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Frequently Asked Questions by Instructors

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General
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  • I can no longer access my courses of the last academic year. What happened to them?

    Your courses of the last academic year are archived. We will retain these archives until the end of the current academic year (August 31st). If you would like a copy of your courses prior to their deletion at the end of August, please let us know which courses you need by providing the following information:

    • course code
    • course title
    • section

    We offer duplication services for $1.00 per CD and $2.00 per DVD.

  • How do I get a copy of my Moodle courses prior to the last academic year?

    We do not provide continuous access to previous years' course materials as our academic course servers are recycled. If you let us know the courses you would like to be backed up, we will do our best to locate them for you. Please note that the time required to retrieve and back up these courses will take longer than our normal processing time. There is no promise we can locate these courses. We will let you know if we are able to find the course(s) or if we have any questions to aide our search.

  • I do not teach the same courses every year. Will they still be available when I teach them again?

    We do not provide continuous access to previous years' course materials as our academic course servers are recycled. There is no promise we can locate courses that are older than one year when we create new courses. Therefore, it is best that you request a backup of your course(s) for safe keeping purposes.

Getting Started
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  • How do I access my Moodle course?

    1. Navigate to http://moodle.yorku.ca.
    2. In the left hand column, click on link for the academic year in which your course is offered .
    3. Log in with your Passport York account.

    Once you are logged in to Moodle, your course(s) will appear in the My Courses listing. If you or your students have problems with Passport York accounts, please contact UIT Client Services at 416.736.2100 x55800 or email helpdesk@yorku.ca.

Course Design
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  • How do I create groups?

    To create a group:

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. Under the 'Administration' block, click on 'Groups'.
    3. Click the 'Create group' button.
    4. Enter the group name and a brief description .
    5. Click on 'Save changes' button.

    To add students to the group:

    1. Click on the name of the group under the 'Groups' column.
    2. Click 'Add/remove users'.
    3. Select the participants ('Potential members').
    4. Click the 'Add' button to assign the participants to the specific group.
    5. Click the 'Back to groups' button to repeat the steps above.
  • How do I increase the number of topics / weeks in my course?

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. On the left, click on 'Settings' under the 'Administration' block.
    3. Within the 'General' section click on the 'Number of weeks/topics' drop-down menu.
    4. Click on the number of weeks/topics you would prefer in your course.
    5. Scroll down and click the 'Save changes' button.
  • How do I change the theme/skin of my Moodle course?

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. On the left, click on 'Settings' under the 'Administration' block.
    3. Within the 'General' section click the 'forced theme' drop-down menu.
    4. Click on a preferred theme.
    5. Scroll down and click the 'Save changes' button.

Course Management

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  • How do I make my Moodle course available to the students?

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. On the left, click on 'Settings' under the 'Administration' block.
    3. Scroll down to the 'Availability' section.
    4. Select 'This course is available to students' from the drop-down menu.

    Note: Please ensure that within the 'Enrollments' section, course availability is set to 'No'.  This ensures only registered students can access the course.

  • How do I add another instructor or TA to the course?

    If your colleagues have never used Moodle in the 2010/11 academic year, please inform them to log in to Moodle@York first, so that you can assign them to your course(s).

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. On the left, click on 'Assign Roles' under the 'Administration' block.
    3. Click on 'Teacher' to allow your colleague(s) to add course materials and grade submitted work.
    4. Click on 'Non-editing Teacher' to allow your colleague(s) to view course materials and grade submitted work.
    5. In the 'Search' field, enter an email address, last name, or first name of your colleague(s).
    6. Click the 'Add' button.

    You can also watch the short screencast that walks you through the process.

  • How do I see students in my course?

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. Click on the 'Blocks' drop-down menu (located at the lower right of your screen).
    3. Select People.
    4. Click on the 'Participants' link.

Adding Content
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  • How do I add course materials?

    You can add any type of files to your Moodle course (such as Word, Powerpoint, PDF, audio, video, or images).

