Why Use Moodle?

Well, for starters, Moodle is the world’s most popular learning management system. The entire system is built specifically for you to be able to create an online learning site in just a few minutes.

The platform is free to use and is open source. You will be able to find a good deal of tutorials to help you through your Moodle website building journey.

Moodle provides educators, administrators and learners of all ages the ability to use a single robust, secure, and integrated system to create personalized learning environments.

It is not too difficult to learn to use, and installation is very easy using the one-click method that is provided by your web host.

In this tutorial, we want to figure out how to show student course stats across your Moodle website. There is a fantastic Moodle plugin that will allow you to do just that.

Let’s take a look at the plugin and then set it up together.

My Course Status

My Course Status is a student block plugin that provides an inclusive completion report and gives Moodle course stats for various classes. The plugin can be added at both the system and course levels of your website.

The system will display what has been attempted, while the course level will display attempted modules of a course. You can also download a report in the form of an MS Word document.

After you install and activate the plugin, you will see it is developed based on three conditions. These conditions are:

• Module completion, or Condition A
• Module with course complete, or Condition B
• Course grade complete, or Condition C

Note: For a course, choose condition A / condition B / condition C, try not to choose more than one condition, though.

Let’s take a look at how to get this plugin installed on your Moodle website so you can start using it.

Install and Activate Plugin

In order to start showing Moodle course stats on your website, you first need to install and activate the plugin. There are a few different ways to install a Moodle plugin. Basically you have the choice of:

• Installing Directly From Moodle Directory
• Via an Uploaded Zip File
• Manually at the Server

For this tutorial, we are going to install the plugin using the uploaded zip file method.

First, head over to the main plugin page for My Course Status and go ahead and download the plugin to your machine.

Now, go ahead and log in to your Moodle website admin area. Once you are in the main admin area, you are going to click on the “Site Administration” tab. This is located in the left menu area of the backend.

This will take you to the main administration panel for your website. Click on the “Plugins” tab and below, that click on “Install Plugins.”

You will see the main installation page. You have the choices mentioned above. However, as stated, we are using the “Install plugin from zip file” method.

Go ahead and drag and drop the My Course Status plugin that you already downloaded into the box.

Once the plugin is in the upload box, go ahead and click on the blue “Install plugin from Zip file” button.

You will be directed to the installation, and if all goes well, you will get a plugin installed successfully message.

From here click on the “Continue” button to move on.

Setup My Course Status Conditions

Now that you have the plugin running, it is time to set your configurations in place. Before that, let’s make one note.

Note: You will actually need to have both courses and modules within those courses set up to use the plugin from here. The instructions below take you to that point, at which time you need to apply the conditions you want to the course modules you have created.

Click on the “Site Administration tab again located in the left side menu of your admin area. Once you are in the site admin area, look for “Advanced Features” and click on that link.

Scroll down until you see the “Enable completion tracking” checkbox. The box should be checked by default. If it isn’t, go ahead and check it. This will allow you to set course completion conditions within your modules using the plugin

Click on the “Save Changes” button and you are all set. You can now go to your modules and set conditions.

Remember, this plugin is developed based on three conditions:

• Using Condition A is for module completion
• Adding Condition B is for module with course completion
• Or Condition C is for course grade completion

For a course, choose condition A, condition B, or condition C. Try not to choose more than one condition.

Final Thoughts

Moodle offers a ton on the side of course building and management. There are lots of different options when it comes to building and designing courses and modules.

The My Course Status plugin gives you the ability to provide inclusive course completion and stat reports to your students. This allows them to view what they have done and what they still need to do.

Have you ever used this plugin? Is there another way you like to track student progress within your Moodle courses?

The post How to Show Moodle Course Stats to Students appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Luckily, this is very easy to do with the help of plugins. Today, I will demonstrate how to test the speed of Moodle with the Speed Test tool.

Why Test the Speed of Moodle?

As I said, speed is really important. For starters, it affects how long your visitors will spend loading pages. The longer it takes, the worse their experience is.

