Thursday, 28 March 2024, 6:04 PM
Site: learn@inasp
Course: General (General)
Glossary: Moodle tips

Managing forum subscriptions

If your course has discussion forums, you may be subscribed to them initially -- or you may not be. If you are subscribed to a forum, it means you'll receive an email with any new post made on that forum. This way, you can keep in touch with the forum discussions without actually logging into INASP Moodle. If you are not subscribed, you will not receive email copies of posts. But you're still part of the forum and you can engage in discussions. To check your subscription status for a forum, visit that forum and look at the "forum administration" menu (usually on the left hand side). If you see "subscribe to this forum", it means you are not currently subscribed. You can click this link to subscribe. If you see "unsubscribe from this forum", it means you are subscribed and you can click this link if you wish to not receive email copies of posts made on that particular forum. If a course has many forums, you'll need to subscribe to or unsubscribe from each forum individually.

See also: Subscription to the news forum

How to bookmark a webpage

We recommend that you bookmark INASP Moodle or your active learning spaces on INASP Moodle. In most web browsers, you can quickly bookmark a webpage by pressing the Control and D keys together when you're on that webpage. When you do this, you'll see a small dialog box asking you to confirm. In the Google Chrome browser, bookmarks are normally added to the bookmarks bar by default, which is right under the address bar. So you can always see your bookmarked pages. In Mozilla Firefox and Internet Explorer, you can make a webpage appear in the bookmarks bar. Just change the bookmark location after pressing Control and D.

Acknowledging AuthorAID courses in your publications

If you would like to give credit to an AuthorAID online course in any of your manuscripts (eg, in the "acknowledgements section"), we suggest this wording: "<your name> gained useful knowledge on research writing from an AuthorAID online course run by INASP". Please note the correct way to write AuthorAID with "AID" capitalised (it is not "AuthorAid"), and please make sure you mention INASP too because this is AuthorAID's parent organisation. Thank you :)

Expiry of courses on INASP Moodle

Any course on INASP Moodle will remain open for at least one month after the end of the course. This is a "read only" period and you cannot participate in course activities. Facilitators or moderators will not be available to provide support, and discussion forums may be closed. However, in this one-month period, you will be able to access the course material and save what you'd like to, such as the course content, results of quizzes, and evaluations you may have received. Beyond one month after the course end date, the course may be deleted or reset and will not be available. If we plan to delete or reset a course, we will give advance notice of at least 2 weeks by making a post on the news forum of the course. If you remain subscribed to the news forum after the end of the course, you'll get a copy of this notification by email. Still, we recommend that you save the course material within one month of the course ending.

Completion check mark for a peer assessment activity

A peer assessment activity consists of three phases, explained below. The completion check mark for this activity will appear at the end of the third phase. It will NOT appear immediately after the submission and assessment phases.

  1. Submission phase: This is the phase in which you have to prepare and submit your work.

  2. Assessment phase: This is the phase in which you have to evaluate the submissions that have been allocated to you. You will be provided with a rubric or assessment form for evaluating each submission.

  3. Closure: Once the above two phases are completed, the course facilitator will close the activity. You will see a completion check mark after the closure phase IF (1) you have submitted your work and (2) you have received at least one assessment. If you have submitted your work but you've not received any assessments, you will not see a completion check mark, but you will still get credit for this activity as long as you have assessed all the works allocated to you.

Also see: Completion credit for a peer assessment activity

ALERT: Upcoming events block is not yet activated

After you complete the pre assessment quiz, the course material will become available to you and therefore the upcoming events block will be activated. If you haven't yet completed the pre assessment quiz, whatever message you see in the upcoming events block (eg, "no deadlines in the next 10 days") may not be correct. So please complete this quiz as soon as possible!

Deadline reminders in upcoming events or calendar block

If there's an upcoming events block or calendar block on your course homepage, you can see upcoming deadlines in this block. By default, deadlines occurring in the next 10 days are shown. When you complete an activity, the deadline message related to this activity may persist on the upcoming events or calendar block. It won't disappear until the deadline has passed. Please don't be concerned by this. To check whether you have completed an activity, go to the activity page to check if your work has been submitted or see whether a completion check mark has appeared against that activity. (For peer assessment activities, see this: Phases of a peer assessment activity)

Message on homepage about quizzes that are due

On your homepage on this site, you may see a message such as "you have quizzes that are due" if there are quizzes in the course you are taking. This message will appear if there's any quiz that has a deadline sometime before the end of the course. It could well be that the quiz is not yet available for you to attempt, but the message will still appear on your homepage. In this case you can ignore the message. Just focus on completing the lessons and activities for the current week or unit of the course you are taking.

Automatically generated certificates

For many courses on INASP Moodle we award certificates that are generated automatically based on the relevant course completion criteria. If you're eligible for such a certificate, you'll be notified when your certificate is ready for downloading. Please note the following:

  1. You can download your certificate anytime after the certificate is ready (even months later, as long as you've not unenrolled yourself or the course hasn't been deleted). You just need to log into INASP Moodle and visit the course homepage. You'll then see a link or section to download your certificate, if you've completed the course. If you've forgotten your password for INASP Moodle, you can reset it by clicking the 'Lost password' link on the homepage.
  2. If you would like your name to appear differently on your certificate, just change your name in your user profile after logging in. See check/edit your profile. Then download your certificate again.
  3. If you've changed the interface language on INASP Moodle from English to some other language and you find that there are odd characters in your certificate, please change the interface language back to English. Then download your certificate again. Some languages are not supported fully in the certificate plugin.
  4. Please do not request any changes in the wording or formatting of the certificate, as these are standardized.
  5. We do not send out hard copies of certificates to online course participants as this would be very expensive! But feel free to print your certificate yourself.

