Moodle manual for students

A Student’s Guide to Moodle

This guide is for the students of the University of Helsinki who use the Moodle learning platform in their studies. The guide is updated by Educational Technology Services.

Moodle also has a training course for students where you can freely test out the Moodle functions and activities (e.g. assignment submissions, quizzes). You can join the training course in: Moodle training course (category: training courses). Add yourself to the course (enrolment key is not needed) and try out Moodle as a student! You can for example try submitting an assignment or taking an exam.

Contents of the Student’s Guide to Moodle

1. General information about Moodle

Moodle is a virtual learning environment used in the University of Helsinki. It supports learning and collaborative studying for students on different University courses.

Moodle  provides various opportunities to communicate between students and teacher. You can, for example, take part in online discussions, answer online quizzes or opinion polls, submit course work and files electronically as well as take online exams.

Due to differences in browsers, Moodle may work differently on different browsers. See the recommended browsers (MoodleDocs).

Front page of the University of Helsinki Moodle (before login).

Example of the Dashboard view (after login).

Example of a Moodle course (after login).

Moodle supports communication and interaction between the students and the teacher. Moodle can be used for example as the course notice board, or for online discussions, taking exams, submitting assignments/files to the teacher, and sharing course material. Moodle also has a wide selection of different tools and functions the teacher can use organize group projects for students.

2. How to log in to Moodle

1. Go to http://moodle.helsinki.fi.
2. In the top right corner, choose Log in
3. To log in with a University of Helsinki user account (also with a limited user account), click:
   

   If you are logging in to the Moodle of the University of Helsinki with a user account of some other Finnish institute of higher education, choose the HAKA login. With foreign university accounts, you can log in by choosing “eduGAIN account”.

   When you log in to Moodle as a student of the University, you must always give your University of Helsinki account and password.
   

3. Enrolling on a course

You can enrol on a Moodle course yourself by using self enrolment, if the course teacher/person responsible has enabled it. You can enrol yourself on courses via the Moodle front page: http://moodle.helsinki.fi.

• If your teacher has provided you with the address of the course area, you can use that to access the course. It is recommended to provide the course area address on the My studies studies page.
• If your teacher has given you the name of the course area, search it in Moodle. The search function is on Dashboard. You can search courses by the course title, a part of the title, or the course abbreviation. When you find the correct course, click its title.
• If you cannot find the course, please ask your teacher for instructions.

If you have not already logged in, Moodle will next ask you to log in. Please see more information about how to log in to Moodle.

Lastly, insert the enrolment key if Moodle asks for one. The enrolment key is a password you may need to enrol on the course area. You only need to insert the enrolment key once; after enrolling on the course, Moodle will no longer request it. If you do not know the enrolment key and one is required, please contact your teacher or the person responsible for the course.

4. Language settings

The Moodle front page will be in the default language of your browser. You can change the language in the drop-down menu at the top of the page. The languages available are Finnish, Swedish, and English. The language you choose remains throughout the session. 

You can change the Moodle default language in your own profile settings. Then Moodle will always be in the language you chose whenever you log in to Moodle. See more information about changing profile settings.

Sometimes (usually on language courses) the teacher has “forced” one language as the language of the course. Then the language of the course will always be the one the teacher chose, i.e. you cannot change it.

5. Dashboard

After login, you will see your personal Dashboard. The page shows the courses you have enrolled on.

The Recently accessed courses block lists the courses you have recently visited.

In the Course overview, you can search for courses, and

• sort your courses e.g. so that only courses in progress are displayed:

• star courses and hide them from your view:

• sort courses by the course name or by the last accessed date:

• choose whether you want the view as a list, cards or a list with course summaries:

If your teacher has enabled the automatic tracking of progress, it is shown as a line segment on the Dashboard beside the course title. The segment shows the percentage of the tasks added to the progress tracking you have completed in Moodle. Please note, that even if the segment says you have completed 100% of the tasks required, it does not necessarily mean you have completed the course: the teacher may not have added all compulsory assignments and exams to the progress tracking. For further information, please see student progress and completion tracking.

By default, everyone will see the Timeline, Upcoming events and Calendar blocks to the right. The timeline shows your upcoming activities. You can organise the courses by dates or by courses and their titles.

