6 User Experience related new features in Moodle v2.3 – A quick visual guide

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Moodle v2.3 was released on 25th June 2012. Below is a quick visual guide I put together to illustrate the 6 new features in this release which, in my opinion, greatly improve Moodle’s user experience.

The screenshots used in this visual guide were taken from our premiere Moodle theme Ace, which is fully compatible with the Moodle 2.3 release.

1) Drag and drop files


Please Note:

This feature only works in browsers which support the HTML5 “Drag and Drop” and “File” APIs (this means it will not work in Internet Explorer versions 9 and below).

From your computer directly into Moodle’s course.

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From your computer directly into Moodle’s file picker

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2) Drag and drop to re-arrange Moodle course sections or Moodle side blocks

Rearrange course sections.

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Rearrange side blocks.

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3) Quick and easy re-naming

You can edit the course activity/resource names without leaving the course page.

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4) New way to add an activity/resource

A nice popup window is used to present all the available Moodle activities/resources in a much more user friendly way.

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5) New course layout – defeat Moodle’s “scroll of death”

Now in the course settings, you can tell Moodle to “show one section per page” to avoid the “scroll of death” issue.

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6) New file picker


The new file picker can display not only the file names but also the relevant file thumbnails as well. This new feature provides users with better visual clues when they need to identify certain uploaded files.

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How to generate and issue a course certificate to learners using the Moodle certificate module

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Not long ago I was asked if it is possible for Moodle to generate and email a certificate to learners who have passed a particular exam (Moodle Quiz). After looking into the matter, I’ve found a way to do just that by using a great Moodle module called “Certificate”

Scenario:

You’ve set up a Moodle training course where you have added an exam using a Moodle quiz. The pass mark for the quiz is 60%. A course certificate will be generated and emailed to learners who get a score equal to or greater than 60%.

Solution:

Step 1

Download and install the Certificate module to your Moodle site.

Step 2

Go to the desired course as a course teacher/manager, and click “Editing settings” under “Course administration” as shown in the figure below.

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Step 3

On the “Editing course settings” page, enable completion tracking. Save the changes.

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Step 4

Turn editing on and update the existing exam (Moodle quiz). Make sure the “Activity completion” section is configured as shown in the figure below. Save the changes.

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Step 5

Go back to the course page and add “Certificate” as a Moodle activity.

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Step 6

Configure the certificate. There are lots of settings available for you to customise based on your needs, but I’m not going to cover everything here. For comprehensive information, you can check out Moodle’s official documentation here

In the figures below you can see some of the settings I used for making this tutorial.

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Step 6

Based on the scenario, we need to make sure the “Grade condition” and “Activity completion condition” are configured correctly as shown in the figure below.

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Step 7

Now it’s testing time – you need to log out and log back in as a student. Take the exam. If you pass the exam you should be able to see the certificate link.

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Step 8

Click the certificate link and you should see the instruction as shown in the figure below.

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Step 9

Click the “Get your certificate” button and your certificate will be generated and emailed to you.

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Conclusion

I hope you find this tutorial useful. For the certificate design, there are quite a few default options which come with the module to get you started. However, if you are feeling adventurous you can also customise the design by following the Moodle documentation here

How to add Twitter and Facebook buttons to your Moodle site

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Adding Twitter and Facebook like buttons to a website is always a good idea if you’d like to spread the word about your site through social networking. In this tutorial I will walk you through how to add the commonly seen buttons to your Moodle site.

First things first. Before we do anything in Moodle, Let’s get the buttons from Twitter and Facebook’s official websites.

Get Twitter “Share a link” button

1) Go to Twitter’s official buttons page: http://twitter.com/about/resources/buttons

2) Select “Share a link” and enter the desired options as shown in the figure below.

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3) Once you are happy about the button’s preview, you can keep the page open for later use.

Get Facebook “like” button

1) Go to the Facebook developers plugin page: http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/plugins/like/

2) Configure the like button as shown in the figure below. For the like button to work in Moodle you can only use the IFRAME version rather than the HTML5/XFBML version.

