We’re approaching mid-semester
We hope everyone is feeling good and productive as we reach the mid-point of the Spring 2020 semester! This month’s Moodle News includes our Spring 2020 Faculty Workshops, Request your Moodle and Echo360 course in SPIRE for Spring 2020, Moodle tip of the month, Planned Downtimes, and Moodle Help and Resources.
Spring 2020 Workshops
We still have many workshops to help faculty begin and master teaching technologies. Gain experiencing in hands-on workshops about creating engaging media, how accessible technologies work, or learn about new resources on campus like 3D Printing in the Digital Media Lab.
We will be covering topics on educational technology tools and create engaging content, such as Getting Started in Moodle, Getting Started in Echo360, Teaching with Zoom, Quizzing in Moodle, A Gentle Introduction to G-Suite (Apps at UMass), Camtasia for Mac, Building Interactive Content with H5P on Moodle, Engaging Your Students with Echo360, and more.
We will be covering topics on new teaching technology, exploring accessible technology and managing your projects, such as Team Formation and Peer Assessment with CATME: A Faculty Panel, Explore the Future of Classroom Technologies, Creating Accessible Podcast, Introduction to Screen Readers, Group Work with G-Suite (Apps at UMass), and more.
Check out our Innovation Events page to see more and register. Can’t decide which workshops to take? Have questions?
Contact the Instructional Media Lab (instruct@umass.edu | 413-545-2823) for help in deciding which workshops are right for you.
Our colleagues in the IDEAS group and the Center for Teaching and Learning are also running a number of workshops to support faculty and instruction at UMass.You can see their offerings on the Online Faculty Development Upcoming Events page and the Center for Teaching & Learning Upcoming Events page.
Fall 2020 Moodle Course Requests Begin
You can request a Spring 2020 Moodle course any point during the semester. Fall 2020 Moodle course requests open March 30, 2020. Make sure to request a Moodle course for each class you want to use it in.
Request your Echo360 Course in SPIRE
Request your Echo360 course in SPIRE for your Spring 2020 semester. While making your request, you can specify that you’d like to:
- Automatically record in-person class meetings in Classrooms Equipped with Lecture Capture.
- Re-use recordings from a previous semester.
- Create screencasts and record custom lessons for students to watch outside of class with Echo360 Universal Capture.
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: Question behavior in Quizzes
The Quiz activity in Moodle allows you to control what feedback students get, and when they get it, while taking a quiz. You can configure a quiz to give students feedback after the quiz closes for everyone, immediately when they finish, or even during the quiz on each question they answer with Adaptive mode and Interactive with multiple tries.
What’s New in Moodle?
On Thursday, March 19, 2020 Moodle will be upgraded to Moodle 3.5.10. This is a minor upgrade which includes required security updates.
Planned Downtimes
Moodle will be down for up to one hour on Thursday, March 19, 2020 during our scheduled maintenance window of 7am and 9am. This was planned during Spring break to minimize disruption for instructors and students.
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 | 413-545-2823) with a question, or to set up a time for a one-on-one consultation.