If you wish, you can add other blocks, for example Starred courses (ie courses you have starred) and Recently accessed items (activities and resources). You can customise your dashboard by clicking the "Customise this page" button at the top right of the page. Then you add blocks using the "Add a block" button at the end of the left column.

If some courses are missing from your Dashboard, you have not yet enrolled on them.

Click Course categories in the title bar to browse all course categories in Moodle and to enrol on new courses.

You can also search courses with the search bar on:

Moodle front page:

Dashboard:

For further information, please see: Enrolling on a course.

If you want to remove an old course of yours from the Dashboard, you can unenrol from the course. After you have unenrolled from a course, you can no longer return to the course and all the works you have submitted on the course area are hidden from the teacher. So never unenrol from a course if the grades have not yet been registered to Sisu! You can unenrol yourself from a course by clicking the gear icon in the top right corner of the page. In the opening menu, choose "Unenrol me from course". This removes the course from your Dashboard. The teacher can also move old courses to the “Past” tab or close the course from students, so that the works submitted by the students are preserved, but the course is no longer visible for students on Dashboard. You can mention these options to your teacher if the course has ended but you do not want to remove your enrolment altogether. When the teacher closes the course, it is closed from all students.

6. Navigating Moodle

You can navigate Moodle with the Navigation menu on the left side of the page. You can show and hide the Navigation menu by clicking  the drawer icon.

On Dashboard, the menu is quite brief:

In the Navigation menu,

• Front page takes you to the Moodle front page.
• Dashboard takes you to your course overview.
• Calendar page shows you all the due dates of the assignments, exams, and quizzes in Moodle. Please note that if the teacher has not set a due date in the activity settings, they will not show in the calendar! You can also add your own entries and notes to the calendar.

When you are on a course page, the Navigation menu contains also links to different sections of the course as well as to course participants and grades. For example:

The navigation path helps you to navigate Moodle. The path is at the top of the course and shows where you are on the course area. For example clicking the link (as seen below) with the course abbreviation, you can go back to the course front page.

On an activity or resource page, you can move between the assignments/resources by clicking the arrows to the next or the previous content, or use the drop-down menu "Jump to..." to move to any course content:

7. Profile settings (user menu)

7.1. Edit Profile

Note that your profile is personal and is shown on all your Moodle courses.

You can edit your profile information with among other thing:

• Email display: You can choose how publicly your email address is shown. The alternatives are a) to all UH users, 2) only to the members of your courses (standard setting), or 3) Hide my email address from everyone.NOTE that if you decide to select "Hide my email address from everyone", your email address is not even shown in emails sent from Moodle. Therefore, no-one can reply to you the messages by email; the replies instead end up in trash. 
• User picture: You can add your picture to you profile, which is then shown to the members of your courses, e.g. in participant lists and discussion forum postings.

7.2. Edit Forum preferences

• Email digest type: You can define how you receive information on messages from discussion forums in your Moodle courses to your personal email. If the discussion forums are very active, it is best to choose "Subjects (daily email with subjects only). Then you will receive only one digested message per day from Moodle discussion forums (which you have subscribed or your teacher forces you to subscribe). The digested message is delivered at 17.00 each day. You can also subscribe each discussion forum separately; in this case you will receive notifications in full to your personal email: "No digest (single email by forum post)"
• Forum auto-subscribe: This defines how you can subscribe discussion forums to your email - by default when you enter a discussion forum or only when you subscribe a certain discussion forum (forum per forum). Usually, in the beginning of a course, it is useful to choose "Yes: when I post, subscribe me to that forum". Later in the course you can change the default into "No: don't automatically subscribe me to forums". Even after this choice, you can subscribe individual discussion forums that are active at the time.

7.3. Edit preferred language

The default language in Moodle usually is Finnish, but Swedish and English are possible as well.

7.4. Edit message preferences

It is recommended to enable all notifications e.g. to receive a notification when your teacher has given you feedback in your assignment. You can freely choose whether to receive notifications as a pop-up or as an email sent to your email address.

8. Introduction to Moodle activities

In addition to sharing course material, the most common features of Moodle are:

• forum discussions
• submitting assignments (files, written works)
• different group projects and self- and peer assessment.

