Getting Started in Moodle

1. Accounts and Passwords
2. Moodle "Happy Place"
3. Moodle Navigation
4. Editing your Profile
   

Accounts and Passwords

Your Moodle username will be your NetID
Your Moodle password will be your GSLIS Domain password

By default, all members of the GSLIS community have an account in Moodle, and have read-only access to course spaces.  In order to fully participate in courses, you will need to be enrolled in that class.  Access to other group spaces, such as the student groups, may vary based on the needs of those groups.

Moodle Happy Place

Once you sign in to Moodle, you'll see the Moodle "Happy Place" or GSLIS Intranet.  This page will provide your gateway to school resources, the community bulletin boards, your courses, and more.

Moodle Navigation

Like LEEP, Moodle has a "breadcrumb trail" for navigation in the upper left hand corner, just below the GSLIS banner.

This example shows the site name (Home) and the class page (SP07LIS409LEB).

This example shows the site name, the class page, and the resource type (Forums).

This example shows the site name, the class page, the resource type, and the individual activity (Forum: Folktale collections).

You can click on any of these links to step back to the site, class page, resource type, etc. Clicking on the resource type (ex. Forums) will take you to a page listing all of that type of resource (in this case, discussion forums). It is difficult to get lost because you can always step back using this top navigation.

Navigation Extras

Moodle organizes course content into modules. These modules can be arranged in a variety of ways; most common is by week. Moodle allows you to navigate between modules quickly by collapsing modules you're not currently viewing - no need to scroll through 15 weeks of class material when you only need to look at one!

To collapse course content, click on this icon in the upper right hand corner of any module except the very first one on the screen:

This will collapse the course space so that the only modules displayed are the first and current ones. The icon will also change to this:

In order to navigate between hidden modules, click on the "Jump..." drop down menu at the bottom of the page:

This will give you a menu of the modules you can view. Clicking on the name of the week/module will take you to that module:

Editing your Profile

The first thing you will need to do once you've logged into Moodle is edit your profile.  Your profile is linked from the upper right hand corner of your Moodle "Happy Place":

Click on your name to access your profile:

To make changes, click on the Edit profile tab.

Your profile contains both required and optional fields.  The required fields will be filled in by default, and can be updated by you.  These fields include your email address, description (like your LEEP bio), and location (Champaign-Urbana, by default).

Like your LEEP bio, you can also include a picture of yourself. Upload a picture by clicking on Browse, locating the picture file on your computer, then clicking on Open. 

If you upload a photo and then decide to change it, you must first delete the existing profile photo (mark the checkbox next to the photo), save the changes, then go back in to your profile to select a new photo.

While Moodle will let you use whatever photo you'd like, your instructors would prefer that you use a photo of you so that they can recognize you in class.

You can also customize a number of settings that will help make your use of Moodle more productive.

• Email format: You can choose to have emails sent from Moodle in Plain text format or Pretty HTML format. HTML format will include images and the Moodle colour scheme in emails, but will be slightly larger in size.
• Forum auto-subscribe: If you select yes for this it will mean that when you post a message to a forum, you will be subscribed to that forum and receive email copies of all messages for that forum. You may unsubscribe from forums if you wish as well.
• Email digest type: You may choose to receive all emails from Moodle in one daily message. There is also the option to receive either the complete message or just the Subjects from forums you subscribe to.
• Forum tracking: This is a useful option to enable. If it is enabled on your Moodle site it will highlight unread forum messages so you can easily see what is new.

Once you are done making your changes, click on Update profile to leave this page.