Peer Assessment using a Moodle forum

“Peer Assessment” – buzz phrase in education – is an activity to which Moodle lends itself beautifully. I have used the Moodle workshop module in the past for peer assessment (see here) It can be set up in many different ways and at levels from basic to advanced. However, its complexity dissuades some from trying it. The “new, improved” Workshop for Moodle 2 which can be tested here is much more user-friendly and I await its arrival eagerly.

In the meantime, and if you only want a quick, very simple peer assessment task, it is possible to tweak a Moodle forum to do the job. The screencast shows one way to do this.

Here are instructions how to set up your forum to achieve this.
The key to making a forum a place for students to peer assess is to enable ratings and then give them the permission to rate each others’ submissions. (What they submit might be text or an attachment such as an image, slideshow, movie/sound file)

1. In the settings for your forum, in “grade”, choose how you want the ratings to work. I chose “average”. All students must grade(rate) each others’ submissions and then each classmate will have an average mark.
2. I kept to the numbers scale for simplicity but you can use customised scales if you wish
3. In course admin>assign roles, click on the “override permissions” tab. (If you are a teacher and you don’t see this tab then ask your Moodle admin to give you the rights to “override permissions”)
4. Click on “student” and scroll down to the forum section
5. To allow them to rate/grade each others’ submissions click the “allow ” button for “rate posts”
6. If you don’t want them to be able to see who has given which grade to whom , then click the “prevent” buttons for “view any rating” and “view rating”.

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Moodle nanogong assignment type

Moodle has a new basic assignment type, thanks to Dan Poltawski of LUNS and CLEO land here in the NW of England. Similar to the “upload a single file” type where students can browse and send you their work for marking , the nanogong assignment presents them with a little sound recorder into which they can record themselves , play back to check and then send to you. Nanogong’s been around and popular for a while but now it’s in an easy-to-operate assignment . Below is a simple screencast showing how to install (if you have admin rights) and how to use it with your students. It has been a big hit for us in Modern languages because it’s an excellent way of setting speaking homeworks – but it has advantages also for those students who might find writing/typing difficult and who would  be happy to speak their responses instead of worry about spelling. They can have a choice now – speak or type!

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Moodle Helen from Moodle HQ

Although Moodle HQ  is physically based in Perth Western Australia, it has remote  outposts thousands of miles away in the Northern Hemisphere and last week I was privileged to  meet Helen Foster Moodle Community Manager and co-author of Using Moodle  2nd Ed who’s based in Bonheiden, Belgium. We spent a lovely few hours together over dinner and a view of the runway of Brussels airport, talking about everything from the ins and outs of moodle.org and moodle.com to the linguistic nuances of Flemish v Dutch v German ( once a linguist, always a linguist!). I look forward to meeting Helen again if I can somehow get back onto mainland Europe – especially as one of her revelations was how lovely German (and ex-Midland) Moodler Stephan Rinke is!

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Control who sees a block on your Moodle front page

.....or “How to let teachers see a block but not students” – a request often asked over on the forums at moodle.orgIf you have Moodle 1.9 you can control whether guests (non-logged in users) can see blocks or not. It is also possible, with some role and permisson editing, to allow a certain group of people access to a block while preventing others. The video below shows how to do it – but if, like me, you can’t get youtube in your area – there are instructions beneath the video!

 

  1. Make your block!
  2. With the editing turned on, click on the “assign roles” icon and then click on “override permissions” You need to click guest and change the button to prevent (viewblock) When you have saved the changes, non-logged in users will not be able to see this block
  3. If you only want your teachers (or a certain group of users to see it) you need first to create a new role. (Just because your teachers are teachers in the Real World, Moodle won’t recognise them as such on your front page and so you need to specify who precisely is allowed to view this block.)
  4. In site admistration>users>permissions>define roles, go to the bottom of the screen and click “add a new role”
  5. Make a new , plain, basic role – call it what you like – teacher block viewer, for example.
  6. Save this role and then go back to your front page block and click the “assign roles” icon again
  7. You need to define who can view this block by assigning them the role of “teacher block viewer” in this block
  8. Click the blue words for your role (teacher block viewer) and select from the box on the right the people you want to allow to see the block. Move them with the arrow to the box on the left.
  9. Click the override permissions tab (as you did for the student) For the teacher block viewer, press the allow button and for the authenticated user press the prevent button.
  10. Some people have their default front page role as student – if this is you, then in override permissions, click prevent for the student role.
  11. Try it out!