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3) Once you are happy with the button’s preview, you can click the “Get Code” button. In the popup window you need to choose the IFRAME option as shown in the figure below. Keep the page open for later use.

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Ok, now the buttons are ready for use we can dive into Moodle to add the buttons.

Step 1

In a new window, Log into Moodle as an administrator. Select the “HTML” option from the “Add a block” drop-down menu.

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Step 2

Now you should see that a new HTML block has been added. Click the configuration icon, which is the second icon, as shown in the figure below. (Your Moodle site’s configuration icon will look different )

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Step 3

On the “Configuring a (new HTML block) block” page, turn on the HTML Source Editor for the “Content” text field by clicking the HTML icon in the editor menu as shown below.

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Step 4

Copy and paste the relevant buttons’ code from the previous Twitter and Facebook pages into the HTML Source Editor and click the “Update” button.

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Step 5

Enter a block title and configure other options before saving.

Step 6

You need to turn off editing to see the changes.

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Conclusion:

Using a Moodle HTML block to add Twitter and Facebook buttons is only one way of doing it. If your Moodle theme offers you extra block/widget areas to enter HTML code you can take advantage of those as well.

For example, in our premium Moodle Theme “Ace”, you can go to the theme settings page and add the Twitter and Facebook buttons to the page’s header as shown below.

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How to add a promotional banner to your Moodle front page

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If you have seen our new premium Moodle Theme’s demo site, you will notice that there is a promotional banner placed on the Moodle’s front page. By default, Moodle’s front page is the site landing page, and landing page is always an ideal place for a promotional banner to attract immediate attention from visitors.

In this tutorial I will show you how to add a banner on your Moodle front page.

Step 1

Log into Moodle as an administrator and navigate to the “Front page settings” page.

Settings > Front page settings > Editing settings.

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Step 2

On the “Front page settings” page you will find an option called “Include a topic section”. Make sure the box for this option is ticked. Save the changes.

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Step 3

Navigate to the front page. Click the “Turn editing on” link which is located right underneath the “Front page settings”.

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Step 4

Now you should see the “Add a resource…” menu appear on the top of the front page content area. Select the “label” option from the menu as shown in the figure below.

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Step 5

In the “Label text” editor you can upload and insert your banner image by clicking the image icon in the menu bar.

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Step 6

Click the “Save and return to course” button and you should see your banner appear on the front page.

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Hopefully you find this tip useful. In fact, you can not only add a banner image but also text/video/flash to the front page using this method. So just play around with it and you might develop some creative ideas for your site’s landing page.

How to use Dropbox as a Moodle file repository

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Dropbox is a popular online file storage app. Imagine it as a type of online USB drive, which you can access anywhere in the world as long as you have a computer and internet connection. If you have a Dropbox account and also use Moodle, you will be glad to know that in Moodle 2.x you can connect the two together and use Dropbox as a Moodle file repository.

Step 1

Sign up for a Dropbox account if you don’t already have one here: https://www.dropbox.com/

Step 2

Log into your Dropbox account and go to the “Dropbox for Developers” page by following the link here – https://www.dropbox.com/developers

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Step 3

Navigate to the “My apps” page and create your Dropbox app by clicking the “Create an App” button.

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Step 4

Enter an app name, description and select the access level to be “Full Dropbox” and click the “Create” button.

Note: the app name needs to comply with Dropbox’s branding guide, otherwise your app won’t be approved later when you apply for production status.

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Step 5

Now you should be directed to the app’s configuration page, where you can find the App Key and App secret as shown in the figure below. later you will need to enter the key and secret in Moodle.

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Step 6

Log in to Moodle as an administrator and navigate to the “Manage repositories” option and enable Dropbox.

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Step 7

Once Dropbox is enabled, you will be directed to the configuration page where you can enter the Dropbox app key and secret from Step 5. Click “save” and you are done.

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Step 8

Now you need to go back to the Dropbox Developers page and apply for production status for the app.

