Friday, 29 March 2024, 3:10 AM
Site: learn@inasp
Course: General (General)
Glossary: Moodle tips

Check your submission

Whenever you upload a document on a website - whether it is a journal submission system, INASP Moodle, or something else - it's always a good idea to try to download and open that document to make sure it has been uploaded properly. Errors sometimes happen during the uploading stage because of which your document may have been uploaded incompletely or may not have been uploaded at all!

Phases of a peer assessment activity

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

2. Assessment phase: The system will randomly allocate some of your course colleagues' submissions to you, and you have to evaluate these using an assessment form.

3. Closure: Once the above two phases are completed, the course moderator will close the activity. You can then view the assessments you have received from your course colleagues.

Related: Completion credit for a peer assessment activity

Completing a peer assessment activity

The completion check mark for an activity that includes a peer assessment phase will appear once the activity is closed. 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. Read the instructions on the activity page to find out what you should submit.

  2. Assessment phase: This is the phase in which you have to evaluate the submissions that have been allocated to you. When the activity moves to the assessment phase, the activity page will contain instructions on how you should carry out the assessments.

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 have not received any assessments, you will not see a completion check mark, but the course moderator will ensure that you get credit for this activity -- as long as you have assessed all the works allocated to you.

Remember: To receive completion credit for a peer assessment activity, you should take part in BOTH the submission and assessment phases.

Email copies of forum posts

Posts made on forums within a course are sent as email copies to people who have subscribed to those forums. You may be subscribed by default to the forums in the courses you are participating in.

If you don't wish to receive the email copies, you can unsubscribe from any or all the forums. Just click the "unsubscribe from this forum" or "unsubscribe from all forums" link in any email copy of a forum post. You can also visit the forum and click "unsubscribe from this forum" in the "forum administration" block on the left.

If you unsubscribe from the forums, please make sure you visit your course regularly to check the forum posts, for there might be a lot of great discussions going on!

If there is a "news forum" in your course, you might not be able to unsubscribe from this forum because important announcements are made here by the course facilitator.

Time zone for deadlines

The default time zone on this site is West Africa Time (WAT).

Why the time zone matters

In your online course, there may be events that are time-based (such as live sessions) and activities that have deadlines (such as writing activities). For such events and activities, your Dashboard on this site and the time alerts on activity pages show times in WAT by default.

Changing the time zone

To see mentions of times in your local time zone, edit your profile and change the time zone in the Timezone field. We also suggest you add reminders in your calendar about upcoming events and deadlines. If you would like to compare WAT with your local time, use this link.

Why we use WAT

We use WAT as the default time zone because a large number of our course participants are based in West Africa.

Trouble opening documents in the assessment phase

If the submission is in DOC or DOCX format, please use Microsoft Word or LibreOffice Writer to open the document. LibreOffice is free and open source software, so it's a good choice if you don't have Word. If you are not able to open a submitted document with such software, or if you open the document and find it to be blank, please do the following: (1) complete a dummy assessment for this submission (eg, write 'could not open document' in each aspect of the assessment form), and (2) report the issue on the Technical Support / Technical Queries Forum.

User profiles

You can see the profiles of your fellow course participants by clicking on their names in the forums, in the participants list, the online users block, etc. So write something about yourself in your profile so others can get to know you smile When you edit your profile, you can set your email address to be visible to your course colleagues, to everyone on INASP Moodle, or to no-one. We recommend that you use the first setting so that your course colleagues can get in touch with you to discuss collaboration or interesting opportunities.

Seeing the peer assessments you've received

If you've submitted your work as part of a peer assessment activity, visit the activity page after the assessment phase to read the assessments you've received. When you visit the activity page, you can view your assessments by clicking the link to your submission. This link appears before the links to the assessments you have given to others. Once you click the link to your submission, you will see a page with a list of all the assessments you have received. Make sure you read all your assessments closely, and make notes on how you can improve your work.

