All Moodle courses should be clearly structured, with accessible, clearly labelled content that is easy for students to find. If you’ve met the University’s VLE baseline requirements for your Moodle course, then you will be achieving a reasonable level of clarity, navigability, consistency and accessibility. This page is about how move beyond the baseline expectations and provide an enhanced learning experience to your students, with a higher level of consistency, accessibility and engagement (as per the institutional digital learning framework).
Consistency
The look and feel and underlying structure of Moodle spaces should be consistent within and across all modules. It is especially important to have consistent course structures within your department or programme, and to use the same activity-types for presenting the same types of content.
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- Adopt consistent use of imagery across the module front page and subsection headers
- A weekly microstructure, using subsections where appropriate, should be used throughout the module, for example:
- Orientation > online reading > pre-class tasks > in-class materials > post-class tasks > formative weekly quiz
- Always use subsections to structure the content whenever there is a substantial number of files. For example, if there are more than three files under a heading, it should be a subsection.
- Use accessible, HTML-based content wherever possible.
- Uploaded PDFs and Word documents are harder to make fully accessible and there is a risk that students will download a copy which will fall out of date is changes are made during the course.
- Apply activity types consistently:
- Books for structured or multi-page content
- Pages for short explanatory text
- Interactive walkthroughs (e.g. H5P) where they add pedagogic value
- Panopto for lecture recordings
- eStream for additional videos
- Don’t upload video files that students will have to download to watch
- Embedded weekly reading lists using Resource list (embedded item)
- Moodle quizor H5P for weekly formative quizzes
Accessibility
Learning content must be accessible to all students. This refers to students’ ability to navigate the Moodle space and find what they need as much as it does to the accessibility of the content itself, so there is some overlap with the requirement for consistency here.
Here you will find some general guidance around how to make the learning materials you use in Moodle accessible. You can find more detailed guidance on digital accessibility here.
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Following the baseline and enhanced requirements for consistency of course design and layout will also make the course more accessible for neurodiverse learners.
A good rule of thumb is to use HTML-based content such as Moodle books, pages, and text/media areas wherever possible instead of downloadable Word documents or PDFs. These are easier to make accessible (due to the built-in accessibility of Moodle) and easier to keep up to date.
Short descriptions should be added to a section as a text and media area, longer (e.g. a full page or more) explanatory text should be a Page activity, and long form documents such as handbooks should be added as a Moodle Book.
Ally is a tool which has been added to Moodle. It provides guidance on how to improve the accessibility of PDF, Word, PowerPoint and other resources uploaded to Moodle. An icon alongside your resource gives you an initial idea of how accessible it is. More information can be found on the Ally Ask page.
All videos must include closed captions (CCs). Automatic captions are added to Panopto by default and eStream can create captions for you with a simple click of a button. Watch the video for guidance on adding closed captions in eStream. More information on Accessible videos is available from Creating accessible videos.
Heading styles should be used in documents. These not only provide a consistent structure, more importantly, they can be used by screen reading software, enabling users to to skip through to a specific section of a document. More information on this can be found on the accessibility checklists linked below (in Files).
Documents uploaded to Moodle must also be accessible. There are checklists for making accessible documents: Word, PowerPoint, PDFs and Excel.
You can also watch a video on making documents accessible.
Diagrams, maps, images, graphs etc. should include alternative text (alt text). Adding alt text to complex diagrams and images can be difficult. The University has produced some guidance on adding alt text to help with this.
Engagement
Online learning spaces should include content that will appeal to and interest students to engage them in the learning process. Use interactive materials to promote student engagement and active learning.
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Use collaboration tools such as Moodle Board, Padlet, and Microsoft Whiteboard for brainstorming and group work. Can either be embedded or linked from your Moodle space for asynchronous collaboration.
- Embed videos from internal (Panopto/eStream) or external sources (YouTube)
- Use Panopto or eStream to make your videos interactive by including quizzes are certain stages.
- Use Xerte or H5P to create multimedia interactive learning objects such as short online courses or scenario exercises.
Use Mentimeter to create polls and quizzes to engage students in synchronous or asynchronous settings. However you conduct your polls, you can embed the results in your Moodle space for reference or for later use.
See How to: Polling with Mentimeter in Microsoft Teams for an example of how to use Mentimer when teaching online.
General housekeeping
It is important to regularly review and update content to:
- Ensure information such as dates are still correct.
- Check links to external videos and other assets still work.
- Check the overall page is organised and consistent particularly if multiple people are uploading content.
- Monitor the accessibility of content particularly if multiple people are uploading.
- Remove any obsolete or irrelevant content.