The Summer 2020 Semester Has Begun
The summer is here, and so are we. We’re still hard at work making improvements to Moodle, supporting instructors, and running webinars to improve your teaching technology use and experiences. This month’s Moodle News includes information about our Summer support, Summer 2020 Workshops, Request your Summer and Fall Moodle course, Request your Summer and Fall Echo360 courses, Moodle tip of the month, IT Computer Classrooms -Software Request deadline extended, and Moodle help and resources.
Summer Support
Just like every Summer, even though we’re not on campus, we’re still here to help you. We have 3 avenues for support, in addition to over 40 webinars that will be offered.
- Support through email. Just reach out to instruct@umass.edu.
- Schedule an appointment with us. Please send an email to instruct@umass.edu with a brief description of your goals/needs, and suggest a few times you are available between 9am and 4pm, Monday – Friday. We will schedule you in as soon as possible. .
- Join our Instructor Support Zoom meeting between 9am and 4pm to meet with a staff member. Please note that wait times depend on the volume of requests.
Summer 2020 Workshops!
Our Summer 2020 workshop session is starting! We’re offering workshops on building online and accessible content, creating engaging media, and new ways to deliver lectures to your students. Check out the Instructional Innovation Events page for more information and to register.
Can’t decide which workshops to take? Have questions? Contact the Instructional Media Lab for help in deciding which workshops are right for you. Contact us at instruct@umass.edu.
Request your Summer & Fall Moodle Courses in SPIRE
Summer and Fall Moodle course requests are available in SPIRE. Don’t forget that each semester you will need to request Moodle for the courses you are teaching.
For detailed instructions, see:
Request your Summer and Fall Echo360 Courses
Echo360 allows you to create recordings of your lectures to deliver to students. Students can access recordings to learn new content or review content to reinforce the information. The system also allows you to add interactive content and measure student engagement.
Echo360 course requests for the Summer and Fall 2020 semesters are available in SPIRE. Just like Moodle, each semester you will need to request Echo360 for the courses you want to use it in.
For step by step instructions, see Request Lecture Capture. Once your Echo360 courses are ready, it’s easy to give students access to Echo360 recordings through Moodle.
Moodle Tip of the Month: Download all submissions and Upload Multiple feedback files in Assignments
When grading students assignments in Moodle you can Download all your students submissions as a .zip file. This could be useful if you like to print or view your students submissions outside of the Moodle interface, specially if you have a large list of students. If you like making comments in your students’ work using Track Changes in a Word document, or adding comments to a PDF using Adobe Acrobat, bulk downloading submissions is a time saver. Additionally, if you have performed the bulk download, when you are ready to upload the feedback documents to your students, Moodle can automatically match feedback files to the correct student. See detailed step by step documentation on how to Upload Multiple Feedback files Using a .Zip file.
IT Computer Classrooms – Software Request Deadline Extended to June 30th
If you need specialized software that you are using for a course installed on IT Computer classroom machines, the deadline to submit requests software has been extended until Tuesday, June 30th. For more, please see Request Software in IT Computer Classrooms.
Moodle Help and Resources for Instructors
To learn more about Moodle or to get help, you can:
- Review our Moodle Support Articles.
- Contact the Instructional Media Lab (instruct@umass.edu) with a question, or to set up a time for a one-on-one consultation.
- Join our Instructor Support Zoom room between 9am and 4pm to meet with a staff member.