Step 9

Upon Dropbox’s approval (you should get an email from them), you can start using Dropbox as your Moodle’s file repository.

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How to use Google Docs as a Moodle file repository

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Google Docs is another wonderful free online service provided by Google. It can be used as an online office suite where you can easily create or edit documents, spreadsheets and presentations. It can also be used as an online file repository, which enables you to access your docs from any computer with an internet connection.

In this tutorial, I am going to show you how to use Google Docs as your Moodle file repository.

Important: If you are using a Moodle 2.1.1 installation, the Google Docs repository may not work due to a known bug which affects this version. To be safe, it is recommended to upgrade your Moodle to the latest version. There is a forum post on the official Moodle site about this where you can find out more about this issue for Moodle 2.1.1.

Step 1

You need to have an account with Google to be able to use Google Docs, so sign up for one, if you don’t already have a Google account.

Since only files in Google Docs format will show up in Moodle’s File Picker later, you need to make sure all the uploaded files (eg. Word, PowerPoint, PDF) are converted to Google Docs format. Google Docs will do the conversion for you when you are uploading the files, as long as you remember to tick the two options as shown in the figure below.

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Step 2

Log in to Moodle as an administrator and navigate to the “Manage repositories” option and enable Google Docs.

Site administration > Plugins > Repositories > Manage repositories

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Once Google Docs is enabled, you will be directed to the configuration page where you can enter a new name for the repository.

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Step 3

Go to a course and turn editing on. Select “File” from the “Add a resource” drop-down list.

Note: Only “File” supports Google Docs.

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Step 4

On the “Adding a new File” page, click the “Add…” button. A Moodle File Picker will appear and Google Docs should be listed as one of the available repositories. Select Google Docs as the repository and click the “Login” button to log into your Google account.

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Step 5

You will need to grant Moodle access to your Google account by clicking the “Grant access” button.

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Step 6

Now you should see all your Google docs as shown in the figure below, and you can select any file you like for using in the course.

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How to use Flickr as a Moodle image repository

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Like Youtube is known as a great online video repository, the Yahoo-owned service Flickr has gained it’s popularity as a great online image repository. It is reported that there are now 6 billion images hosted on Flickr and the number is still growing.

And again, just like Youtube videos, Flickr images can be used to enrich your teaching / training material. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to use Flickr as your Moodle site’s image repository. This tutorial has three parts – Part One is about things you need to do in Flickr; Part Two contains all the Moodle-related steps; In Part Three, a test is carried out to check everything is working as it should.

Part One : Flickr

Step 1

If you don’t already have a free Flickr account, you need to sign up for one.

Step 2

Make sure you are logged into Flickr, and follow the link here to get a Flickr API key for your Moodle site.

Step 3

Once you click the link provided above, you should see a screen like the one shown below. Click the “Get Another Key” button to proceed.

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Step 4

Now you should arrive at the “App Garden” page, and you need to click the “APPLY FOR A NON-COMMERCIAL KEY” button.

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Step 5

On the “Tell us about your app” page, fill in the form and submit.

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Step 6

Ok, now the API key is generated for you! Copy the key. (Ctrl+C on PC or Cmd+C on Mac)

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Part Two: Moodle

Step 1

Log into your Moodle site as an admin user, and navigate to the “Manage repositories” option:

Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Repositories > Manage repositories

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Step 2

On the “Manage repositories” page, find “Flickr public” (NOT “Flickr”) and choose “Enable and Visible” from it’s options drop-down list.

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Step 3

On the “Flickr public configuration” page, paste the API key into the relevant box as shown below. Save and you are all good to go.

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Part Three: Testing

Congratulations, you have just set Flickr up as your Moodle site’s image repository! Now let’s test it out by adding a Flickr image to a course.

Step 1

Go to a course and turn editing on. Choose “Label” from the “Add a resource…” drop-down list.Click the image icon on the editor menu bar like shown below.

