BlOCKS

Adding new blocks or re-adding deleted blocks

If you delete a block and then would like it back, you can always re-add it. This process is the same as adding one of the optional blocks.

To add a block, turn editing on and choose the block you would like to add from the Add… drop down menu in the Blocks block. This menu will only be visible when editing is turned on, and will never be visible to your students.

People Block

The people block provides a listing of all participants in this course (enrolled students and teachers). If you have enabled groups, then there will be a link to view groups here, as well. Under the People Block click on Participants. The following page will open:

- My Courses: (1) it’s the list of all your courses on Moodle at AUB. You can select another one to view it’s participants (in case you have any other course, as an instructor or as a student)
- Separate groups: (2) If you have enabled groups, then there will be a link to view participants groups here, as well.
- Current Role: “All”, (3) By default, All users appear in one list. If you want to see only the instructors, choose “teacher” from the drop down menu. Same thing applies for other roles.
- Inactive for more than: (4) [ 1 day up to last year ]. CAUTION: you’ll see this option only if you are instructor in the course.

Another great tool in the Participants page is the ability to send messages only to your class (Instructors, students or by manual selection).

At the bottom click on the Select all button and from the << With selected users >> drop down menu select Add/send message. A message body
window will open:

Type in it the message to be sent to your selected participants and click on the Preview button to check your message before sending. If you want to confirm, click on Send if not click on Edit to return back to your message. At the bottom of your message you will see all participants selected and beside each user there is a remove button if you decided at the last minute to exclude him/her.

Note : don’t worry about your student list, whenever you activate your course (make it available to the students in the current semester) all your students will be enrolled automatically in your course. When they login to Moodle, you can see their names here. Only those who login will appear here!

The image below shows the listing of Instructors and/or Students in this Participants page under the People block, depending on the role you choose.

Messages Block

This block will show a list of new messages and links to the messages page. Clicking on Messages… opens a pop up window with three tabs.

With this tool, you can communicate with all Moodle-AUB users by chatting:

1- if the user is online
2- if the user is offline, messages will be automatically transferred to his/her email after 10 minutes (you can change this setting).

You will find different icons, below is the definition of each:

This icon allows you to add the user you searched to the contact list you have. When you add a contact, you’ll see it in your contacts’ list (see figure).
This icon allows you to remove one of the users added to your content list.
This icon allows you to prevent a specific user from contacting you.
This icon allows you to see all the message history occurred between you and the person selected.

Contacts: Contains previously added contacts. At the beginning it is empty.
Search: Allows you to either search for a person from among the students of your course only, or all users registered at AUB.
Settings: Settings regarding the Contact List, Alerts, blocking messages, HTML editor…etc

Upcoming Events Block

This block will display the upcoming events and a list of due dates for course activities (Default 10) that will occur in a chronological order starting from today's date, and students may click the names of this list to directly access the activities.

Events in Moodle

At the bottom of the Upcoming Events block there are two links Go to Calendar and New Event…

Creating Events

New Event: To create an event click on New Event…Here there are two types of events that you can choose to create:

- User event: To add your personal private events.
- Course event: is an event specific to the course. Only instructors can post this type of events, students can not post course event. Both instructors and students inside the course will see this event.

To select one of these events select the corresponding radio button and then click on Ok. The New Event Page will open.

Here you specify the settings to this events with all the information regarding this event.

Name: Event name.
Description: description of this event.
Date: The date of this event, when is it going to take place.
Duration: The duration that this event will take.
Repeats: Specifies whether this event is going to be repeated on regular basis.

Click on Save changes to create this event. You will be taken to the Day View of the event. You can see your event, its day and time.

To create an event you can also click on Go to Calendar from the Upcoming Events block.

In the Calendar page you will see a list of upcoming events. Clicking on a day in the calendar will open the day view. While Clicking on the month in the Calendar will open the month view.

To create a new event click on the New Event button under the navigation bar

Follow the same steps as before to enter the information related to this event.