Finding your way through Moodle

Finding Your Way in Moodle

To help you find your way around your Course, Moodle provides a variety of navigation tools. Below you will find an introduction to the most useful of these.

The Course Page/ Homepage

The course page or homepage is the first thing you will have seen when you entered this Course. It lists the entire contents of the course, broken up into an introduction and a number of topics that appear down the large left hand column. It also contains a variety of other navigation aids, called blocks, in its right side-column and these are outlined below.

At the right hand side of each topic box you will see a small white box which, when clicked on, will hide from view all other topics except the introduction and the one clicked. This can be very useful to save scrolling up and down long courses.

To view all the topics again simply click again on the icon, which should now show two small white boxes. Alternatively, if you wish to display a different topic on its own, you can select it from the drop-down list found directly underneath the single displayed topic.

Recent activity

The Recent activity block is one of the first things you should check when you log into a course. It gives you an overview of changes to the course since you last logged in including additions or changes to the course content and any forum posts. You can access the new material by clicking on the hyperlinked title.

By clicking on Full report of recent activity you can see a much more detailed breakdown of what has been happening on the course.

Activities list

The Activities block will list each type of activity in your course. Clicking on the name of an activity will take you to a list showing each occurrence of that activity, organized by topic.

Online Users

The Online Users block will display the name and user icon of anyone who has accessed the site in the last five minutes.

People

This block lets you see who else is involved in your course. Clicking on Participants will show you a list of the Course Tutor and of all enrolled students. By clicking on their picture you can get more information about them (if available).

Edit Profile allows you to record or change information about yourself. It is particularly important that you keep your email address up to date.

Within Activities

When you are in an activity you will have access to a different range of navigation options.

Breadcrumb trail

One of the most used navigation aids in Moodle is what web designers call the breadcrumb trail. This is used to find your way back if you find yourself lost deep within a Course.

You can see a breadcrumb trail at the top of every page in Moodle (including this one). It is a line of links running horizontally underneath the site name and/or logo.

The breadcrumb trail on this particular page, in the upper left of the screen says:

guide >> Home >> Resources >> Finding your way through Moodle

All but the last section will be clickable links taking you steps back towards the beginning of the Moodle site.

The most commonly used link is the Course Name which returns you to the main list of topics in your course. The Course name for this Course is 'Home'. The 'Resources' link before the 'Finding your way through Moodle' link in the upper left of this page will lead you to a full list of all the pages in your Course that are called Resources in Moodle. Resources are simply pages of text that are displayed for you. Resources differ from Activities-- while Resources are flat pages of text or images, Activities ask you to participate and do something.

Other hints

Using the 'Back' button

Usually, when navigating in Moodle, using your browser's 'Back' button will return you to the previous page you viewed. This will not work if your last action was to change the site in some way, e.g. by posting a message to a forum, as returning to that page will attempt to add the message again. You will not break or damage anything by using the back button in these cases, though you may be presented with an error message rather than the page you expected.

Getting help

If you find yourself stuck in Moodle there are two immediate sources of help. Firstly, hovering over most icons will produce a small pop-up text, called a tool-tip, that will give you a brief hint about what will happen if you click on it.

Secondly, there are small, orange circles containing a question mark next to many of the controls. Clicking on them will pop-up a window that contains help relevant to your current situation.