Engaging eLearning

Engaging welcomes and tutor presence 

While most you will already write warm welcomes to your course, one way you can add a little more engagement is by adding a video welcome. You can simply video yourself using the video capture tool in Moodle or even just use your phone. This way you can inject a bit of your personality into the course! If your a bit camera shy, another option is to create animated character video. You can use software such as Animaker or Powtoon. These have free versions (with branding), but the eCreate team can also help create unbranded videos for you. Check out the very brief animated demo video of a welcome to this course. 

Making a Moodle course look easy to navigate! 

Creating a course that ākonga can easily follow is half the battle! If a course looks cluttered and confusing, there is a good chance they will miss content and activities. When creating your Moodle page, it's important to make it look easy to read, easy to navigate, relatable, and be logical to follow!  Here are some tips to help you create some great looking Moodle courses:

1. Set the scene (e.g. provide overview of course, Learning outcomes, schedules, paper outlines etc). Signpost for the learners where they are heading!
2. Create a layout that works for you and chunk your course content. For example collapsed topics, weekly topics and our personal favorite, Tiles (within tiles check out if you like the sub-tile setting!).
3. Be consistent with headings, images, colours and structure. 

Engaging banners

Creating a unique banner can create a connection and appeal for the learner. You might like to use relevant imagery on a shape with text created in PowerPoint, or you could even take photos of the teaching team and pop them on a banner. You can remove backgrounds with tools like ppt or head to removebg. Another great tool for creating banners is Canva (this courses banner was created in Canva). Check out some of these examples how you could create some fun and engaging banners. 

Other useful tools

There is a string of other Moodle tools that you can use within your courses. Lets check out some of them! This first one Checklist can be used in a few different ways but most often we use it as a tool for students to check off what work they need to complete. This means as a tutor you can be super clear! Have a quick look. 

This next option is Moodle choice. Again lots of ways this could be helpful. It could tell you when most students want to have a class party, or what day and time is best for a tut, or like in the example below, what topic would they like to focus on in the next tutorial. You could perhaps even use for informal feedback.. e.g. what did they find most useful from the weeks content or workshop.  

Do you ever get your students to keep a Journal? Would it ever be useful to get students to reflect on an assignment, a guest speaker or perhaps a field trip. A Moodle journal is a way of students being able to regularly journal their thoughts and you are able to provide feedback where necessary.