Moodle Tutorial

Moodle is an Open Source course management system (CMS), suitable for creating online courses, school, high school, college, and university web sites. It is written in PHP and requires a MySQL database. Moodle is free to download and use. With SiteGround hosting you can use all Moodle features.

The Moodle Tutorial covers the following issues:

• How to install Moodle CMS instructions
• How to change Moodle themes
• How to manage courses in Moodle
• How to start a course
• How to add activity
• How to uploading files for the courses
• How to install Moodle modules
• And how to upgrade Moodle

Please, note: You can request a FREE installation of Moodle from SiteGround. Your Moodle web site will be quickly setup and you will be able to log into Moodle admin panel and start managing your courses in less than half an hour.

You may use this tutorial for your own use. You may not distribute it in any form without the express permission of the publisher. You may provide a link to the publisher's web site, where this tutorial can be used from. This tutorial is provided free of charge and without any warranty of any kind.

Moodle Installation

Get a FREE Moodle installation with SiteGround Moodle hosting package!

You do not need to download Moodle to your local PC. On your SiteGround Hosting account Moodle CMS can be easily installed through our Fantastico Autoinstaller in just several clicks! In order to do that, please, locate the Fantastico icon in the cPanel's home page. Find the Moodle link.

Now choose the location of your Moodle CMS - if you would like to have it as your site front, leave the directory box blank, otherwise fill in the appropriate folder name. Next, fill in the administrator details and click the Install button.

Click the confirmation button on the next page, and then you will see the success notice on the third page.

Add the addresses from the success notice page to your bookmarks, since you will be using them often.

Moodle Themes

Log into Moodle administration

Now you can start building your site with Moodle. First, login to the Moodle admin panel. You can do that from your Moodle site home page. Fill in the Admin username and password in the login form.

Now that you are logged into your Moodle admin panel, the first thing you should do is look under the Administration on your course home page. Note that the whole Administration section is available only to you and the site administrator. Students will not see these links.

Moodle themes

Please, click below to find out

• How to install a new theme on your Moodle site?
• How to change your Moodle theme?

How to install a new theme on your Moodle site?

Once you have your own theme created or you have downloaded a theme, you should follow these steps to install it on your site:

Step 1: Unzip the theme's archive in your local computer

Step 2: Upload the theme's folder

Upload the folder file into the Themes folder which is located in your Moodle installation folder. If you have installed Moodle in your public_html folder then the Themes directroy will also be located there. You can use FTP to upload the directory which contains the theme files to your account.

Step 3: Choose your new theme as default.

Choose your new theme from the Administration -> Appearance -> Themes -> Theme Selector. Please see below how to change your Moodle theme.

How to change the Moodle theme?

In order to choose a new theme/template for your web site, please, go to Administration --> Configuration and then choose Themes

Now choose the theme that you like most and click Choose

Now press Continue and you will see the new theme on your web site

You can click on How to make new themes in order to customize or create new Moodle themes. There you will find detail information how to proceed if you would like to personalize the outlook of your Moodle site

Well done! You have successfully changed your Moodle theme!

Course Setting

You can start setting up your courses from the Courses menu under Administration

You can create different categories for your courses, e.g. Moodle Tutorial, Forum Tutorial, etc.

When you press the Add a new course button you can set the name, choose the category and add a short description about your course.

You can also set different course formats: weekly, topics and social

The weekly and topics formats are very similar in structure. The main difference is that each box in the weekly format covers exactly one week, whereas in the topic format each box can cover whatever you like. The social format is based on just one forum - this is displayed on the main page.

The next How to Create a Course page will give you more information about the content of your course.

How to create a Course

To start adding content to your course, please press the Turn on editting button

Now you can add information about the course via the Edit summary button

You can also Add Resourse or Add Activity. Click Next for more info.

Add Activity

To add a new activity, simply go to the week (or topic or section depending on the course format) of the screen where you want to add it.

Please, click on the drop-down button to see for the choices that you have. In Add Activity you have Assignment, Forum, Chat, Quiz and a couple of other options

You can play with each of these activities to see how they work. Below you can find short descriptions of the Activity choices that you have.

As an example, we choose Quiz. You will be automatically taken to the Quiz setting menu, where you can write a description of the Quiz and set your preferences and user permissions. After you press the Save your changes button, you can add your questions file or Create new questions of different types: Multiple Choice, True/False, Small Answers, etc.

Here you can find more information about the types of Activities you can add:

Assignment

An assignment is where you set a task with a due date and a maximum grade. Students will be able to upload one file to satisify the requirements. The date they upload their file is recorded. Afterwards, you will have a single page on which you can view each file (and how late or early it is), and then record a grade and a comment. Half an hour after you grade any particular student, Moodle will automatically email that student a notification.

Choice

A choice activity is very simple - you ask a question and specify a choice of responses. Students can make their choice, and you have a report screen where you can see the results. It can be used to gather research consent from your students, or just for quick polls or class votes.

Forum

This module is by far the most important - it is here that discussion takes place. When you add a new forum, you are presented with a choice of different types - a simple single-topic discussion, a free-for-all general forum, or a one-discussion-thread-per-user.