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Step 2

After clicking the “Find or upload an image…” button, another popup window called “File picker” will appear where you will see “Flickr public” as a repository option. Click the “Flickr public” button and you can start searching the images using the search form on the right-hand side pane.

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Step 3

I’ve done a search for “Moodle” and I got 126 pages of related images!

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Step 4

I decided to pick a poster about new features in Moodle 2.0. By default, when you save the image, the image will be stored in your Moodle site. However, if you have limited server space or bandwidth you might want to check the “Link external” option and let Flickr host the image. The drawback of the latter method is that if the image is deleted from Flickr by the user, it will also disappear from your Moodle site as you are only providing a shortcut pointing to the image on Flickr, so if the actual image gets deleted/moved the shortcut would no longer work.

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Step 5

Click the “Select this file” button and the image should be inserted into the editor. Save and return to the course and you will see the Flickr image has been inserted into the course.

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And that’s it. Now you know how to use Flickr as your image repository for Moodle – we hope you enjoyed our tutorial.

How to visually track student progress in a Moodle course

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Recently, I was asked if there is a way for students and teachers to track the progress in a Moodle course. After some looking around on Moodle.org, I discovered a wonderful third party plugin called “Progress Bar” which does exactly just that, and even better, the progress data is visualized so it is very intuitive for users. This plugin is contributed by Michael de Raadt and he has made a great video demonstration about the plugin as well.

I’ve installed the plugin on our Moodle demo site, so if you are interested you can log into Demo Course 01 to have a look (Username: user2 Password: user2demo).

The progress bar on our Moodle demo site looks slightly different from the original one, as I tweaked the plugin so it fits in better with our Moodle site’s style.

Below are the steps you can take to make the progress bar work for your Moodle site:

Step 1

Download the plugin and install. You can follow the instruction on the Moodle official website page for this plugin.

Step 2

Log in as an admin user. Go to a course you’d like to track progress, and turn on editing.

Step 3

Once editing is on, you should see a block called “Add a block”. Choose “Progress Bar” from the drop down list, and the block will be added. Click the configuration button.

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Step 4

Now you should see the configuration page for the Progress Bar block, where you can customise the settings according to your needs. The settings are pretty much self-explanatory, but if in doubt you can always click the (?) help icons to get more instructions.

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Step 5

Save the configuration and logout. Log in again as a student who is enrolled on the course. The figure below shows you what happens to the progress bar before and after the student interacting with one of the course resources/activities.

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Step 6

Log in as the site admin or the course teacher, you can also check all of your students’ progress by clicking the “Overview of students” link in the Progress Bar block as shown below.

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How to use Google Analytics for your Moodle 2.0 site

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Do you want to obtain detailed statistics about the visitors to your Moodle site? If the answer is yes then you need to use Google Analytics to track the site traffic. Google Analytics is a free yet very powerful web analytics tool, and is widely used by all types of websites nowadays.

Essentially there are only two steps involved to start gathering information : Step 1 – Get your tracking code from Google Analytics. Step 2 – Add the tracking code to your Moodle site.

Ok, let’s get cracking!

Step 1

You need to have an account with Google to be able to use Google Analytics, so sign up for one here if you don’t already have Google account for your organisation. Once you’ve got a Google account, you can create your website profile in Google Analytics and get the tracking code for your Moodle site.

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The tracking code should look something like below, where “UA-xxxxxxxx-x” is your site ID.

<script type="text/javascript">

  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-xxxxxxxx-x']);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

  (function() {
    var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
    ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
    var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();

</script>

Step 2

Log into your Moodle site as an admin user, and navigate to the Additional HTML option:

Settings > Site administration > Appearance > Additional HTML

Paste the tracking code into the first box which is called “Within HEAD” and save.

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Ta da! All done. Now you can sit back and relax. Give it 24 hours, and Google Analytics will work it’s magic and give you insight of your Moodle site traffic.

How to install a new Mahara Theme

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We have just released our first free Mahara theme – Orange. The theme is developed to be consistent with our free Moodle theme – Mandarin, so you can use them together to form a seamless “Mahoodle” setup.

