[ 1 ] Moodle E-Learning Course Development Third Edition A complete guide to create and develop engaging e-learning courses with Moodle William Rice BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI Moodle E-Learning Course Development Third Edition Copyright © 2015 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: June 2008 Second edition: August 2011 Third edition: June 2015 Production reference: 1230615 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-78216-334-3 www.packtpub.com Credits Author Project Coordinator William Rice Nikhil Nair Reviewers Proofreader Saad Faruque Safis Editing Anna Krassa (kanna) Danny Wahl Indexer Monica Ajmera Mehta Commissioning Editor Joanne Fitzpatrick Production Coordinator Arvindkumar Gupta Acquisition Editor Subho Gupta Cover Work Arvindkumar Gupta Content Development Editor Arun Nadar Technical Editors Siddhesh Ghadi Siddhesh Patil Copy Editors Relin Hedly Ulka Manjrekar Sonia Mathur Karuna Narayanan About the Author William Rice is an e-learning professional who lives, works, and plays in New York City. He has authored books based on Moodle, Blackboard, Magento, and software training. William enjoys building e-learning solutions for small and midsized businesses. He gains professional satisfaction when his courses help students and make their work easier and more productive. His indoor hobbies include writing books and spending time reading at http://slashdot.org/. His outdoor hobbies include practicing archery within sight of JFK Airport and playing with his children. William is fascinated by the relationship between technology and society, how we create our tools, and how our tools shape us in turn. He is married to an incredible woman who encourages his writing pursuits. William has two amazing sons. You can reach William on his website at http://williamrice.com. For every book that I successfully complete, I owe my wife a debt of gratitude. Thank you for creating the space and time for me to write. I would also like to thank my small business clients, especially Financial Success Training and Dubspot. Moodle is an essential tool for their businesses. I am grateful for their trust in me and enabling me to guide and help them build their online schools. About the Reviewers Saad Faruque has over 15 years of experience implementing open source software solutions for business and educational institutions. During this period, he worked with banks, ISPs, and educational institutions. Recently, Saad helped set up the IT infrastructure for International School Dhaka and Stonehill International School, Bangalore. Currently, he works as the head of solution development at Xeo InfoSoft (http://xeois.com), a Bangalore-based company that he cofounded. Xeo helps businesses implement open source software solutions, such as Moodle, Mahara, Alfresco, Zimbra, ORTS, Nagios, and Elastix. You can find him on his blog at http://tektab.com. For Moodle and some other open source software implementation-related support, Saad can be reached at [email protected]. Anna Krassa (kanna) holds a bachelor's degree in librarianship and information science. Mostly, she works as an e-learning consultant. Anna lives in North Greece (Nea Moudania, Chalkidiki). In December 2006, she became the first Moodle-certified teacher in Greece. In May 2007, Anna became a mentor and assessor for MTC/MCCC candidates and collaborated with Certification Central Administration, HRD Moodle Partner (New Zealand). In 2012, Anna became the main mentor and assessor at MCCC Central Administration. Her responsibilities include assessing MCCC candidates, mentoring MCCC mentors and assessors, and representing HRDNZ in conferences. Anna has also been working at GAC Corporate Academy since 2007, initially as an external facilitator for HRDNZ Moodle Partner, facilitating the course on personal and professional development. When this course was withdrawn after 2 years, her position changed from a facilitator to a course developer and GAClearn administrator because of her Moodle background. Since 2012, she has been working as a GCA learning developer. Her areas of focus are site administration, course design, facilitator training and support, participant assistance, research on e-learning, and Moodle. She also represents GCA at conferences, seminars, and similar events. In Greece, Anna has worked for the e-learning service of the Greek School Network and the Library of University of Macedonia Telemathea. As a volunteer, she has worked for FreeMoodle and Mathisis, the most active e-schools in Greece and Cyprus. Internationally, she worked as an HRDNZ contractor in Bahrain (GII Academy), Ethiopia (Mekelle University), Canada (the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology), and Cyprus (European University Cyprus). Anna started collaborating with Packt Publishing as a technical reviewer in 2013. Until now, she has been involved in three books: Moodle 2.5 Multimedia, Moodle Course Design Best Practices, and Moodle E-Learning Course Development, Third Edition. She is married to Vasilis and has a lovely daughter. Danny Wahl is an educational technology consultant and implementation specialist working in the Asia-Pacific region with a particular focus on international schools. He has assisted several schools in 1:1 computing, online, and mobile e-learning programs, among other things. When not working, he enjoys web development, reading the Bible, and playing the ukulele. www.PacktPub.com Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more For support files and downloads related to your book, please visit www.PacktPub.com. Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at [email protected] for more details. At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks. TM https://www2.packtpub.com/books/subscription/packtlib Do you need instant solutions to your IT questions? PacktLib is Packt's online digital book library. Here, you can search, access, and read Packt's entire library of books. Why subscribe? • Fully searchable across every book published by Packt • Copy and paste, print, and bookmark content • On demand and accessible via a web browser Free access for Packt account holders If you have an account with Packt at www.PacktPub.com, you can use this to access PacktLib today and view 9 entirely free books. Simply use your login credentials for immediate access. Table of Contents Preface xi Chapter 1: A Guided Tour of Moodle 1 A plan to create your learning site 2 Step-by-step instructions to use Moodle 2 Step 1 – learn about the Moodle experience 2 Step 2 – install Moodle 3 Step 3 – configure your site 3 Step 4 – create the framework for your learning site 3 Step 5 – make decisions about common settings 3 Step 6 – add basic course material 4 Step 7 – make your courses interactive 4 Step 8 – evaluate your students 4 Step 9 – make your course social 4 Step 10 – add collaborative activities 4 Step 11 – manage and extend your courses 5 Step 12 – take the pulse of your course 5 The Moodle philosophy 5 The Moodle experience 6 The Moodle front page 7 Arriving at the site 7 Anonymous, guest, and registered access 8 The main menu 9 Blocks 9 The site description 10 Available courses 10 Inside a course 11 The navigation bar 12 Blocks 12 The navigation block 12 Sections 13 [ i ] Table of Contents Joining a discussion 14 Completing a workshop 15 Editing mode 17 Normal mode versus editing mode 17 The edit icon 18 The delete icon 18 The hidden/shown icons 19 The group icons 19 Resources and activities 19 Adding resources and activities 20 The administration menu 22 The Moodle architecture 23 The Moodle application directory 24 The Moodle data directory 25 The Moodle database 26 Summary 26 Chapter 2: Installing Moodle 27 Installation step 1 – the web server 27 How much hosting service do you need? 28 Disk space 28 Bandwidth 29 Memory 29 Ensuring minimum prerequisites 30 Installation step 2 – subdomain or subdirectory? 31 Installation step 3 – getting and unpacking Moodle 31 Choosing a Moodle version 32 The quick way – upload and unzip 32 Uploading and decompressing the zip file on the server 32 The long way – decompress the zip file locally and upload files 34 Installation step 4 – the Moodle data directory 37 Installation step 5 – creating the Moodle database and user 38 Creating the database 39 Creating the database user 40 Installation