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 |
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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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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| 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. |
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