You can get the theme zip file from the freebies page, and the following steps will show you how to install the theme for your Mahara 1.4 site.

Step 1

Download our free Mahara theme Orange here.

Step 2

Unpack the theme zip file and extract the /orange/ folder and the files.

Step 3

Upload the /orange/folder to your hosting server’s Mahara theme directory. You can use an FTP program to do so.

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Step 4

Log into your Mahara site as an admin, and navigate to the Site Settings:

Site Administration > Configure Site > Site Options > Site Settings

Step 5

Select the “Orange” theme from the Theme’s drop-down list as shown on the figure below.

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There you have it – the new theme is activated.

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How to bulk upload users to Mahara

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Adding users one by one in Mahara can be a tedious admin job. Luckily, Mahara actually provides a quick and easy way for adding multiple users at one go. All you need to do is – first, create a CSV (comma-separated values) file with all users’ login details, and then upload the file to Mahara.

Step 1

Create a CSV file using using Microsoft Excel or OpenOffice Spreadsheet.

Here I’m using OpenOffice. You need to create a table as shown in the figure below and the first row must include “username”, “firstname”, “lastname”,”password” and “email”, as by default, those four elements are compulsory for creating a user account in Mahara.

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Make sure you save as the file type “CSV”.

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Tip: If your organisation has already got a user information management system in place, such as SIMS, you can probably export information of all/selected users as a CSV file. Some editing to make the exported CSV comply with Mahara’s requirements may be needed (such as the fact that Mahara requires passwords to be at least six characters long and contain at lease one digit and two letters).

Step 2

Log into your Mahara site as an admin user. Navigate to the “Add Users by CSV” page and upload the CSV file.

Site Administration>Users>Add Users by CSV

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Step 3

Now, if you go back to the User Search page you should see the new users have been added to your Mahara site.

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How to pull a Twitter Feed into Moodle

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Note: The method described in this tutorial is no longer working as Twitter retired its API v1 in June 2013. Check out our new blog post for the latest method.

Twitter has become ubiquitous on the web nowadays. Displaying your organization’s Twitter Feed on your website is an effective way to inform your site visitors or users about your latest news and events.

Is it possible to do this in a Moodle site and how? Some of you may wonder. Yes, it is indeed possible and I’m going to show you all the steps to achieve this.

I’m using our Moodle demo site for this tutorial. To find out more about the demo, you can visit the demo page here.

Step 1

Log into your Moodle site as an admin user, and turn on editing.

Step 2

You should see a block called “Add a block” once the editing mode is on . Choose “Remote RSS Feeds” from the drop down list.

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Step 3

A block called “Remote news feed” should be added to your site by now. Click the configuration button as shown in the figure below. (Note: We have customized our demo’s Moodle icon set so they will look different from the generic Moodle icons.)

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Step 4

Let’s add the Twitter Feed first before doing any configuration work. So click the “Add/edit feeds” link and then on the next page click the “Add a new feed” button.

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Step 5

Enter your Twitter Feed code into the Feed URL text field:

(You need to replace the **** with your twitter name)

http://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/user_timeline.rss?screen_name=****

Here I’m using our company’s Twitter Feed as an example:

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Step 6

Click the “Add a new feed” button, and your Twitter Feed will be added to the Feed list.

Step 7

Now we have added the Twitter Feed, but we still need to tell Moodle to display the feed by configuring the feed settings. To do so, first of all, you need to navigate back to the homepage by clicking the “Home” link in the breadcrumb. Secondly, in order to get back to the configuration page, you need to repeat Step 1 to Step 4 as explained above.

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The figure below explains the main parameters you can define/change depending on your needs.

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Step 8

Once you are happy with the configuration, you can click the “Save Changes” button, and the desired Twitter Feed should appear on your Moodle site.

Tip: Remember to actually select the Twitter Feed as shown on the figure above, otherwise your feed won’t appear! You can view the result in action on our Moodle demo

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