Moodle

Moodle is a web application that allows faculty to post course materials (like documents, discussion boards, assignments, video and audio) online making them available to their students around the clock.  Instructors can make use of discussion boards, quizzes, online activities, and other tools available in the system to expand the the walls of a traditional classroom. Moodle can also help you to maintain paperless classroom or meeting.

Moodle provides a flexible environment for all types of learning communities, whether a “regular” course, departmental project, or university-wide task force.

Clark’s Moodle is provided and maintained by Clark University’s Academic Technology Services team (part of ITS).

FYI for geeks: The acronym “Moodle” stands for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment.

Most Moodle courses are created automatically. All “regular” courses at Clark (those courses that students register for as part of the regular registration process via CUWeb), automatically receive a Moodle site. When courses are cross-listed, Moodle creates a container for the “master” course. It is the faculty member’s decision on if they wish to use the automatically created site. If they do, they should ‘enable’ the course in Moodle (click here for information on how to enable a course). ATS also manually creates courses for needs outside of “regular” courses.

The process of enrolling students in automatically created courses happens several times each day. A process checks Registrar data to see which students are registered for which classes, then registered students are placed in their corresponding Moodle courses. When courses are cross-listed, Moodle includes all students registered for cross-listed sections in the “master” course created.

If there are students missing from your Moodle course enrollments, please contact the Academic Technologist assigned to your department. Click here to contact your Moodle liaison.

No. For faculty, Moodle courses will remain accessible in Moodle for about 3 years.

Students will lose access to a course soon after grades are released. This is in part to comply with copyright law which specifies that only registered students may have access to materials used under fair use exemptions for the duration of the course. If you have a student that requires continued access, please contact your Academic Technology Liaison.

Generally a course remains in Moodle for approximately 3 years after the start of the semester in which it is taught. Clean-up happens in Spring each year, and you will receive communication from ITS notifying you that your older courses will be removed from the system.