Moodle tips
Mainly for the participants in our online courses
Currently sorted By last update ascending Sort chronologically: By last update
Having trouble enrolling in a course? | |||
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If you receive enrollment instructions for a particular course, you'll need to follow the instructions carefully. Don't rush through this process. In particular, you have to locate the right course (and the right batch number, if relevant) and enter the enrollment key exactly as given in the instructions. It's a good idea to copy the key from the instructions and paste it in the box where you have to enter it. After entering the enrollment key, you can "unhide" it to see if it matches the key given to you. Make sure there are no extra spaces or other inessential characters. If you can't join your course AND you're absolutely sure that you have tried enrolling in the right course with the right enrollment key, you may email the course facilitator to seek help. Please mention in your email the full name of the course you tried to join and the enrollment key you used. Related: Enrollment deadline | |||
User profiles | |||
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You can see the profiles of your fellow course participants by clicking on their names in the forums, in the participants list, the online users block, etc. So write something about yourself in your profile so others can get to know you | |||
Email copies of forum posts | |||
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Posts made on forums within a course are sent as email copies to people who have subscribed to those forums. You may be subscribed by default to the forums in the courses you are participating in. If you don't wish to receive the email copies, you can unsubscribe from any or all the forums. Just click the "unsubscribe from this forum" or "unsubscribe from all forums" link in any email copy of a forum post. You can also visit the forum and click "unsubscribe from this forum" in the "forum administration" block on the left. If you unsubscribe from the forums, please make sure you visit your course regularly to check the forum posts, for there might be a lot of great discussions going on! If there is a "news forum" in your course, you might not be able to unsubscribe from this forum because important announcements are made here by the course facilitator. | |||
When you will see peer assessments | |||
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You will see the assessments you've got from your peers only after the assessment deadline. You will not be able to see them before the deadline even if the assessments have been done. Please be patient See phases of a peer assessment activity | |||
Open peer assessment activity | |||
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In an open peer assessment activity, the people getting assessments can see the names of their assessors. So when you do an assessment, you need to keep in mind that your name will be seen by the person receiving the assessment. Please do not let this affect your objective assessment of their work. Note: Peer assessors can always see the names of the people whose work they assess. Related: Single-blind peer assessment activity | |||
Single-blind peer assessment activity | |||
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In a single-blind peer assessment activity, the people getting assessments cannot
see the names of their assessors. Note: Peer assessors can always see the names of the people whose work they assess. Related: Open peer assessment activity | |||
What to do if you've not received any assessments | |||
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There's a small chance that none of the people who have been allocated your work completed the assessment. This is an unfortunate outcome (but hopefully rare). If you don't see a "grade for submission" when in fact you have submitted your work, we will award you credit for the activity as long as you have assessed the submissions allocated to you. We will be looking at the course logs to determine who has done what. So don't worry! | |||
What to do if you get disconnected while taking the pre/post quiz | |||
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You can make only one attempt on the pre assessment and post assessment quizzes. If you get disconnected while taking any of these quizzes and can't complete your attempt, please write to Ravi - rmurugesan@inasp.info - and mention the name of your online course / learning space and the name of the quiz. | |||
How pre/post assessment data helps us | |||
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Your score in the pre and post assessment quizzes will help
us learn what impact the workshop has had on your knowledge of the key
concepts. And you have something to gain as well: after you take the
post assessment quiz, you can see the answer key and thus validate your
knowledge of the key concepts. | |||
Being part of the AuthorAID community | |||
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There's more than one way to be part of the large AuthorAID community!
AuthorAID is run by INASP, an international development charity in the UK, and we work in the areas of research access, research production, research uptake, and so on, all with a focus on developing countries. If you're interested in INASP's work...
