A Well Designed Moodle Homepage

A well-designed Moodle homepage includes:

• A chronological organization. It is best to make the homepage into a syllabus sequence of activities. The students would have a difficult time finding what they need to access and when in the coursepage below. Rather than putting all readings together and forums together and quizzes together, organize the page by weeks with only the activities and readings needed for that week. Look at the Well Designed Hompage for an example.
• Name of the course. Don't forget to name the course at the top of the page, since you and the students have more than one and centered, large heading as part of the design will help give all the naming information you want.
• Topical or weekly headings. It is best to have a topic heading, such as Introduction and Terminology below, of larger font for each topical or weekly area.
• Images. Images help to make each week's topic and topic area distinctive for quicker navigation.
• Instructor contact information. How do you want students to reach you? What is your email policy on response time? You should pick one contact method--internal email, oakland email, other external email, or the News forum.
• The appropriate number of topic areas for the content. Empty topic or weekly areas look like a lack of planning, so go to Settings under Administration and change the number of Topics or Weeks to match how much content you have.
• Topical titles for links, e.g. Renaissance Forum. It would be better to use distinctive titles such as the names of the topics covered in the readings, forums, and quizzes. It would also be good to include the due date, unless there is a consistent pattern set out in the syllabus.
• Reading assignments organized in the week they are assigned. The reading should be broken down chronologically by making each topic area a set amount of time. They would look less daunting then and be easily accessible. If it is important to keep all readings together, then put them in a directory (folder). You do this by clicking on Add a Resource and Display a Directory. The individual files should have been previously put in a folder in your Files area under Administration.
• Each week has only three to four links. If you have more readings than one or two, then put them in a directory (folder). You do this by clicking on Add a Resource and Display a Directory. The individual files should have been previously put in a folder in your Files area under Administration.
• Indent links. Indent links that are subsiderary to other links, so that students will know what is related or less important than what.
• Announcements. An announcements area is easy for students to see and for faculty to construct by adding an HTML block. Old announcements may be removed and added to a running web page of old announcements.
• Administrative Blocks. Delete all unused blocks for a cleaner look. Make certain that all text and activities and blocks are actually needed to speed up navigation and comprehension time. The administrative blocks on either side of the central content are not really necessary. Delete the blocks you don't use and put on the left all the remaining ones that are necessary. The People block and the Administration block are definitely necessary.