Moodle for Students-Using MCNY's Course Management System
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for Students USING MCNY’S LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM moodle.mcny.edu This manual will prepare you to use Moodle, MCNY’s online Learning Management System. You can use Moodle to read lecture notes, participate in discussion forums, turn in assignments, take quizzes, view grades, and communicate with your teacher, your classmates, or anyone in our academic community. The material presented in this manual is generic and applies to fully online, hybrid, and onsite courses, and in all MCNY programs. Please note that, while all students have Moodle accounts and all courses appear in Moodle, professors teaching fully onsite courses may choose not to use Moodle at all. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Office of E-Learning Dr. Victor Kioulaphides Director, Office of E-Learning [email protected] MOODLE FOR STUDENTS: USING MCNY's LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM VISIT THE MOODLE SYSTEM AT: HTTP://WWW.MOODLE.MCNY.EDU P a g e | 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS Welcome To Moodle! ..................................................................................................... 2 Technical Requirements And Expectations ............................................................................. 2-3 Accessing Moodle …………………................................................................................................. 4 Moodle Accounts ..................................................................................................................... 4 Moodle Location On The Web ........................................................................................... 4 Student Username And Password .......................................................................................... 5 Getting Around Moodle ....................................................................................................... 6 Key Moodle Features ....................................................................................................... 6-7 Inside A Course ……................................................................................................................ 8-12 Directions For Common Tasks .......................................................................................... 13 How To Edit Your Profile ....................................................................................................... 13 How To Download A File …………………………………………………………………………………………………. 14 How To Participate In A Forum .......................................................................................... 14-15 How To Turn In An Assignment .......................................................................................... 16-19 How To Check Grades ……………......................................................................................... 20 Frequently Asked Questions ...................................................................................................... 21-24 For information beyond this guide and/or relating to a specific course, please contact your professor directly. For login problems, please visit the Library for face-to-face assistance or email [email protected]. MOODLE FOR STUDENTS: USING MCNY's LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM VISIT THE MOODLE SYSTEM AT: HTTP://WWW.MOODLE.MCNY.EDU P a g e | 2 INTRODUCTION W E L C OM E T O M OOD L E! Moodle is MCNY’s online Learning Management System. You will be using Moodle for fully online courses (also known as Distance Learning, code “DST” sections) and hybrid courses; you may also use Moodle for fully onsite courses but only if your professor chooses to post material on Moodle. Distance Learning: Distance learning courses are conducted completely online through Moodle. Hybrid Courses: Hybrid courses have at least 30% of the instruction delivered online through Moodle. Onsite Courses: Professors of onsite courses may use Moodle to extend the learning experience outside the classroom or as a course-management tool; they may not use Moodle at all. Y OU M A Y N EED T O D O T H E F OL L OWI N G T H RO U G H M OOD L E • Download a course syllabus or some other file • Follow a hyperlink to visit some external website • Submit an assignment to a drop-box • Post a comment on an online discussion forum • View your current grades as the course progresses • Watch a video that is embedded in Moodle • Take a quiz or some other assessment of your progress Moodle is similar to Blackboard, Angel, Canvas, Schoology, Web CT, Sakai, and other systems that you may have also used at other schools. You may learn more about Moodle at www.moodle.org T E C H N I C A L RE Q U I RE ME N TS A N D E X P E C TA TION S In order to use Moodle, you only need very basic computer and internet navigation skills, plus internet connection. Your interaction via Moodle is very similar to your daily participation in the Social Media: you post comments, read the comments of others, reply to their posts, view pictures, watch videos, etc. While Moodle may be accessed by any web-enabled, handheld device such as a tablet or a smartphone, the coursework requires a desktop or laptop computer. MCNY has several desktop computers around campus for student use. Please be aware that third-party Moodle apps may be particularly unreliable. For information beyond this guide and/or relating to a specific course, please contact your professor directly. For login problems, please visit the Library for face-to-face assistance or email [email protected]. MOODLE FOR STUDENTS: USING MCNY's LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM VISIT THE MOODLE SYSTEM AT: HTTP://WWW.MOODLE.MCNY.EDU P a g e | 3 Up-to-date internet browser and related plug-ins Supported browser versions include: Firefox 4+ Internet Explorer 8+ (IE 10 required for drag-and-drop of files from outside the browser into Moodle) Safari 5+ Google Chrome 11 Firefox is one of the recommended browsers for working in Moodle. You can download and install Firefox by going to the following link: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/new/. Google Chrome is another compatible browser that has the added benefit of a built-in spellcheck function. You can download and install Chrome by going to the following link: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/95346?hl=en Certain functions in Moodle depend on browser plug-ins. You must have the following plug-ins/add- ons, and they must be up to date: Java Adobe Flash Player Adobe Reader Apple Quicktime Productivity software You will need some word processing software such as Microsoft Word for most assignments and exams. Certain courses will also require submissions in Excel and/or PowerPoint. Computers with Microsoft Office installed are available for your use all around campus. If you want to have Office on your own device, you may download Microsoft Office software from your Office 365 account which is licensed for your use while you are enrolled at MCNY. Alternatively, you can compose assignments using the Google Docs app available through Google Drive. If you already have a Gmail or YouTube account, you can use that to access Google Docs. This is an excellent, free, cloud-based alternative that allows you to access and compose your documents online. From Google Docs, you can then easily export documents to a Word .doc or .docx file type. Learn more here: http://www.google.com/drive/about.html Please bear in mind that we cannot open documents created on Pages or other such Apple-specific applications. If you create your assignments in such a format, please convert them to PDF before submitting them for grading. There are also various other types of files that are incompatible with our systems at MCNY. Using Microsoft file types facilitates the review and grading process so it is always best to do and submit your work in a format that can be easily read by your teachers. For information beyond this guide and/or relating to a specific course, please contact your professor directly. For login problems, please visit the Library for face-to-face assistance or email [email protected]. MOODLE FOR STUDENTS: USING MCNY's LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM VISIT THE MOODLE SYSTEM AT: HTTP://WWW.MOODLE.MCNY.EDU P a g e | 4 ACCESSING MOODLE M OOD L E A C COU N T S All current MCNY students, faculty and staff have Moodle accounts. Moodle is our online community; we can all reach out to each other without even needing to know each other’s email address! First-time users may need to look up their username on the Moodle homepage. New students’ accounts are automatically generated the day after their initial MCNY registration. Moodle uses the same username and password as Self-Service and your email on Office 365. M OOD L E L OC A T I ON O N T H E W E B MCNY’s Moodle ecosystem is accessible 24 hours a day at the following web address or URL: moodle.mcny.edu We recommend that you simply bookmark moodle.mcny.edu on all your devices. There is also a link to Moodle on the bottom of the MCNY website, under RESOURCES. This link is for indirect access to Moodle, via the College’s own website; even in the rare event that MCNY’s site is down for whatever reason, you still have direct access to Moodle at moodle.mcny.edu For information beyond this guide and/or relating to a specific course, please contact your professor directly. For login problems, please visit the Library for face-to-face assistance or email [email protected]. MOODLE FOR STUDENTS: USING MCNY's LEARNING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM VISIT THE MOODLE SYSTEM AT: HTTP://WWW.MOODLE.MCNY.EDU P a g e | 5 S T U D E