And considering Moodle is mainly used for educational purposes, you need to make it the best experience possible. Otherwise, people look for alternative methods of learning.

Secondly, speed is a factor that search engines examine when they rank your website. If you rank lower than expected, it may be due to speed and performance. Due to the big mystery that is the Google algorithm, it is important to capitalize on every known factor.

Having a faster website has no disadvantages, so you are only doing yourself a favor in the long run.

Why Not Just Use Third-Party Tools

Speed tests are not new and there are a lot of tools from third-parties, like speedtest.net, that will tell you your site’s general speed. However, there is a big problem:

Third-party speed tests do not give you fully accurate results.

This is because they are examining your connection based on the closest servers near you. This results in very good looking results that do not actually reflect the site’s performance from other areas of the globe. While these tools have their uses, they are not ideal for someone who owns a website.

Instead, you need to have your own speed test that examines your site’s instance.

Installing Speed Test

The Speed Test plugin does exactly what its name implies, tests the speed of your Moodle website. It’s very simple to use and should not take more than a few minutes to set up.

On the Moodle dashboard, click on Site Administration and select the Plugins tab.

Click on the Install Plugins option.

If you already have the Speed Test plugins zip file, you can upload it here and skip the rest of these steps. If not, click on the “Install plugins from the Moodle plugin directory” button.

You have two options, you can log in to your Moodle.org account, which allows you to install the plugin directly, or you can browse the directory and download the Zip file.

The choice is up to you, but I will demonstrate the browse option. Feel free to skip this section if you are familiar with installing plugins.

Click on the “Browse plugins” button.

Search for Speed Test in the search box.

Locate the Speed Test plugin and click on it.

Click on the “Download” button.

A zip file will be downloaded. Return to the plugins area of Moodle and click on the “Choose a file…” button.

Select the Upload a file option and click on the “Choose File” button. Select the Zip file you just downloaded, it should be located in your computer’s downloads folder, and click on the “Upload this file” button.

Click on the “Install Plugin from the Zip file” button.

Once it has installed, click on the “Continue” button.

Finally, click on the “Upgrade Moodle database now” button to finish the installation.

The plugin will now finish being installed and is ready to use.

Using the Speed Test Plugin

The installation is the only time-consuming part of this tutorial. The Speed test plugin is ready for action. To use it, simply go to your website and add the following at the end of the URL: [ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]/admin/tool/speedtest/[/ht_message]

Thus, if your website was www.moodleexample1.com it would look like this:[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]www.moodleexample1.com/admin/tool/speedtest/[/ht_message]

This should pull up the Speed Test page.

To use it, simply click on the “Start speed test” button.

The speed test will begin. It will tell you your download and upload speed, ping, and jitter in under a minute. It will also provide other information including your country, IP address, and ISP.

Note: If you are unsure what jitter means, don’t feel bad, not many know the term. Jitter or Packet Delay Variation (PDV) is the variability in your ping throughout the duration of the speed test. Essentially, the smaller the jitter, the more stable your ping will be, which is a good thing.

You can click on the “Re-run speed test” to run the test again. There are sure to be some fluctuations in the results in between tests, so you may want to perform a few to get a realistic range of the speeds.

That is really all there is to this plugin. Congratulations on setting up the Speed Test plugin to test your Moodle website.

Note: I had an issue when reloading the page with the Speed Test on it. It seemed to temporarily block my IP address if I did this on my website, which is a fresh Moodle install and only this plugin added to it. The problem resolves on its own after a few seconds by completing a Recaptcha test, so do not be alarmed if you see the message.

Consider a More Robust Tool

This plugin is great for what it is, but to be honest, it is very simple. It will only provide you with your website’s speed and nothing more. This can be problematic if you are looking to make improvements.

For this reason, you may want to consider using a more robust speed testing tool like GTMetrix.com.

This tool provides you with a PageSpeed score, YSlow score, the time it takes to load a page, page size, and a lot more information related to the performance of your website. On top of this, and most importantly, it goes into detail about why your website received these scores.