The teacher chooses the activity best suited for the work in question. For example, students can submit some assignments to a forum so they are visible for all, but learning journals and other personal works can be submitted using the Assignment activity, so that only the teacher can access them.

Moodle supports group work. This requires that the teacher has divided the students into small groups in Moodle. Depending on the settings, you can see the groups in Participants. The options regarding groups are:

• separate groups: the students discuss or work their projects in their own separate, closed groups and cannot see what other groups are doing, or
• visible groups: the students discuss or work their projects in their own groups, but they can also see what other groups are doing. 

Group-specific wikis are a good way to organize group work. The wikis can be visible to either all course participants or only the group members and the teacher. These wikis can be supported by group-specific forums, where group members can discuss and plan their project. Sometimes the Assignment activity is used to collect group submissions. If the activity you are using seems tricky or hard to use, please ask your teacher for further information and instructions.

Next, we will introduce the most common activities and functions:

8.1. Discussion forums

Forum front page

• The forum front page shows the titles of the discussion topics, who started the topic in question, the number or replies, the number of unread replies (in Moodle), and when the last post has been submitted (the author, the date and the time).
• If students are divided into visible groups, you can use the drop-down menu to change the group whose discussions you are reading. You can participate only in the discussion of your own group. See example below:

• Open the topic by clicking the title.
• The list of topics has the newest discussions at the top and the oldest discussion at the bottom. You can search the forums by using the Search forums function at the top right corner of the page.
  
• The forum posts are one below the other. By default, the replays are displayed in a “nested” form, so the replies to a post are shifted to the right. You can change the display of the topic, and for example choose to show the oldest messages first or not use the nested form. Change the display options in the drop-down menu at the top of the topic. The display settings are only for the user and the topic in question.

Writing and posting

• Start a new discussion by clicking Add a new discussion topic.
• Reply to a message by clicking ”Reply” at the bottom right corner of the post. The title of the topic is automatically copied to the reply message Subject field, so update it to match your message
• You can also attach files to your post, if the teacher has so allowed. Think before you use attachments, because reading the discussion is easier without having to click open the files. If you add a file, the PDF form is recommended.
• If forums are limited to specific groups, you can only participate in the discussion of your own group, even if you can still read the discussions of others. If you receive the error message “You do not have the right to create posts”, you have not chosen your own group in the drop-down menu. Before writing your post, choose your group in the drop-down Visible groups menu on the forum front page (see the picture above). The teacher can also use separate groups, then you access automatically only the discussion of your own group.  
• By default, Moodle sends email notifications about new forum posts to subscribers’ email addresses 30 minutes after posting. Within these 30 minutes, you can edit or delete your post, but after the time limit expires, you can no longer do either. If you want to send the notification to the subscribers immediately, check the “Send forum post notifications with no editing-time delay” box (see the picture below). Moodle sends new posts to forums about every 10 minutes. The posts you send are still available for editing for 30 minutes, even if you chose to send the notification right away. If later there is need to delete or edit posts, please contact your teacher.

Subscribing to a discussion topic

• By default, whenever you write your first post to a discussion, you subscribe to the topic. This applies to every forum separately. If you have not written anything to a topic and have not changed your settings, you will not receive email notifications about new posts.
• The Announcement forum (it may have another name if your teacher has renamed it) is an exception to the rule, as you cannot unsubscribe from this forum.
• You can change the subscription settings in three different places:
  • For example, you can think ahead and subscribe to a forum to prepare for the upcoming course discussion right at the beginning of the course, or
  • If you usually subscribe to receive email notifications, but you do not want to receive notifications from a specific forum, you can unsubscribe from it (if the teacher has allowed it).
• For the default settings of all Moodle forums, see your own profile (see Editing profile settings)
• By each forum separately: Click the gear icon on the front page of the forum and choose Subscribe to this forum / Unsubscribe from this forum. See the image below.

• By each discussion topic separately: you can always change your subscription settings to a topic when writing a new post.