Resource

Resources are the content of your course. Each resource can be any file you have uploaded or can point to using a URL. You can also maintain simple text-based pages by typing them directly into a form. Click here for more info about how to upload files.

Quiz

This module allows you to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple choice, true-false, and short answer questions. These questions are kept in a categorised database, and can be used in other courses as well. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers. This module includes grading facilities.

Survey

The survey module provides a number of predefined survey instruments that are useful in evaluating and understanding your class. Currently they include the COLLES and the ATTLS instruments. They can be given to students early in the course as a diagnostic tool and at the end of the course as an evaluation tool.

After adding your activities you can move them up and down in your course layout by clicking on the little arrow icons next to each one. You can also delete them using the cross icon X, and re-edit them using the edit icon.

Uploading Files

You may have existing content that you want to add to your course, such as web pages, audio files, video files, word documents, or flash animations. Any type of file that exists can be uploaded into your course and stored on the server. While your files are on the server you can move, rename, edit or delete them.

All of this is achieved through the Site Files link in your Administration menu.

The Files section looks like this:

This interface is only available to teachers - it is not accessible by students. Individual files are made available to students later on (at "Add Resources" - see How to Create a Course).

As you can see in the screenshot, files are listed together with subdirectories. You can create any number of subdirectories to organize your files and move your files from one to the other.

Uploading files via the web is currently restricted to one file at a time. If you want to upload a lot of files at once (for example a whole web site), it can be a lot easier to use a zip program to compress them into a single file, upload the zip file and then unzip them again on the server (you will see an "unzip" link next to zip archives).

To preview any file you have uploaded just click on its name. Your web browser will take care of either displaying it or downloading it to your computer.

HTML and text files can be edited in-place online. Other files will need to be edited on your local computer and uploaded again. if you upload a file with the same name as an existing file it will automatically be overwritten.

If your content resides out on the web then you don't need to upload the files at all - you can link directly to them from inside the course.

How to add a Module on your Moodle website

Please, follow the three steps, listed below, in order to add a module to your Moodle website:

Step 1. Please, upload the Module folder (which will have in it a folder named 'db' and various module files) to your 'moodle > mod' folder.

Step 2. If the module includes a lang file (and possibly help files), then you will need to copy those to the 'moodle > lang > en' folder (or, if other languages are available, copy them to the appropriate language folder).

Step 3. Once the files are uploaded, please login to your site as admin, then click on the 'Administration' link. This will install the module, and you will then get a message that the module was successfully installed and the database tables were created.

Moodle Backup

How to create a backup copy of your Moodle website?

You can create backup of your Moodle installation in 3 easy steps. Let's say that your Moodle is installed in a subdirectory of your public_html folder called moodle. In this case your website will be accessible at: http://example.com/moodle/

Step 1: Copy the Moodle files on your local hard drive

In order to backup your files we recommend using FTP and copy them to your local PC. You will need to copy the Moodle directory located inside your public_html folder. If you're not sure which folders should be copied please copy the whole public_html. The Moodle directory is where the data for your online courses is stored.

The Moodle directory is where your Moodle system is installed - if you can access your Moodle courses at http://example.com/moodle, then you can access the Moodle directory is at the folder public_html/moodle from your website files. If you access Moodle at http://example.com/, then the Moodle directory at the folder public_html.

Step 2: Create a backup of your database

The Moodle software stores the users details and Moodle settings data in a MySQL database, so you need to back it up too. Most Moodle upgrades will alter the database tables, adding or changing table fields. Each database has different ways to backup. To create a backup copy of your database (or export it), please check the How to backup/restore your database? tutorial. Normaly, the name of your Moodle database would look be username_mdle1, where the username is your hosting account username.

Step 3: Create a backup of the Moodledata folder

There is a folder, named moodledata and it is usually located in your home folder, not in your web folder. (Your home folder is the folder where you are logged in when you connect via FTP. There resides the public_html folder). You must download the moodledata directory too, as it contains very important information about your Moodle installation.

Well done! You have successfully backed up your Moodle website!

Moodle upgrade

How to upgrade the Moodle version of your website

Please, follow the two steps, listed below, in order to upgrade the Moodle version of your e-learning website

Step 1:

Create a backup of your Moodle files and databse

Please, check here how to create a backup of your Moodle Directory, MySQL databse and "moodledata" folder. Once having the Moodle files backed up on your local hard drive, you are ready to proceed to the actual Moodle upgrade.

Step 2:

Moodle upgrade

Overwrite the files in the current Moodle directory with the new version's ones, then go to http://yourdomain.com/moodle/admin and follow the Next -> Next -> Next procedure. It doesn't matter if you are logged in as admin or not, Moodle will automatically detect the new version and perform all the database or file-system upgrades that are necessary.

If there is anything it can't do by itself (very rare) then you will see error messages telling you what you need to do. Assuming all goes well (no error messages appear) then you can start using your new version of Moodle and enjoy the new features!

Please, feel free to contact us if you have any questions or recommendations about this tutorial at: tutorials 'at' siteground.com