It even has an option to watch a video of your pages being loaded to prove its findings, but this does require an account.

This makes it an invaluable tool when trying to improve the performance of your website because it offers clear and precise tips that can point you in the right direction.

Not to mention you can change from a number of servers available for testing how the site performs in other areas.

Optimize Moodle for Speed

If you are not happy with the results you are getting, consider taking steps to optimize your website’s performance. Moodle is a very customizable platform because it needs to be.

As an educational tool, it needs to accommodate a wide array of subjects. And the way that both teachers and students interact with these subjects is unique for each case. Thus, the platform they do it on needs to be robust.

And Moodle does not fall short in this regard. A great way to see a performance increase in moodle is to change the default caching options. To be perfectly honest, they are not the best and will slow your website down. I recommend starting out with caching options when looking for a speed boost.

Luckily, there are many plugins available that can help you optimize Moodle.

How easy did you find the Speed Test plugin to use? What other tools do you use to boost your website’s performance?

The post How to Test the Speed of Moodle appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Today, I will demonstrate how to install Moodle using Softaculous.

What is Moodle?

Moodle is actually an LMS, or Learning Management System, that focuses on meeting the needs of educators. In fact, it is one of the most popular choices among LMS’s with a staggering 23% market share.

Moodle or Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment gives educators powerful tools to create content for students, while also supporting collaborative learning environments.

And it supports over 120 languages!

It is important to remember that Moodle is open source, which means it is completely free to use, highly customizable with over 1400 plugins, easily scalable to aid fast-growing businesses, and very secure to boot.

And on top of this, Moodle is very mobile-friendly. It is fully equipped with the tools to allow students to upload images, attempt quizzes, submit assignments, receive notifications, and much more all from your mobile device.

While you may think Moodle is just used for education, that isn’t true. It is used by businesses, government entities, and other websites that have a need for a community system. And of course, it can be self-hosted quite easily.

Installing Moodle

Before beginning, make sure you have access to your web hosting account. This will grant you access to cPanel. If you are unsure about the login information, make sure to contact customer support.

Step 1: Use cPanel

The cPanel is full of useful tools that allow you to customize your domains and subdomains accordingly. Scroll down to the Software section and click on the “Softaculous Apps Installer” option.

Step 2: Search for Moodle

Softaculous can install over 300 apps, which means we need to do some searching, but luckily, it’s easy to do. Search for Moodle in the available search box in the upper left corner and select the Moodle option.

Step 3: Click on Install Now

This will bring up the main Moodle page with a list of features and a description of the system. Click on the “Install Now” button.

Step 4: Software Setup

You will now need to go through the various settings. One of which is the version you are installing, which should be the latest version by default. You have the option to install older versions of Moodle, but it’s better to use the most current option. This will help prevent exploits and compatibility issues later on.

On top of this, you will also find other settings like what the folder will be named, selecting a username and password, admin email and more. Simply go through each setting and change them accordingly.

Note: I urge you to make a strong password. A strong password should include upper and lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters, while also avoiding common phrases and dates like your birthday.

Click on the “Install” button when you are done.

The installation may take a few minutes to complete. Once you see the congratulations page, you are good to go!

All that’s left is to create some courses on your new Moodle install.

NOTE: Give the DNS a bit of time to propagate your URL. The links under the “Congratulations” message may not work immediately. Many web hosts suggest giving up to 48 hours, though this usually happens within 10 to 15 minutes. This is because the URL has to become recognized by the Internet Service Provider.

Installing Moodle is Just the Beginning

Installing Moodle is only the first step to creating a fully functional website. You have a lot of work ahead of you, but luckily, Moodle is very simple to create content on.

The less time you spend fumbling with the settings means you have that much more time to create quality course material. On top of how easy it is to use, I am positive you will be overwhelmed by the number of customization options available in this LMS.

And we have plenty of Moodle Tutorials to help you along the way.

The post How to Install Moodle Using Softaculous appeared first on GreenGeeks.