Teaching Technology Services/Aino Laineenoja & Aleksi Hassinen 31.3.2017

LUT Moodle –Student Guide 2017

Content

1. HOW TO START & FRONT PAGE ......................................................................................... 2

1.1. The toolbar of the web site ......................................................................................... 3

1.1.1. Navigating ............................................................................................................ 3

1.1.2. Personal information ........................................................................................... 4

1.1.3. Preferences .......................................................................................................... 5

1.2. Start page (Course overview) ...................................................................................... 6

2. COURSES ............................................................................................................................ 7

2.1. Activities on the course page ...................................................................................... 8

2.2. Participating in conversations ..................................................................................... 9

2.3. Assignment ................................................................................................................ 10

2.4. Taking a quiz .............................................................................................................. 13

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1. HOW TO START & FRONT PAGE

Welcome to LUT Moodle! Moodle is the platform that we use for online studying in

Lappeenranta University of Technology. You will find LUT Moodle in

http://moodle.lut.fi/?lang=en – the technical support can be reached via e-mail in

opetushelp@lut.fi.

The Login-button on the right upper corner will take you to the login page

http://moodle.lut.fi/login/index.php.

The source for the information in Moodle is Oodi. The students enroll in courses in WebOodi,

and they will automatically be directed in Moodle once the deadline for the registration has

closed.

There are multiple language versions available at LUT, but the default language is Finnish. You

may change the settings in the language bubble in the toolbar, own profile settings or the

course settings. Teachers may also set for their course an obligatory language that the

students are not able to change.

LUT students may

login here

People with manual accounts (such

as visitors) need to click other users

in order to login.

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1.1. The toolbar of the web site

Once you have successfully logged in, the toolbar of every page on the site

contains the following information:

In addition, LUT Moodle uses a breadcrumb trail which appears next to the Home button.

This makes it faster for you to navigate in Moodle. By clicking either LUT logo or Home, you

will always be directed in the start view.

Next let’s look more specifically at navigating and personal information. The most important

part of personal information is Preferences, which will be presented separately.

1.1.1. Navigating

In navigating, you will find the following parts:

Dashboard takes you to the start page

Site home shows the news of LUT Moodle.

In Site pages, you will find the calendar that shows the next course events.

My courses shows a list of all courses where you have enrolled in.

All courses takes you to view all the courses in LUT Moodle.

On the start page, the Navigation block contains also the path to site blogs,

badges and tags. This block will be presented later.

The start view

Navigate in Moodle

(eg. own courses and

calendar)

Help Language Search for

courses

Personal information:

profile, preferences,

grades & messages

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1.1.2. Personal information

Personal information includes the following titles:

Dashboard takes you to the start page

In Profile, you will see your own information regarding courses and

use, as well as all messages you have sent on the courses and

conversations you have started (under Miscellaneous). In Edit

profile the following view opens:

Grades (grades of those courses that use Moodle evaluation)

Messages (you can add contacts and send them messages)

Preferences (presented more specifically next)

Log out

Timezone should be server

(Finland) in order for you to see

for examples deadlines correctly.

You can add yourself a profile picture.

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1.1.3. Preferences

Preferences contains three headings: User account, Blogs and Badges.

Under User account, there are six titles:

- Edit profile: the student may edit own user settings (picture in 1.1.2)

- Preferred language

- Forum preferences: manage the descriptions of course forums. If you receive too

many messages from the forums, you can edit these settings (see also Messaging)

- Editor preferences: text editor (Default editor/Atto/TinyMCE/Plain text area)

- Security keys are safety measures regarding the RSS feed. Read more by clicking the

title.

- Messaging: you can define, which messages will reach you and how. If you get too

many e-mails, you can edit these settings.

Blogs contains three titles:

- Blog preferences: defines, how many blog posts are shown on one page in the

student’s view.

- External blogs automatically takes you to Register an external blog, where you will be

able to import an external blog to Moodle.

Badges

- Manage badges shows the badges you have earned

- Badge preferences defines the visibility of badges

- Backpack settings can connect Moodle badges with other external badges.

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1.2. Start page (Course overview)

The start page has two parts by default, and these parts can be modified by clicking

Customise this page. You can for example divide the page in three parts.

1. On the left side

Blocks that support studying (calendar, upcoming events and latest news).

Navigation: Includes a wider offering than the toolbar. Site pages contains Site blogs, which

presents blog posts of other people and a possibility to write your own post. The student may

decide, whether the post is visible to only him/herself, or the whole LUT Moodle community.

Tags shows the tags the course teachers have created. Sivuston uutiset (=Site news) shows the

news that have been published on the LUT Moodle front page. Courses has been presented

more specifically in the next chapter.

Private files: you can save final or unfinished versions of your files in Moodle to use them for

example in submissions.

2. In the middle

Customisable course overview: the ongoing courses, their tasks and deadlines. You can modify

the course overview by clicking Customise this page. You can define, how many courses appear

on the start page (the rest are hidden), and you can change their order by dragging them from

the four direction arrow.

