The eLearning Department offers a range of training sessions designed to help lecturers build confidence and skill in using Moodle and other digital teaching tools effectively. Below you’ll find descriptions of each topic and the status of development and offering.
Analytics Graph: Spotting At-Risk Students and Acting Early
Status of Guide: Currently being Developed
Status of Training Sessions: Not Yet Started
Description: This training introduces the Analytics Graph plugin, a set of five visual dashboards that help lecturers identify student engagement patterns before they become problems. From grade distributions and assignment submission timeliness to resource access and weekly activity hits, these graphs surface which students are falling behind, disengaging, or missing coursework — and let you act immediately by clicking directly on a graph to email an at-risk group or an individual student. The session focuses on using these tools for proactive student retention: catching learners who haven’t logged in, accessed materials, or submitted work, and reaching out before disengagement turns into dropout. Participants will leave able to read each chart, interpret behavioural patterns, and build timely, targeted outreach into their regular course monitoring routine.
Mastering Forums: Effective Announcements and Student Engagement
Status of Guide: Currently being Developed
Status of Training Sessions: Not Yet Started
Description: This training shows lecturers how to use the Forum activity in Moodle as a reliable, everyday communication channel with students. It covers the Announcement forum for broadcasting course updates, deadlines, and reminders, and the “Subject Inquiries and Discussions” forum for responding to student questions specific to the subject in one central, searchable thread. A key focus is that forum posts are automatically delivered as email notifications to subscribed students — meaning a single post reaches every student’s inbox without extra effort, making forums a far more effective and far-reaching communication tool. Participants will leave knowing how to post clear announcements, manage and reply to student inquiries efficiently, and use forum subscriptions to keep communication consistent and visible.
Grading with Rubrics: Efficient, Consistent, and Meaningful Feedback
Status of Guide: Currently being Developed
Status of Training Sessions: Not Yet Started
Description: This session equips lecturers with the practical skills needed to grade student assignments in Moodle using the Rubric grading method. Participants will learn how to build a rubric with clear criteria and performance levels, attach it to an assignment, and apply it consistently during marking. The session highlights why rubrics outperform the Direct Grading method — where ticks simply mark work as correct or incorrect — by breaking each submission into weighted criteria, allowing lecturers to grade large classes quickly without sacrificing consistency, while automatically generating structured, criterion-by-criterion feedback that tells each student exactly where they did well and where they need to improve. By the end of the session, lecturers will be able to design an effective rubric and use it to grade efficiently at scale while delivering feedback of real value to students.
Exporting Grades from Moodle
Status of Guide: Currently being Developed
Status of Training Sessions: Not Yet Started
Description: This topic covers how to extract grade data from the Moodle Gradebook for use outside the platform. Lecturers will learn how to generate grade exports in common formats (such as Excel or CSV), select which grade items and categories to include, and apply filters for specific groups or grading periods. The session also covers best practices for keeping exported records accurate and consistent with the live gradebook — ensuring exported grades are ready for institutional reporting, moderation, or submission to academic administration.
Uploading Content Properly for Best Student Online Learning Experience
Status of Guide: Not Yet Developed
Status of Training Sessions: Not Yet Started
Description: This topic covers best practices for adding course materials to Moodle in a way that is accessible, well-organised, and easy for students to navigate. Lecturers will learn how to structure course sections logically, use clear and consistent file naming and labelling, choose appropriate formats for different content types (documents, slides, video, and multimedia), and manage file sizes to avoid slow loading or access issues. The session also covers using Moodle’s resource and label tools to add context around uploaded materials, helping students understand what each item is and how it fits into the course, ultimately creating a smoother and more engaging online learning experience.
Managing the Gradebook
Status of Guide: Not Yet Developed
Status of Training Sessions: Not Yet Started
Description: This topic covers how to keep the Moodle Gradebook organised, accurate, and aligned with a course’s grading structure. Lecturers will learn how to set up grade categories, apply appropriate aggregation methods (such as weighted or simple averages), add and adjust manual grade items for work submitted outside Moodle, and review the grader report to spot and correct discrepancies. The session also covers how to manage overridden grades and handle empty or missing marks, so the gradebook consistently reflects each student’s true progress.
Creating a Quiz Activity for Online Test
Status of Guide: Partially Developed
Status of Training Sessions: Not Yet Started
Description: This topic covers the fundamentals of building a Quiz activity in Moodle for use as a formal online assessment. Lecturers will learn how to add a new Quiz to their course, create and organise questions from Moodle’s question bank, and structure the quiz layout for a smooth testing experience. The session also covers selecting appropriate question types and arranging them into a coherent, well-paced assessment ready to be configured for online test conditions.