What to do if you've not received any assessments

There's a small chance that none of the people who have been allocated your work completed the assessment. This is an unfortunate outcome (but hopefully rare). If you don't see a "grade for submission" when in fact you have submitted your work, we will award you credit for the activity as long as you have assessed the submissions allocated to you. We will be looking at the course logs to determine who has done what. So don't worry!

Check/edit your profile

To edit your profile, click your name or photo in the top right hand corner of this site, click "Profile" and then "Edit profile". We recommend that you add a photo of yourself in your profile and write something about yourself in the "description" field. This way you'll contribute to making the course a friendly learning environment :) When editing your profile, you can also change your personal details (including your password), set your time zone, etc.

Having trouble enrolling in a course?

If you receive enrollment instructions for a particular course, you'll need to follow the instructions carefully. Don't rush through this process. In particular, you have to locate the right course (and the right batch number, if relevant) and enter the enrollment key exactly as given in the instructions. It's a good idea to copy the key from the instructions and paste it in the box where you have to enter it.

After entering the enrollment key, you can "unhide" it to see if it matches the key given to you. Make sure there are no extra spaces or other inessential characters.

If you can't join your course AND you're absolutely sure that you have tried enrolling in the right course with the right enrollment key, you may email the course facilitator to seek help. Please mention in your email the full name of the course you tried to join and the enrollment key you used.

Related: Enrollment deadline

Who can take part in the assessment phase

Only those participants who have submitted their own work will get others' work for assessment. If you have not submitted anything, you will not be assigned any submissions to assess.

When you will see peer assessments

You will see the assessments you've got from your peers only after the assessment deadline. You will not be able to see them before the deadline even if the assessments have been done. Please be patient :)

See phases of a peer assessment activity

Open peer assessment activity

In an open peer assessment activity, the people getting assessments can see the names of their assessors. So when you do an assessment, you need to keep in mind that your name will be seen by the person receiving the assessment. Please do not let this affect your objective assessment of their work.

Note: Peer assessors can always see the names of the people whose work they assess.

Related: Single-blind peer assessment activity

Single-blind peer assessment activity

In a single-blind peer assessment activity, the people getting assessments cannot see the names of their assessors.

Note: Peer assessors can always see the names of the people whose work they assess.

Related: Open peer assessment activity

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.

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 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 :)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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/

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.

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.

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

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.

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)

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!

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

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.

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 :)

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.

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

Subscription to the news forum

Your course may have a "News" forum, which normally appears at the top of the course homepage. This is a special forum where the course administrator or facilitator make announcements. You may be subscribed to this forum by default as we would like everyone to be notified whenever a post is made here. If you would like to unsubscribe from the News forum, visit this forum and click on "Unsubscribe from this forum". We however suggest that you remain subscribed to the News forum because the announcements made here are important.

What others can see in your user profile

If you are a participant in a course on INASP Moodle, other course participants can see the following information about you: your photo if you have uploaded one, your description/bio if you have entered any text in the "description" field in your profile, your name, your email address, when you last accessed the course, your role in the course and which group (if any) you belong to, and the list of courses you are enrolled in. You can choose to hide your email address when you edit your profile. Others CANNOT see the city and country in which you are based. We encourage you to write a short description in your profile page (see check/edit your profile) so that your course colleagues who see your profile can learn about you. If you would like them to know where you live, mention your location in the description.

Creative Commons license

Creative Commons licenses allow material to be shared and reused under terms that are flexible and legally sound. There are 6 types of creative commons licenses. See https://creativecommons.org/share-your-work/licensing-types-examples/

Why deadline extensions are not possible for peer assessment activities

An activity that involves peer assessment has a number of sequential phases. Immediately after the deadline for the submission phase, the submissions are randomly allocated by the system for assessment. It's not possible to plug in a late submission after the activity enters the assessment phase. Then, right after the assessment phase, the activity is closed and everyone can view their assessments. Again, it's not possible to plug in late assessments once the activity is closed. Because of the way this activity works, we cannot extend the deadline for either the submission or assessment phase. So please do not ask for extensions!