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Hide resources from one class and show to another with Moodle groupings

I’ve noticed a trend, as the new term approaches in many Moodle-using countries, that questions are asked on the Moodle.org forums regarding installation, enrolment of students and the best way to “share” courses between several teachers with different classes without everyone getting in each others’ way. This latter query has appeared several  times in the last couple of weeks. Personally I don’t have a problem with everyone seeing everyone else’s activities. (The students will never see their classmates’ work anyway, and if teachers can view what their colleagues are doing, surely that’s a Good Thing in terms of collaboration and self-evaluation?) But there have been various workarounds suggested, from each teacher and class having their own Moodle course to  the setting up of  metcourses.  However, in Moodle 1.9 onwards, there is another way: Groupings. Groupings act a bit like the Harry Potter Invisibility Cloak and give you the power to make certain tasks invisible from some classes (groups) but available to others, all within a single Moodle course. So  if you don’t want Mr Jones’ class to see what Mrs Smith’s class is doing - or if you want your set 4 not to have access to your set 1 work -and you are absolutely sure that’s a good idea - then this video shows you how:

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Help! I lost my edit icon and the label's broken my Moodle

I don’t know why, because I am not a coder, but sometimes you innocently put things into labels and the Moodle Gremlin takes advantage and steals your editing icons. It might be some code, some javascript, a swf file -whatever it is, it causes panic , all the more so if it happens on your Front Page and the whole world could see you broke your Moodle. I know - I speak from bitter experience… There are some step by step instructions in the Moodle docs but here is a screencast that hopefully will demonstrate how to get back editing rights and defeat the Gremlin. (And thanks to Dan Poltawski for helping me sabotage my front page!)

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How to use the Activity Locking Course format

(download)

I already posted a video showing how to install this really useful course format by Chardelle Busch - a pre-cursor to the much anticipated "Conditional Activities" in Moodle2.0 Below is a screencast just of how to set up some activities with requirements attached to them, if it might be helpful.
 
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Activity Locking course format for Moodle 1.9

Here is a quick rough and ready screencast showing how to install and use this very handy course format

 
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Moodle 1.9 Multimedia: a new book from Packt

During the long months last year that I spent writing my book Moodle for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds, I was comforted by the thought that another Moodle colleague João Pedro Soares Fernandes was also toiling away on his publication - which I am glad to see has just now come out.  It’s a great read -in fact, I spent all today reading it (instead of marking) and have learned a lot.  There is a sample chapter you can download here.  It has to be said though, that Moodle 1.9 Multimedia is about 75% Multimedia and 25%  Moodle , but that is exactly how it should be: this book is aimed at those who already know the basics of uploading resources and creating activities in Moodle  and who are now looking for more exciting ways to enhance their students’ learning. While Moodle can do a lot of wonderful things - don’t I know it - sometimes it is useful to look outside of its Walled Garden to the Wider Web and gather in the Best of the Rest. This is what João’s book does: it covers, thoroughly, practically and in an easy-to-grasp manner a wide variety of  image, sound and video applications that can be embedded in Moodle or work alongside Moodle to the benefit of teacher and student. The full details are here but I particularly enjoyed the chapters on pictures (using GIMP) sound (with VLC and Audacity) and video (including instructions for Movie Maker and Photostory) Wherever possible he refers the reader to  free or  Open Source software and includes a huge range of “fun” Web 2.0 apps, many of which I know and love (Voki/Voicethread/Jing/Everything Google) and some new to me in the sphere of mind-mapping/ floor planning…oh and many more.. There are sections on assessment  with HotPotatoes and J-Clic and videoconferencing with Google Chat and DimDim. Most useful of all I felt  though, is the chapter dealing with Copyright, an extremely important issue in these times when we could (in theory) get any image, sound or movie we want off the internet without a second thought. João reminds us what we should and should not do in this respect. In conclusion: an enjoyable read! This book does not replace a Beginners’ Moodle manual such as Moodle For Teaching 7-14 Year Olds,  or Ian Wild’s Moodle Course Conversion but is complementary, offering additional functionality with more engaging features for those teachers who are ready to raise their Moodling up to the  next inspiring level -and take their students with them!

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Mary Cooch on Why you should write for Packt.

Everyone thinks they have a “book inside them”, and what was so good about working for Packt was that they encouraged me, not just to write “my “ book, but to develop  and fine-tune it to make it readable and marketable in a way I would never have thought of myself. So not only did Packt bring out the book inside me;  they actually helped me  write a better version. I was, therefore, more than happy to talk about the process of writing for Packt in a recent interview for them which you can read here: Mary Cooch interview with Packt

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About

I am the author of Moodle 1.9 for Teaching 7-14 Year Olds published by Pactkpublishing. I am a teacher (MFL and geography) and VLE trainer specialising in Moodle, and I work at Our Lady's Catholic High School Preston http://www.olchs.lancs.sch.uk. My main Moodle blog is here http://www.moodleblog.org