My students can't see their quiz grades. What should I do?

Quizzes have some additional visibility controls not found within other modules.  Usually an issue with these settings is what prevents students from seeing their quiz grades. To access the specific visibility settings for a quiz, turn editing on and to the right of the quiz select Edit and then Edit settings from the dropdown menu.  Scroll down to Review Options.  This section allows you to control what students see and when:

Points, refers to students scores.  Depending on your language settings, it may be labeled as Marks. If you uncheck this option for a particular time period, students will not be able to see their score at that time.  For example, if Points is unchecked in the second column, then students will not be able to see their score immediately upon completion of the quiz.  If Points is checked in the third column, students are able to go back to the quiz after they have exited the quiz and view their score as long as the closing time for the quiz has not been reached.  

If you have set a close time for the quiz, the last column will be any time after that time has passed.  If you don't have a close time then this column is disabled. 

How can I view my Moodle course as a student?

There are times when you may find it helpful to see your Moodle course the way it looks to your students.  To activate student view, click on your profile picture in the upper right and from the dropdown menu select Switch role to...

From the list of options, select Student.  Depending on your role in the course, you may see different options than the ones displayed below. 

You may now view and interact with your course much like a student would.  In the upper right corner above your name you will notice that the word Student appears while you are in this mode. 

Once you are done viewing the course as a student, click on your profile picture again and from the dropdown menu select Return to my normal role.  You will not be able to view and interact with Moodle the way you normally do. 

How can I check to see if a student has logged into Moodle or viewed a particular resource that I have posted?

There are a variety of ways that you can check student activity in Moodle to get a better sense of student engagement with the posted content. 

Last access to course

If you are interested in finding out when students last accessed the course's Moodle site, you can see this information on the Participants page.  

Using the left navigation menu, select Participants

To the right of each student's name, under Last access to course it will indicate how long it has been since the student last viewed the course (e.g. 3 days 5 hours)

Activity Logs

Activity logs will provide you with timestamped records of when students accessed specific items within the Moodle course. 

1. From the main course page, click the gear icon and select More 
2. Select Reports>Logs.  From here, the logs can be narrowed down by student, activity, and/or date. 

Activity Completion Report

This report will tell you who has completed each item based on its completion settings (set on the Edit settings page for that item)

1. From the main course page, click the gear icon and select More 
2. Select Reports>Activity Completion

Using Groups in Moodle

Assigning students to work in teams is a great way to increase student engagement.  Student groups can also be implemented in Moodle.  One of the most common uses for this is to allow students to submit assignments in groups.  This can significantly streamline your grading process if you're already using Moodle to collect assignments.  When set up, scores and feedback for each group assignment need to be entered only once, and Moodle will give that score and feedback to each member of the group.

Another popular use is to give group members a private forum on Moodle in which to communicate with each other.  Even if you don't have students submitting their assignments in Moodle, giving groups a space of their own in which to communicate can help them collaborate more effectively.

See this tutorial on the Moodle Training Course for more information on how to create student groups on Moodle, and how to set up group assignments and private forums.  See the video below for a brief overview:

Open Access Textbooks

What are open access textbooks?

Open access textbooks are free, peer-reviewed, online textbooks.  Depending on the publisher, open access textbooks can be found in a variety of formats including PDF, html, Word doc, etc.  In some instances publishers will provide printed copies of their textbooks for a nominal fee. 

Open access textbooks are available for nearly every area of study. A majority are released under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license. 

How do I find open access textbooks?

The following is a list of popular open access textbook providers:

OpenStax: http://cnx.org/search?q=
Books can be viewed online or downloaded in PDF, ePUB or Offline HTML formats.

Saylor Academy: http://www.saylor.org/books/ 
Books can be downloaded in PDF or DOC formats.

Due to the abundance of open access textbooks and providers, several institutions, including Purdue University and the University of Minnesota, have partnered to provide a search engine called the Open Textbook Library in order to make it easier to find textbooks by subject and keyword. 

Open Textbook Library: https://open.umn.edu/opentextbooks/

In addition to providing a searchable database of textbooks, the Open Textbook Library also allows instructors to rate textbooks that they have adopted.