Faculty

Scholar

Scholar is Simpson's version of an open source course management program called Moodle.  This webpage provides a list of books, handouts, videos, and people at Simpson who can help you learn to use Scholar.

People

Jule Thorsen, Instructional Services Specialist, is available to help you learn Scholar.  Jule can be reached at jule.thorsen@simpson.edu or at extension 1844.

To request a Scholar site, send an email to scholar@simpson.edu or to Chuck Johnson.  Please include the Term, Department, Course Number, Section, and Course Title in your e-mail.  For Example, Fall 2009 ACCT-251-A Principles of Accounting I.

Books and Websites

Jason Cole and Helen Foster’s book Using Moodle: Teaching with the Popular Open Source Course Management System is now available as a free download.  

Moodle provides documentation for teachers .

Answers to Frequently Asked Questions about using Scholar are available.

An Index of Help Files is also provided.

Handouts

Assignments - This shows how to add and grade an assignment

Emailing all Students - This shows how to email all your class participants in Scholar

Enrolling and Unenrolling Students

Extra Credit - This shows how to designate a grading opportunity as extra credit

Importing Material from a Previous Course Site - If you have used Scholar to teach a course in the past and now you are teachign that course again, you can import all the materials from the old class into the new class.  

Organizing and Displaying Information - This shows how to change between the weekly view and a topics view, how to link to a file or website, and how to add labels and lines to make your site look nicer.

Using the Gradebook in Scholar - This handout describes a variety of different ways of entering and calculating grades.

Quizzes

Using Hot Potatoes to Create a Scholar Quiz

This handout provides instructions for creating a Scholar quiz if you have a testbank such as TestGen or ExamView.

This handout provides instructions for creating a quiz by first typing the items into a text file and then moving them to Scholar.

Videos

The following videos are designed to help teachers learn specific aspects of using Moodle.  If you find that any of the links no longer work, or you find additional videos you would like to see added to this list, please contact shelly.priebe@simpson.edu.

Getting Started

Logging in and getting oriented with Moodle (5:08) provides a nice overview for people who have never used Moodle before.

Customing your profile (4:07) explains how to setup your profile to provide your students with additional information about you such as your campus extension.

Customizing course settings (3:49) explains how to change the basic layout of your course.  This video shows how to switch from a topic view to a weekly view.  Most Simpson Scholar sites start in the weekly view, but this video will still provide you with the information you need to shift to a topic view.  A similar video is available here (1:50).

Monitoring student's activities (2:55) shows how to see how students are utilizing your course site.

Adding Resources

Adding files (3:17) explains how to move a file to Scholar.  The video shows how to move a Word file.  Keep in mind that if a student doesn't have the same program you have, the student may not be able to open the file.  Consider saving files in generic formats (PDF or RTF) before moving them to Scholar.

Working with files and folders (2:39) demonstrates how to put files in folders in Scholar.

Adding labels (1:33) shows how to add labels to organize materials on your Scholar site.

Adding a website link (2:36) shows how to add links to websites.

Adding youtube videos (1:20) shows how to include youtube videos on your Scholar site.  This video is a little fuzzy.

Make your course page look like a webpage (2:11) demonstrates a clever way to alter the appearance of your course page.

Communication Tools

Creating forums (5:23) shows how to add and edit a forum so that students can discuss topics online without having to all log in at the same time.

Chat tool (4:34) shows how to add a chat room so that you can communicate with students in real time.  This is a text only feature.  If you want to communicate using audio and video, consider using Dimdim (free for groups up to 20 people).

Creating a wiki (6:36) shows how to add and use a wiki.  A wiki is a space that anyone in the class can edit.   

Online Quizzes

The quick overview of quizzes (8:06) demonstrates how to create a quiz in Scholar.  If you want a slightly longer version, try Quizzes Part I (9:50) and Quizzes Part II (9:01).

Using Aiken (4:53) demonstrates an easy way to create a text file of mulitple choice items and then upload that file to Scholar to create a quiz.

Using quiz statistics (5:36) demonstrates how to determine which items in a quiz are causing problems for students and shows how to change the answers and regrade student's work.

Last Updated: 11/18/11