by a student if they have previously seen and/or acted upon another resource or activity

• schedule the availability of individual resources and activities, and even entire sections containing multiple resources and/or activities for specific dates/times in the future

• implement outcomes tracking, to result in an end-of-term report showing which students achieved outcome completion

• unconventional, innovative, out-of-the-box features and functions that you might not think are possible. Share your ideas with us!

A typical scenario: an experienced Moodle instructor offers, or agrees to let another instructor who is new to Moodle (often a new hire) copy content from their course into the new instructor's course. In our experience and observation, the new instructor thinks that most or all of their course development work will be done through this process, but it is almost always a double-edged sword. We have never seen a scenario where two instructors share the same exact teaching preferences, but luckily, there are as many ways to develop and deliver education via Moodle as there are people developing and delivering education via Moodle! We on the LBCC Moodle Team have helped hundreds of instructors through this process, and we are happy to do the same for you! For more info, refer to our help guide.

Step #1: Make sure you have an LBCC Moodle account. Your Moodle account will typically be created during the midnight Banner-Moodle sync after you have been hired by the college. Your access to Moodle is via the Single Sign-On dashboard. Look for the orange "M" Moodle logo, and if you don't see it, consult with your departmental administrative assistant. When you reach your Moodle dashboard, look to see whether your course(s) is present. If not, that may mean no student registrations have been processed yet. In that scenario, we can create a development course shell for you to get started on.

Step #2: Secure permission from the experienced instructor. This is best done by copying them on a simple email message to lms-admins-lb@linnbenton.edu, asking for their authorization for us to enroll you in their course shell in a special role that will enable you to import all or part of their Moodle course into your own. Be sure to ask them to reply with the URL to their course, and include yours, as well. When all of the planets align, we will reply with instructions for the course import process. Want to see how easy that is? Before you run the import process, though, we recommend making an appointment with one of us to help you understand how the other instructor's course is structured, along with the experience you and your students will likely have if you use that content as-is. We may actually help you determine that it would be a better idea to build your course from scratch (see "Creating a Moodle Course from Scratch with Your Own Content" above), after all. Don't panic! We have some nifty processes in place to help you quickly create a Moodle course that will perform efficiently and consistently for you and your students from week to week, all throughout the term.

Step #3: If you determine your best course of action is a full or partial import from the other instructor's course, go for it! Your next task will be to personalize the copied content in your course to suit your needs (hint: turn editing on). Beyond the obvious changes to the instructor name, contact info, etc. wherever they may appear, you will want to explore and adjust the settings for each resource and activity. You can do some of that in bulk. Feeling overwhelmed at the options on top of options on the settings page for a resource or activity? Contact us at lms-admins-lb@linnbenton.edu.

Step #4: By now, you may be wondering how to "set up the gradebook" in your Moodle course. Depending on how the source course instructor configured their gradebook, you may or may not want to have yours function similarly. This is one of those scenarios where it will benefit you to consult with one of us, so we can help you get the functionality you want and need. The bottom line is to make sure your Moodle course gradebook aligns with what you have indicated in your syllabus. Be sure to do this as early as possible (ideally before you start grading students' work), so make an appointment with us NOW. We have a lot of experience in this aspect of Moodle course design, so make good use of it!

Note on Student Enrollments: If you are teaching a credit course, your students will be automatically enrolled in the "student" role in your Moodle course during the next Banner-Moodle sync (syncs happen at midnight, 0600, 1200, and 1800 every day). If a student contacts you to say they can't log in to Moodle, that likely means they have not registered for a credit course at all (and that is what triggers a student's Moodle account creation). It's not your job to troubleshoot that, though. Instead, refer the student to the Student Help Desk, as they are equipped to support students with all Moodle issues. On that note, it would be a good idea to include that info in your syllabus, as well as in a URL resource in your Moodle course.