Example page - Introduction to the module

General introduction

Once you have defined course main settings (visual) we are ready to start adding course materials. It can be a simple conspectus (ex. in PDF format) or a link to external resource (webpage, reference to library resource, video in YouTube etc.). We call that kind of learning material as resources. To be able to add those resources you need to Turn editing on for your course. You can find that button/link from the top right corner or from the left side menu (depends on your course layout).

Pay attention to, that your front page visual changes. Once you have clicked on Turn editing on, you see a lot more buttons and user interface elements, that enable to add different types of resource but also activities (we look more into activities in the next module). In general we focus here into two drop-down areas. Called as Add a resource... and Add an activity... (those are shown for each module).

In this module we focus on Add a resource drop-down. Most important selections here are:

• File - enables to upload and share a file based resource (ex. conspectus in PDF format, etc.).
  
• Page - enables to create a web-based style learning material that is saved directly into Moodle course.
  
• URL - enables to add links to external resources (including a webpage, video link, etc.)
  
• Label - enables to add simple line of text that is a separator from one sub-section to another (ex. conspectus, exercises, labs, assessments, etc.).

In addition to those drop-downs, you should be able notice one Edit button that is approximately in-line with the module/topic name. With that you can change the visual of your module heading, add some text to the front page (avoid copying it from MS Word). By default your module headings are as weekly ranges or topic names like 1,2,3... In the current image we have weekly range.

Let's click on that Edit button (note that we are using Weekly format right now). Select Edit week. New page opens.

If you want to, you can easily change the section name, by removing the selection of Use default section name. After that add some text into the first text-box. Let's do it like: General introduction as shown in the following image. In addition you can add some text into summary box. Usually we keep this area clean, not too much information (or long texts, because it affects the general layout of our course and makes is long to scroll). Also, you can format this text anyway you like, use common sense and do not overuse colors that doesn't make sense with course core visual theme. Be careful, if you fill that text are from MS Word (because of invisible format tags, your front page may get messed up - therefore it is safer to type the text manually or paste it over some simple text editor, like Notepad for Windows users).

Once you have edited the text, just hit Save changes. Your course front page should look like so.

The learning goals for the current module:

• Make yourself familiar with main resource elements in Moodle
• Do a general structuring of your course