IT Center Blog

With RWTHmoodle at RWTH Aachen University, e-learning 2020 is easily possible from home.
Source: Unsplash

Today’s article in the mini-series “Our Services & the HomeOffice” deals with the use of RWTHmoodle and the digital course rooms.

Course rooms & participants

To apply for a digital learning room for your course, you can simply contact the “LV-Coordination” of your chair or institute. This person can order the desired course room. Lecturers of the corresponding courses are automatically authorised as “Manager” if a TIM-CAMPUS-Coupling exists.

Instructions for creating course rooms.

Automatic booking of “lecturers” and “assistants” as managers.

As “Manager“, you have the possibility to add manually further persons to the course room besides the students who were automatically authorized due to a confirmed place in RWTHonline.

Automatic booking of students in the course rooms.

Explanation of the roles and rights in RWTHmoodle.

Instructions for adding and removing people in the course room.

Instructions for booking external persons in the course rooms.

To provide materials from previous semesters you can use the import function in the course room. It is also possible to create many different, interactive working materials and activities.

Instructions for importing and reusing

Instructions for creating resources or activities.

If you want to make videos available in the course room, you can do this easily in two steps with the RWTH streaming server: Upload and embedding.

Instructions for uploading videos to the streaming server.

Instructions for embedding videos in the course room.

If you wish to contact students directly, you can use the “Announcements” activity in RWTHmoodle or you can use “Quickmail” to send e-mails comfortably to the participants of your course room.

Instructions for creating an announcement in the course room.

Instructions for sending e-mails via the course room (Quickmail).

Support

If you need support for continuing online courses during the digital semester, you can find support at the IT-ServiceDesk. Furthermore, the Learning Platform Management department of the Center for Teaching and Learning Services (CLS) also offers a RWTHmoodle consultation hour in which individual questions can be discussed personally. (Please note these pages are currently only available in German.) It is also worthwhile to take a look at the CLS’s advice on distance and online teaching at the RWTH.

More information is available at any time:

https://www.itc.rwth-aachen.de/corona

Responsible for the content of this article are Liza Schwarz and Nicole Filla.

The summer semester 2020 is just a few weeks old and yet it is already a very special one. Due to the corona pandemic, all courses will be held online this semester.

For lecturers and students at RWTH this is a special challenge, but especially the teaching and learning portal RWTHmoodle offers many great opportunities for communication with students and for teaching and learning content. There, lecturers can use virtual course rooms and thus exchange information with students and make learning materials available.

Here are some tips and tricks about RWTHmoodle for lecturers
Source: Pixabay

In this article you will learn more about the different functions of RWTHmoodle which are especially important at the start of the digital summer semester. Beside the descriptions of the different features you will find links to helpful pages of the IT Center Documentation Portal and further information.

Opencast for video upload

With the streaming server of RWTH it is easy to provide recorded lectures or other video material in the course rooms. These videos can then be viewed by the students in the course room. Video material of up to 10 GB can be uploaded. Follow the link.

Managing tasks and duties

If you do not want to organize student submissions by e-mail, you can use the activity “Task” in RWTHmoodle. In this way, tasks can be set, submitted and evaluated completely digitally. All this is displayed in the course room in a simple and clear way.

Notify and inform students

To keep students up to date with the latest developments, there are a few options in RWTHmoodle. We recommend the forum “Announcements“. It allows students to be notified about new announcements by e-mail. However, the announcements remain permanently visible in the course room via the forum.

Create student folder for submissions

The Student Folder activity is a great option for sharing content and materials between students. If lecturers include such a folder, students can also upload materials in the course room and share them with others.

Allocate consultation hours by appointment planner

With the activity of the “Appointment Planner”, the allocation of consultation hours is no longer a problem using the digital way. Booking online is very easy once the activity has been activated by the lecturer.

Restrict access and visibility

If requirements for the view of certain materials should be fulfilled in advance, this can be easily controlled via RWTHmoodle. Both the previous completion of a task, the membership in a group or a certain time: All this can be set to limit the access to files, follow the link here.

Designing tests

To create tests in course rooms in RWTHmoodle you need to activate the activity “Test“. It allows you to create and run tests for students and thus allows easy retrieval of knowledge despite spatial distance.

Designing interactive course room elements with H5P

H5P makes it easy to integrate interactive elements into the course room. These include dictations, cloze texts, pictures, memory games and the possibility to conduct a quiz. All this is activated with just a few clicks and provides a varied alternative to the other content.

If there are still questions that cannot be answered by the tutorials or if there is a general need for advice about RWTHmoodle, the CLS “Learning Platform Management” department now offers online consultation hours. These can be booked under the following link:

https://www.buchsys.de/cls-aachen/angebote/aktuellerzeitraum/RWTHmoodle-Sprechstundeonline.html

We hope you have gained a good insight into the most important functions of RWTHmoodle for lecturers and wish you a smooth implementation of your teaching concept in this very special semester.

Responsible for the content of this article are Susanne Kubiak and Liza Schwarz.

Welcome to RWTH!
Source: Pixabay

We, the IT Center, would like to welcome you, dear newly enrolled students. We all know that every beginning is exciting and sometimes a little difficult. As if it wasn’t enough to begin a new phase of life as a first semester student, you are even rushing into a digital first semester.

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