Getting Started - enable teacher presence online

Moodle tools that enable teacher presence online

To encourage students to participate in your Moodle course, it is necessary to be active in the course on a regular basis. Students' use of social media leads them to expect a social experience in all their online activities—if it is absent they will quickly disengage.

Moodle has many tools to help you promote participation by maintaining a highly visible presence in your course. Click the following link for a more comprehensive list of Moodle communication tools.

Tool	Description	Purpose	Examples
News Forum/Announcement	Announcements allow teaching staff to make posts that all course participants are subscribed to, meaning that everyone receives email notification when an announcement is posted. A News Forum is automatically added to every Moodle course on creation.	General information: course updates, reminders, encouragement etc. Note: The Announcement Tool is called News Forum in Moodle. It is recommended that you rename it before the start of semester.	Welcome to … No tutorial this week as Monday is a public holiday … There is a room change for this week only …
Forum	Forums are an asynchronous discussion activity which are useful when participants aren’t able to meet face to face, and/or can’t be online at the same time as each other.	Students can post general questions they might have in relation to the course for other students to benefit from. A Convenor or Tutor can relay general course information or answer a question that is coming up frequently in a dialogue or tutorial conversation. Extension of a lecture or tutorial conversation Scaffolding ideas or arguments Student-centered forum within topics to encourage course work conversations Convenor/Tutor forum (hidden) Small group planning or conversations	Can I email the assignment to you rather than hand it in? On my timetable it says that the tutorial is in x and the Unit Guide says it is in y … Handout mentioned the lecture recording is available … Introduce yourselves … The reading this week proposes … Reflect on ... Each group will be allocated a specific case study to examine, discuss and report back on … Where do you stand in this debate?
Chat	Chat allows participants in a unit to have a real-time synchronous discussion—which is especially beneficial when the group is not able to meet face to face.	Students planning a group presentation can communicate with each other. A question-and-answer session with a Tutor/Convenor External students can get to know each other and the topic being discussed.	How shall we approach topic x … (hidden chat between co-convenors on large/split campus) I believe there are some issues around how to use a Wiki for the group task … Any ideas on how we should structure our presentation?
Email	Allows you to send email messages to individuals, groups or your whole course	Preferred to, and/or additional to, other communication methods when it is important that all students receive a message.	Important course dates Changes to important course details e.g. assignment changes Late room changes
Feedback	The Feedback activity is a student survey tool you can use to request feedback on your course or your teaching. Unlike the Quiz tool, you can create non-graded questions.	Use the Feedback tool when you want students' opinions either of your course as a whole or of specific activities or aspects within it.	Assess student satisfaction with your course as a whole. Assess student satisfaction with individual activities or topic within your course.