Week 1

Once the empty course has been created in Desire2Learn, it is time to add participants and to activate the course.

First, click the Course Admin link at the top menu (Setup 1), and then click the Course Offering Information link (Setup 2). This will open the options to activate the course.

Then, make sure that the "Course activate" box is checked, enable and set the course start and end dates, and then click "Save" (Setup 3).

Next, click the "Classlist" link on the top menu (Setup 4), click "Add Participants", and then choose "Add existing users" (Setup 5).

Before searching for users, choose the "Student" role from the drop-down list, choose the users to be added as students, and then click "Enroll Selected Users" (Setup 6). 

Before course content and activities can be added, course modules must be created in order to contain the required content. These modules can be named to match the content they will hold.

First, click the "Content" link from the top menu, and then click "Add a module" (Module 1). Choose a name for the module, and then press Enter.

After creating the module, click on one to begin adding content for the course (Module 2). 

Desire2Learn already contains tools and resources to meet most course needs, however sometimes external content is needed, and must be integrated within the course. This standard protocol is called LTI.

To add external LTI content to Desire2Learn, choose a previously created module, click "Add Existing Activities", and then choose "External Learning Tools" (LTI 1). For this example, the Atomic Learning preset was chosen to integrate tutorials into the course (LTI 2).

For further instructions, please view the video demo below. 

Like all Learning Management Systems, Desire2Learn has a HTML editor to allow the creation of simple pages for instructions.

To use the HTML editor, choose a module, then click "New" and then choose "Create a file" (HTML 1).

Next, name the file, add the content, and then click "Publish" (HTML 2).

If advanced editing is required, or existing HTML code needs to be added, then an option to edit the HTML code is available in the editor. 

In addition to adding text with basic word processing tools, images can also be added to the HTML Editor for new and existing files.

From the editor, click the "Insert Image" icon from the toolbar (Image 1).

Next, upload the required image, and then click "Add" (Image 2).

The image is then inserted with handles for resizing. However, the option to word wrap the image could not be found in either the toolbar or the Insert Image options. 

Once an empty course has been created, students must then be enrolled, and the course made visible.

To enroll students, click the gear icon at the top-right corner, and then choose "More" (Setup 1). Click the "Users" tab, and then click "Enrolled Users" (Setup 2). This will show a list of the existing enrolled users within the course. To add more users, click the "Enroll Users" button at the top right (Setup 3).

Next, in the Enroll Users box, choose the "Student" role, and then search for the users to add (Setup 4). In this example, all of the users fit in the list, which allowed multiple users to be enrolled at once. If a user needs to be enrolled with a different role, change the role drop-down first before clicking the "Enroll" button beside the name.

Once all users are enrolled, click the "Finish Enrolling Users" button.

To make the course visible to students, click the gear icon again, and then click "Edit Settings" (Setup 5).

Set the start and end dates, make sure that the Visible field is set to "Show", and then click "Save and display" (Setup 6). 

Unlike Desire2Learn, Moodle courses are created with a default weekly layout with at least 10 sections available. These layouts can be changed to meet the needs for the course. Most use the weekly layout, but there are also a Topics layout, and a Social layout for use with a large discussion forum.

Whichever layout is chosen, the number of the sections can be changed in the settings of the course (Module 1). Once chosen, the title of the segments can be easily changed by clicking on the gray pencil icon, typing in the new name, and then pressing Enter to save it (Module 2).

Each segment has an "Add an activity or resource" link in order to access all of the available assignment and resource activities (Module 3). 

As with any course activity, the LTI External Tool can be added by turning the course editing on, and then clicking the "Add an activity or resource" link (LTI 1).

In the Activities box, choose "External Tool" (LTI 2).

Next, name the activity, and then provide the LTI information.

For further instructions, please view the demo video below. 

Like other Learning Management Systems, Moodle has a very good HTML editor, called Atto. To add a HTML resource, click "Add an activity or resource" in the desired section, click the "Page" option, and then click "Add" (HTML 1).

Name the page, add a description if needed, and then create the content (HTML 2). The next step will show how to access the additional editing tools, and how to add images to the editor.