1 2

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2. COURSES

In Course overview, you will see all courses that you have enrolled to. Also in

the Navigation block, you will find the listing by clicking My courses.

You can view other courses by clicking Courses. The view shows all course

categories, and you can search for a course by writing the course code or a

part of the course title in the search field. Some courses allow visitors to view

the course content, even though they have not registered to the course. This

kind of courses are marked by the following icon:

Moodle course pages are always similar by their structure, but they differ regarding the

content and activities based on the teacher’s choices. The course page contains Navigation

and Settings blocks on the left, the course page in the middle and course-specific blocks on

the right (these are additional parts that support the course).

The course page can be formatted by topics, where the course proceeds topic by topic or it

can be in weekly format, and it proceeds by every study week. The third option is to use

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onetopic format – multiple tabs in order to clarify the structure of the course. The courses

often contain an introduction. In addition, most of the courses have News in the first section

(the teacher may change its name). All messages sent in News are also sent in the student’s

e-mail. On the course page, these pieces of news are visible on the right side in Latest news.

On the right side, you will find the tools that support the course. Every teacher has chosen

the tools that best fit that specific course. Most common are calendar, which shows the

calendar marks and events of the course (these events are also shown on the start page of

Moodle), Latest news, Comments, Links to the course sections and Recent activity.

2.1. Activities on the course page

The teacher can add both resources and activities on the course page. The material is often

PDF, Word, Excel and Power Point –documents or internet links. The teacher can also

arrange the material in files.

Through the activities, the teacher enables for example conversations, different tasks,

submissions and exams. The purpose of an activity is two-way communication with the

student. Next, we present Forum, Assignment and Quiz, which are the most commonly used

activities.

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2.2. Participating in conversations

When the course page has a forum, click the icon and

participate in the terms of the teacher.

In Discussion subscription, you can choose, whether you want to receive a copy from the

messages on the forum, unless the teacher has made it obligatory. You can also add a file to

your forum post as an attachment and finally click Post to forum.

Forum can also be used for group conversations. The students are then divided in groups, and

the teacher has set the conversation visible only for the participants of that group. Forum can

also be used in submitting different assignments, but there is also a specific tool for this

purpose, which will be presented next.

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2.3. Assignment

The teacher creates an assignment in Moodle, when he/she needs the students to submit

personal or group works. There are multiple ways to submit in Moodle:

Online text or File submission – the teacher can choose one or both. The submission may

have a start date and a deadline. Submissions that are late can be denied.

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Online text is written straight in the text field. In File submission, the student drags the file

in the submission box or clicks the icon on the upper left corner and browses the file from

the computer. The file can also be renamed in Save as.

You may be able to return multiple files, if the teacher has allowed it. If you want to delete

the uploaded file or change the name – move the cursor on the file and open the editor by

clicking with the right button of the mouse.

If you have uploaded own files in Moodle (Navigation>Profile>Private files), you can select

also among them, by choosing Private files.

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When clicking the assignment, you will see the overview of your submission. The teacher

decides, whether the student needs to confirm the submission by pressing “Submit

assignment” – without this confirmation, the assignment will not go for evaluation. The

teacher may also decide to enable the editing of the assignment until the deadline, which

will show the submission to the teacher immediately when uploaded. This option will open

the following view:

The submission may also be a group submission, where only one member of the group

needs to submit the assignment, and it will be visible for all group members as well as the

teacher.

The submission can also be a Turnitin-task, where the student submits a text or an

attachment, which will be examined with an originality check. This provides the student

with an Originality report about the written text. There is a separate guide available for

Turnitin here.

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2.4. Taking a quiz

The teachers may use the Quiz –tool for making different quizzes, tasks and questionnaires.

First, open the quiz.

This quiz has a time limit of one hour. There might also be a time period and a deadline for

the exam, within which the exam must be taken (for example one week).

When you start your attempt, Moodle will confirm it, since there is a time limit:

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When you start the exam, the first question will appear. You will see the amount of

questions and the remaining time on the left side. This example quiz has one question on

each page, but there might be also more of them. Next to the question, you will see how

many points that question is worth.

When you have answered all questions, you will get a summary of your attempt.

You can check that all your answers are saved, and you can also return to the attempt in

order to edit the answers.

Once you are satisfied and want to submit your answers, click Submit all and finish.

Once more, Moodle confirms the submission:

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After the submission, you can look at your quiz. You can view the questions one page at a

time or all at once.

Moodle cannot check your essays automatically, the teacher will. If the quiz contains self-

correcting tasks such as multiple choices, you will be able to see how you performed, unless

the teacher has denied it.

One example is short answer which has multiple right answers, but the teacher has only

defined one of them here. If the teacher has enabled to show the right answers, they will be

visible here.

Once you have finished with your review, the summary of your previous attempts opens. If

the teacher allows it, you can re-attempt the quiz. The questions might be different at the

second time.