Related tip: Verification code on the certificate

How to search forums

When you visit any forum, you'll see a "search forums" box at the top of the forum. Enter one or more keywords and do a search. Go through the results and click the "advanced search" link under the "search forums" box if you wish to refine your search. If your keywords don't show any results, you'll see a form to do an advanced search. In general, start with one or two simple keywords and then refine your search if you get too many results.

Checking your submission in a peer assessment activity

  1. Go to the activity page.

  2. Pay attention to the table at the top which explains the different phases of the activity.

  3. See if there's a green check mark next to the phrase "Submit your work" in the "Submission phase" section. If yes, you have successfully submitted your work. You can click the "Submit your work" link to see your submission, and you can edit it before the deadline if you'd like to. If you don't see a green check mark next to "Submit your work", you have not submitted your work.

  4. If you have uploaded a document as part of your submission, make sure that it is in a proper file format (eg, an MS Word file). It is always a good idea to download what you have submitted and then to open it to check (a) whether the file opens and (b) if it has the right contents.

Being part of the AuthorAID community

There's more than one way to be part of the large AuthorAID community!

  1. Join the AuthorAID online mentoring scheme as a mentee or mentor: http://www.authoraid.info/en/mentoring/
  2. Join the AuthorAID mailing list: https://dgroups.org/groups/authoraiddiscussion
  3. Subscribe to the AuthorAID blog to receive email copies of informative posts and news items, including calls for applications for online courses and grant announcements. Enter your email address in the box on the right side of this page: http://www.authoraid.info/en/news/
  4. Follow AuthorAID on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pages/AuthorAID-at-INASP/123030044377871
  5. Follow AuthorAID on Twitter: https://twitter.com/authoraid


AuthorAID is run by INASP, an international development charity in the UK, and we work in the areas of research access, research production, research uptake, and so on, all with a focus on developing countries. If you're interested in INASP's work...

  1. Subscribe to INASP newsletters and publications: http://eepurl.com/cBoao
  2. Follow the INASP blog: http://blog.inasp.info/. You can subscribe via email (see the box on the right).
  3. Follow INASP on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/inasp.info
  4. Follow INASP on Twitter: https://twitter.com/INASPinfo
  5. View INASP videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/INASPinfo/

Printing/saving quiz reviews and peer assessments

You can print or save quiz reviews (ie, quiz questions and answers) and peer assessments you've received. For quiz reviews, visit the quiz page, click 'Review' next to any of the attempts you have made, and use the print or save feature in your browser. If you have a PDF writer installed (such as CutePDF), you can print the review as a PDF file. 

For peer assessments, visit the peer assessment activity page, view the assessments you've received, and use the browser print or save feature. Alternatively, you can manually copy and paste the assessments into a document. Also see: how to view the assessments you have received

How pre/post assessment data helps us

Your score in the pre and post assessment quizzes will help us learn what impact the workshop has had on your knowledge of the key concepts. And you have something to gain as well: after you take the post assessment quiz, you can see the answer key and thus validate your knowledge of the key concepts.

Confidentiality statement: INASP Moodle

The information you provide in the background information survey and your activity metrics in the course will be held in confidentiality by INASP. If you are taking an online course as part of a sponsored group, we may share this information with the sponsoring organisation. Otherwise, only overall data, such as the number of course completers, are shared in the public domain.

What to do if you get disconnected while taking the pre/post quiz

You can make only one attempt on the pre assessment and post assessment quizzes. If you get disconnected while taking any of these quizzes and can't complete your attempt, please write to Ravi - rmurugesan@inasp.info - and mention the name of your online course / learning space and the name of the quiz.

Need help? Please read this first.

  • Make sure you have gone through all the information given in the course induction section.

  • Read the posts made in the announcements forum.

  • If your question is about an activity, read the instructions given for the activity.

  • See the calendar block on the course homepage to note important deadlines. We do not offer deadline extensions, as explained in the learning agreement (you can find this in the course induction section).

  • If you'd like to leave the course, see this: Unenrolling from the course

If your doubt or query persists after you've done the above, please make a post on the technical queries forum.

How to be a good peer assessor

Follow the Golden Rule. Treat the people you assess as you would like to be treated yourself. Would you be happy with brief remarks in the assessments you get from your course colleagues, or would you like to see detailed comments and suggestions that actually help you improve? We assume it's the latter -- so please give such assessments to others :)

Why the assessment phase is crucial

In a large online course such as this one, it's not feasible for a small group of teachers or facilitators to provide personalised feedback on each participant's work. Peer assessment is the only practical way to provide participants with feedback on their work.

A survey of participants who took part in a peer assessment activity in one of our previous courses indicated that...

  • Most participants found the different aspects of the peer assessment activity to be a useful learning experience.
  • Some participants were happy with the feedback they got from their peer assessors, but some were disappointed.
  • Getting overly brief assessments without useful or practical suggestions was the most common cause for disappointment.
Now please read this: how to be a good peer assessor

How grades are calculated for a peer assessment activity

There are 2 grades for a peer assessment activity: grade for submission and grade for assessment. In many cases, a full score is awarded for both if you submit your work and assess at least one submission allocated to you. The grades don't matter in a peer assessment activity, unless stated otherwise. It is important to submit your work and assess all the submissions allocated to you. If you do this, your work in the activity will be considered complete.