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How grades are calculated for a peer assessment activity | |||
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There are 2 grades for a peer assessment activity: grade for submission and grade for assessment. In many cases, a full score is awarded for both if you submit your work and assess at least one submission allocated to you. The grades don't matter in a peer assessment activity, unless stated otherwise. It is important to submit your work and assess all the submissions allocated to you. If you do this, your work in the activity will be considered complete. | |||
How to search forums | |||
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When you visit any forum, you'll see a "search forums" box at the top of the forum. Enter one or more keywords and do a search. Go through the results and click the "advanced search" link under the "search forums" box if you wish to refine your search. If your keywords don't show any results, you'll see a form to do an advanced search. In general, start with one or two simple keywords and then refine your search if you get too many results. | |||
Message on homepage about quizzes that are due | |||
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On your homepage on this site, you may see a message such as "you have quizzes that are due" if there are quizzes in the course you are taking. This message will appear if there's any quiz that has a deadline sometime before the end of the course. It could well be that the quiz is not yet available for you to attempt, but the message will still appear on your homepage. In this case you can ignore the message. Just focus on completing the lessons and activities for the current week or unit of the course you are taking. | |||
Deadline reminders in upcoming events or calendar block | |||
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If there's an upcoming events block or calendar block on your course homepage, you can see upcoming deadlines in this block. By default, deadlines occurring in the next 10 days are shown. When you complete an activity, the deadline message related to this activity may persist on the upcoming events or calendar block. It won't disappear until the deadline has passed. Please don't be concerned by this. To check whether you have completed an activity, go to the activity page to check if your work has been submitted or see whether a completion check mark has appeared against that activity. (For peer assessment activities, see this: Phases of a peer assessment activity) | |||
ALERT: Upcoming events block is not yet activated | |||
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After you complete the pre assessment quiz, the course material will become available to you and therefore the upcoming events block will be activated. If you haven't yet completed the pre assessment quiz, whatever message you see in the upcoming events block (eg, "no deadlines in the next 10 days") may not be correct. So please complete this quiz as soon as possible! | |||
Expiry of courses on INASP Moodle | |||
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Any course on INASP Moodle will remain open for at least one month after the end of the course. This is a "read only" period and you cannot participate in course activities. Facilitators or moderators will not be available to provide support, and discussion forums may be closed. However, in this one-month period, you will be able to access the course material and save what you'd like to, such as the course content, results of quizzes, and evaluations you may have received. Beyond one month after the course end date, the course may be deleted or reset and will not be available. If we plan to delete or reset a course, we will give advance notice of at least 2 weeks by making a post on the news forum of the course. If you remain subscribed to the news forum after the end of the course, you'll get a copy of this notification by email. Still, we recommend that you save the course material within one month of the course ending. | |||
Acknowledging AuthorAID courses in your publications | |||
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If you would like to give credit to an AuthorAID online course in any of your manuscripts (eg, in the "acknowledgements section"), we suggest this wording: "<your name> gained useful knowledge on research writing from an AuthorAID online course run by INASP". Please note the correct way to write AuthorAID with "AID" capitalised (it is not "AuthorAid"), and please make sure you mention INASP too because this is AuthorAID's parent organisation. Thank you | |||
How to bookmark a webpage | |||
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We recommend that you bookmark INASP Moodle or your active learning spaces on INASP Moodle. In most web browsers, you can quickly bookmark a webpage by pressing the Control and D keys together when you're on that webpage. When you do this, you'll see a small dialog box asking you to confirm. In the Google Chrome browser, bookmarks are normally added to the bookmarks bar by default, which is right under the address bar. So you can always see your bookmarked pages. In Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can make a webpage appear in the bookmarks bar. Just change the bookmark location after pressing Control and D. | |||
Managing forum subscriptions | |||
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If your course has discussion forums, you may be subscribed to them initially -- or you may not be. If you are subscribed to a forum, it means you'll receive an email with any new post made on that forum. This way, you can keep in touch with the forum discussions without actually logging into INASP Moodle. If you are not subscribed, you will not receive email copies of posts. But you're still part of the forum and you can engage in discussions. To check your subscription status for a forum, visit that forum and look at the "forum administration" menu (usually on the left hand side). If you see "subscribe to this forum", it means you are not currently subscribed. You can click this link to subscribe. If you see "unsubscribe from this forum", it means you are subscribed and you can click this link if you wish to not receive email copies of posts made on that particular forum. If a course has many forums, you'll need to subscribe to or unsubscribe from each forum individually. See also: Subscription to the news forum | |||