Moodle Tip of the Month: Sort Your Gradebook Using Groups.
Did you know you can Sort the Moodle Gradebook Using Groups? Using groups in conjunction with the Moodle gradebook makes it easier to filter data or enter grades. Even more when you have a big class and TAs in charge of grading different groups of students. Also, it can be really helpful for those who teach Multi-section courses, since Moodle auto-creates groups for each section.
Request Your Moodle Courses in SPIRE
Fall and Winter 2022 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.
If you haven’t requested your Moodle course yet, see:
Request your 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. Echo360 course requests for Fall 2022 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.
You can connect your Zoom and Echo360 accounts, and have all cloud recordings copied into Echo360.
Echo360 Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) uses speech to text algorithms to create an interactive transcript for your recordings. After you do a little editing for accuracy, your students will be able to study for exams.
Once your Echo360 courses are ready, it’s easy to give students access to Echo360 recordings through Moodle.
Planned Downtimes
There are no planned downtimes outside of regular maintenance windows for October 2022.
Scheduled routine maintenance windows for UMass Amherst Moodle in the Cloud are Thursdays 11pm-12am (ET). Regular maintenance is a necessity for a stable, secure, and improving service. Many of these maintenance windows will not actually have the site unavailable for more than a few minutes, but it is still not advised to plan activities or set due dates during maintenance windows.
You can check the status of Moodle, Zoom, and other supported teaching technologies on the IT Services Status for Remote Teaching and Learning page.
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.
- Request a consultation with an Instructional Designer.
- Join our Instructor Support Zoom room between 10am and 3pm to meet with a staff member.