8.2. Submitting assignments

Submission status view

• Here you can see the assessment status, for example “Not graded”. When your work has been graded, you can also see the feedback. The page has a summary of your submission: the beginning of the online text, the list of files, and the comments you left. If the assignment uses automatic plagiarism recognition system Ouriginal, the report may also be on this page (if it has been set visible for the student).
• Submission comments: You can write additional information about your work for the assessing teacher. Click the text link Comments (n), write the comment and click Save comment.
• Edit submission: You can return to edit or add files or to edit the online text.
• Submit for grading: if this button is available, remember to click it to confirm that you are submitting the final version and there will be no more changes. By clicking Submit for grading, you are locking your submission and can no longer edit it.

 Remember to submit the assignment for grading before the due date!

Answers to assignments, exercises, exams etc. can be run through the Ouriginal plagiarism recognition process.

7.2.1. Examples of submitting an assignment

In this example assignment, works can be submitted as either online text or maximum three files. Additional information can be given with comments. The teacher has enabled the “Submit for grading” function the students use to confirm their work is ready.

Zoom into pictures (1-5) by clicking them.

1. Add submission:

2. You can write online text and/or upload files. Save changes!

3. You can edit your submission. You can delete an uploaded file by clicking the file icon and in the pop-up window choosing Delete.

N.B! If you see the “Submit assingment” button, remember to confirm your submission by clicking it. After this, you can no longer edit the submission.

4. The assignment has been submitted to the teacher for grading:

5. The teacher has graded the submission and given feedback:

Save

8.3. Wikis in group work

The Wiki activity is usually used in group projects as a collaborative writing platform, for example to write essays together. In Moodle wiki, students can produce content together (e.g. text, images), but only one student at a time. The idea is that everyone can edit the text written, so a text created by one student can be edited further by others.

Students can use the wiki comment tab to discuss e.g. the schedule of the project, how the tasks are divided, changes to the project etc. Attachments can be uploaded by clicking the link icon in the editor and then choosing the file you want to upload. Attachments are on the Files tab.

8.3.1 Creating subpages

You can add pages and subpages to a wiki to divide the information to multiple pages (website-like structure). In extensive assignments, each subject or theme can have their own page, and they can act as writing platforms for group or pair work.

• On the wiki main level in the editor, write the titles of the subpages, e.g. Introduction, Literature, Methods, Results, Discussion, References, each on a separate row.
• Then put double square brackets around each title, so the subpages will show like this (you can also copy the example below and edit the subpage titles if you wish):

[[Introduction]]
[[Literature]]
[[Methods]]
[[Results]]
[[Discussion]]
[[References]]

• Save.
• Click the link to write content to the subpage. Each subpage can only be edited by one student at a time

On the History tab of the wiki, the teacher and the students see the edits made to the wiki. They can also compare different versions and see who has written what.

8.4. Quiz

You can always recognize the Quiz activity for its  symbol . The teacher can use quizzes for essay exams, multiple-choice quizzes, and other tests that support the studies and learning. The teacher can add restrictions to the quiz so that it can only be accessed during a certain time. The teacher will also define when the student will see their own points and the correct answers.

N.B. In essay exams, the teacher may also use Assignment activity, the symbol of which is . If the teacher uses the assignment submission in the Quiz activity, see the instructions here. Please note, that quiz answers can be processed through the Ouriginal plagiarism recognition process.

Before the quiz

Before starting the quiz, please make sure you have a working internet connection and that you are in a quiet space.

Read the teacher’s instructions well before the quiz. If there is a test quiz e.g. available, try it out so the quiz activity and structure will be familiar to you. You can also ask the teacher to create a test quiz for the course. You can also try the Quiz activity on the Moodle training courses.

Starting the quiz

Usually the quizzes have a specific start and end times and the questions are available automatically at a given time.

Start the quiz by clicking Attempt quiz now. If you cannot see the button, reload/refresh your browser e.g. by pressing F5.

Moodle may be congested when the exams is about to begin. In this case, wait a moment, refresh your browser and reopen the exam.

If the quiz has a time limit, Moodle will notify you about it when you click the Attempt quiz now button. Moodle will then ask you to confirm starting the quiz. 

During the quiz

Do NOT close the browser when you are taking the quiz or you will lose the answers you have already given.

If the quiz has more than one page, you can switch pages by clicking Next page / Previous page. These buttons will also save your answers. However, be careful not to click the link that will take you to the next section of the course area!