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. Click on 'Turn Editing On' (located at the upper right corner).
    3. Click on the 'Add a resource' drop-down menu and select 'Link to a file or web site'.
    4. Enter a title/label for the 'Name' field.
    5. Enter a brief description of the content for the 'Summary' field.
    6. Click on 'Choose or upload a file'.
    7. Click on 'Upload a file' in the new screen, then on 'Browse….' (PC) or 'Upload a file' (Mac).
    8. Locate the file you want to upload on your computer, select it, and click 'Open' (PC) or 'Choose' (Mac).
    9. The file location and name will appear in the box. Click 'Upload' (PC) or 'Upload this file' (Mac).
    10. Your file will be added to a list of files you have uploaded for the course. Select it by clicking on 'Choose' so that your file can be accessed. The window will close and return you to the previous screen.
    11. Click the 'Save and return to course' button.

Communication
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  • How do I add a discussion / forum to my course?

    1. Log in to Moodle@York, and click on the required course title that appears.
    2. Click on ‘Turn Editing On' (located at the upper right corner).
    3. Click on the 'Add an activity' drop-down menu and select ‘Forum’.
    4. Enter Forum name.
    5. For Forum type, choose 'Standard forum'. (Click on the question to see the difference between forum types.)
    6. Forced everyone to be subscribed: select 'Yes'. Students will receive an email for each posting. It is ideal for critical information.
    7. Click on 'Save and return to the course' button.

Chat

  • What is the difference between a Moodle Forum and a Moodle Chat room?

    Moodle Chat room allows participants, who are online at the same time, to enter a chat room and converse in real time. A Moodle forum is available for participants to discuss without having to be logged in at the same time. Messages are posted to a discussion forum that other participants can review and reply to at any time.

  • Does Moodle Chat allow two way vocal chat or is the chat only via text?

    Moodle chat is only text based and does not support audio chat, there do not appear to be any plans to include it in the near future. There are other available tools that can be used for voice chat e.g Skype (free) or Adobe Connect (available to York University Faculty and Staff). We are currently looking into an integration between Adobe Connect and Moodle that will allow instructors to create an Adobe Connect meeting room directly from within their Moodle course. In an Adobe Connect meeting the meeting host can give participants the option to share their voice (providing they have a working microphone). For more information about setting up an Adobe Connect account please contact lts@yorku.ca

  • Can we have a Moodle chat with students who are not registered in a course? (e.g have an information session on a particular topic)

    For academic courses, a student must be officially registered in the course in order to access the Moodle course and therefore the chat. You could use a tool such as Adobe Connect (available to York University Faculty and Staff) as a space to have a text based chat, since you would only need to provide users with a web address to access and participate in the meeting. For more information about setting up an Adobe Connect account please contact lts@yorku.ca.

  • Is it possible to have students review a current session when they join the chat room later than the start time?

    When participants enter the chat room, they do not see any chat that has occurred prior to them entering. You could provide short summaries for latecomers or make sure that the sessions are saved and made available for students to review the missed dialogue at a later date.

  • Is there any restriction to how many chat sessions you can have and how long they are saved for?

    Within Moodle you can set up as many chat sessions as you like, and set up the chat so that past sessions are never deleted. However, you must take into consideration that saving all sessions will increase the size of your course which may cause problems at the end of the academic year when your course needs to be backed up. Another important thing to remember is that the sessions will only be available to you for as long as your course is not archived. You may therefore want to think about the added value of saving sessions for an extended period of time.

  • Is there a limit to the number of students who can enter a chat room?

    Technically no, however if you are creating chats that you will be moderating you will need to identify a number of users that you feel you can comfortably manage.

  • How can I format my text using HTML commands?

    The table below shows some of the HTML commands you might find useful for formatting your text in a chat room.

    Format Type this in the chat box How it is shown in the chat room
    Bold <b>This is bold text</b> This is bold text
    Italic <i>This is italic text</i> This is italic text
    Colour <font color="red">This text is red</font> This text is red
    Insert a web link www.yorku.ca www.yorku.ca
    Insert an image (that resides online) <img src="http://www.yorku.ca/web/css/yorklogo.gif">
  • When students are in a chat room together without the instructor is their conversation private?

    The instructor will always have access to view the past sessions of any chat even if they have not been present in the session. The sessions will be available for as long as the Instructor has selected to save them.

Assessment
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Evaluation
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Related Info

You can find detailed instructions of most of the frequently asked questions on the resources for instructors page.