When designing the Moodle course area, it's important to ensure that all necessary information is presented clearly to the students. Also, remember to provide sufficient guidance—some students may not be familiar with working in the Moodle environment, and course areas are not identical. Different instructors may use activities in different ways, so it’s essential to explain clearly to the students what they are expected to do. You can find support for this in the HelpJYU portal's Moodle instructions for students.

The items mentioned in this guide are not absolute truths for all courses; rather, we have compiled best practices and tips for course design, which you can adapt to suit your course as you see fit.

What should students do if they encounter challenges during the course?

• Course practices can be agreed upon and documented for everyone to read in Moodle. For example, if you want students to communicate questions or problems with assignments via email, Moodle's discussion board, or another specific method, you can add a text box to the right side of your course, specifying the email address for inquiries and indicating your typical response time.
• However, there is no need to repeat information that is already available to students, for example, in Sisu.

Example: The contact details of instructors, which students can use if needed, can be added to the Moodle course area in the right-hand side menu as a text block, listing the names and contact details of the instructors.

For technical issues, students and instructors can always turn to the university’s digital services for both pedagogical and technical ideas and to seek help in resolving problems! "Happy to HelpJYU" https://help.jyu.fi

Organizing the course content on the course's main page

• Consider the course structure from the student's perspective; they are coming to a new course to learn its content and may not yet know how the teaching will be organized. Students often browse the Moodle course area hoping to get a clearer idea of what to expect and how much material and tasks are involved in the course.
• Courses are often divided into several themes, which can be organized in Moodle by naming each section after the corresponding theme. This makes it easier for students to find the materials and tasks related to each theme.
• Name resources and activities clearly, and if you refer to them in text, use the same name to avoid confusion and prevent students from spending unnecessary time figuring out what tasks they need to do and where to find them.
• Long content can be placed on sub-pages, so that the main section introduces the topic and then continues with content using a page resource (or lesson, wiki, etc.). This way, the main page of the course doesn’t become overwhelmingly long.

Example: Structuring the course area by themes and moving long content to sub-pages helps students grasp the larger concepts being covered. Students can also track the course's progression via the table of contents on the left side. The table of contents includes a progress tracker; if the student needs to submit something or take action, this is indicated by a circle symbol. Once the student has completed the task according to the required criteria, the circle turns green.

Tasks, instructions, assessments, and feedback

Choose the most suitable resources and activities for each purpose. The University of Jyväskylä’s Moodle offers a variety of resources and activities, allowing you to share files, create online content, embed videos, handle assignment submissions, conduct exams, hold discussions, enable peer reviews, use discussion or flashcards, and much more. You can find more information on the most appropriate resources and activities for your needs in the HelpJYU guides or by seeking support from our web pedagogy experts through HelpJYU.

For tasks, regardless of the activity type, make sure to provide sufficient instructions for the students. Write clear instructions that detail what the student needs to do and the criteria related to the task. For example, when using the assignment activity, you can write a description explaining what the task involves and which topic it relates to. There is a specific section in the assignment for submission instructions. Here, you can write guidelines for the content and structure of the assignment ("describe the theoretical part...," one A4-page text, save as a .pdf...), as well as additional instructions on how to submit the assignment in Moodle. Visual instructions for students can be found in the HelpJYU portal, and you should consider linking these for further assistance. As a teacher, you can also choose settings such as the number of files students can submit or the file formats allowed. Be sure to inform students of these restrictions and explain the reasons behind your choices.

Additionally, inform students how and when their tasks will be assessed and whether they will receive written feedback. It often reassures students to know that the teacher is not constantly at their computer grading assignments, but will instead complete assessments within, for example, a week of the submission deadline. If you have a large number of submissions to grade, you may also want to consider using the assignment activity’s staged assessment feature. This allows students to see the progress of their assessment, and once all tasks are graded, the results can be published at once for all students. It’s also helpful to explain how students can access the written feedback for their work.

Example: In the assignment activity, it's useful to give students adequate instructions. In the description field of the assignment settings, you can write general instructions for the task, and in the submission instructions field, you can provide additional details that only appear when students reach the submission page. For example, you could tell students in the description field, “You will see more instructions regarding the task submission once you begin the submission process.”

Remember to test your course area from the student’s perspective before opening it up to students!