You can also save your unfinished quiz by clicking Finish attempt. You can still edit your answers by clicking Return to attempt.

You can also use “Quiz navigation” to switch pages in the quiz, if the teacher has allowed this. A quiz with a time limit will have a timer showing the “Time left”. You can also flag a question for yourself.

The questions you have flagged will show in the Quiz navigation in red. In the picture below, question number 2 has been flagged and it has no answer. The questions that already have (saved) answers, 1 and 3, are grey.

If there is interruption in your internet connection

Moodle saves your answers every few minutes. The answers you have written before a possible interruption in the internet connection are saved and you can continue to take the exam when the internet is working again. If you lose internet connection, first wait a moment. If nothing happens, refresh your browser. Navigate back to the exam. Continue the exam by pressing "Continue the last attempt"

Submitting a quiz for grading

By clicking Finish attempt, you get to the Quiz summary page.

N.B!
Submit your final quiz answers by clicking!

After this, Moodle will once more ask you to confirm that you want to submit the quiz for grading:

Do not leave the quiz submission to the last minute, because your clock is not at the exactly same time as the Moodle clock! If the exam has a time limit, the submissions are closed automatically. After this, you can no longer submit your answers.

If you have not submitted your answers for grading, you will see a “Continue the last attempt” button and the summary will have the state “In progress”. The state will be “Finished” when the answers have been submitted for grading to the teacher.

After the quiz

Depending on the settings the teacher has chosen for the quiz, you will see

• quiz marks and the grade in the “Summary of your previous attempts”,
• the exam questions, answers, marks by questions, teacher's comments and the automatic feedback by clicking “Review”.

8.5 Workshop (self-assessment and peer assessment)

The Workshop activity is used in self-assessment and peer assessment.

You can see the phases of the assessment on the assignment page. The current page is highlighted with green and shown with icon.

Submitting works

When the teacher opens the workshop for students, they will see a “Start preparing your submission” button.

Name your submission and then add your work as a PDF file (recommended) or by writing it directly to the Submission content field.

Assessment

In the next phase, you will carry out a peer assessment / self-assessment on submissions as per the teacher’s instructions. In the Assessment phase, you can see how many submissions are waiting for your assessment. Depending on the settings, it is possible to do the assessment anonymously.

You can assess the submission by clicking “Assess”.

In the following example, assessment is carried out by the numeric grading and the aspects given by the teacher. General feedback is marked with an asterisk (*), meaning it is a compulsory field.

Grading evaluation phase

In this phase, you can no longer edit your submissions or peer assessments. The teacher calculates the final grades and can give feedback to both submitted works and peer evaluators.

Closed

When the teacher closes the workshop, the students can see their grades.

The grade for submission is calculated as weighted mean of particular assessment grades given by all reviewers of this submission.

The grade for assessment tries to estimate the quality of assessments that the participant gave to the peers. If your grade differs from that given by the others, you will be given a lower grade.

Click on the name of your work to see the feedback you have received.

9. Student progress and completion tracking

Your teacher may have provided you with an opportunity to track and record your progress on the course area. The teacher is then also able to track the progress of all students on the course. Some of the activities and resources in the tracking may be automatically connected to the progress tracking based on the conditions set by the teacher.

Use the progress tracking, for example,

• as notes on what course materials you have already read and what you have still to read
• to indicate materials and assignments the teacher has published in the middle of the course and what you have not yet read/done
• to track the status of submitted assignments.

You can view activity dates and completion criteria on the activity. The gray colour and the text "to do" indicates that you haven't done the task yet. If the colour is green and tke test is "done", you have completed the task. Depending on the settings made by the teacher dates and criteria are also shown in the course page:

The teacher may also have added a completion progress bar to the course to help you track your progress. The settings the teacher has chosen define the tasks shown in the bar and when a task is shown as completed. When a task is completed, it is shown as green in the bar. A red colour indicates that the completion of the task is late.

The Timeline provides an overview of deadlines on the Dashboard. Deadlines may be sorted by Overdue or Upcoming due dates or by due dates per course.

You can see your progress also on the Moodle Dashboard in the percentages to display.

10. Student portfolio

13. Help for problem cases in Moodle

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