Related tip: phases of a peer assessment activity

Tips to use your digital badge

If you complete an online course on INASP Moodle, you may receive a digital badge. To download this badge, login to INASP Moodle (http://moodle.inasp.info) and visit the "My badges" page: http://moodle.inasp.info/badges/mybadges.php

Click the badge to view the full details. You can copy the link to this web page from the address bar of your web browser and share the link in your CV or any online profile.

You can also display this digital badge on a badge portfolio. To do this, follow the steps given in this tutorial.

Finally, read this Wikipedia page if you'd like to learn more about digital badges.

Forum etiquette - Dos

  • Check the forums regularly to see what others have posted
  • Make sure your posts are relevant
  • Post your contributions at appropriate times or within deadlines (if any)
  • Check what you have written before posting it, especially when expressing a disagreement

Forum etiquette - Don'ts

You should NOT:

  • Display any kind of bias towards course participants based on their gender, ethnicity, nationality, or anything else
  • Write in a harsh or insulting manner to anyone in the course
  • Share the contact information of other participants without permission
  • Discuss things unrelated to the topic of the course (unless you use a special social forum for informal/off-topic discussion);
  • Advertise anything without providing context. This includes posting calls for papers from journals, conferences and other events. You can however provide a link to anything online if it is relevant to an ongoing discussion in the course
  • Provide links to websites that may have illegal content, such as pirated software, scanned books, and copyrighted journal articles that are not meant to be shared openly. Uploading any such content directly on the forums is also forbidden.
  • Create an excessive number of separate threads on the same topic
If you are in doubt, check with your course moderator.

Using emoticons on this site

The basic smiley smile is arguably the most popular emoticon, but emoticons can also be useful to convey other feelings. You can make an emoticon just by typing the relevant characters in your text editor. No special formatting is needed! For example if you type a colon : followed by the symbol ) you won't immediately see a smiley but when you save your post you'll see it has appeared on the page like this: smile .

Completion check mark for lessons

Once you see all the pages in a lesson, you will see a check mark inside the box next to the lesson name on the homepage, indicating that you have completed this lesson. If you think you've gone through a lesson but you don't see the check mark, it means you may have skipped one or more pages in between.

How to save your own blog entries

If you have written blog entries as part of a course, you may want to keep a record of all your entries to read them later on (for example, when you wish to remind yourself of what you learnt in the course). You can look at your own blog entries by going to your profile and clicking Blog entries (under the Miscellaneous heading). Then use the save or print feature in your web browser to save a copy of the page that you see. This page shows a maximum of 10 entries. If you have written more than 10 entries, you will see links to access the other pages with your entries and you can save/print all the pages one by one.

How to subscribe to the site news forum

We post announcements of our upcoming online courses on the site news forum. You can subscribe to this forum to receive email alerts whenever we make posts. To subscribe,

  • Make sure you are logged into INASP Moodle with your user account. 

    • Click the Log in link at the top if you're not logged in. If you don't have an account yet, you can create a new account on the login page.

  • After you are logged in, visit the site news forum and click the link called 'Subscribe to this forum' in the menu on the left.

How to mark this quiz as complete

After you take this quiz, please click inside the solid box next to the title of the quiz above so that you see a check mark. You must do this to receive credit for this quiz activity.

Saving course materials after the end of a course

Once a course comes to an end, you will have access to the course materials for at least one month after the end date. While our courses are usually not deleted from this site, we cannot guarantee that our courses will be indefinitely available. We strongly recommend that you save the course materials once the course you have taken comes to an end. Instructions are given below.

  • For learning resources such as lessons, guided readings, or tutorials, you will find instructions in the course on how to save or download these resources.

  • For quizzes and peer assessment activities, see this: Printing/saving quiz reviews and peer assessments

  • For saving a forum discussion, use the print or save feature in your web browser.

  • If you have received a certificate for the course, remember where you have saved it on your computer!

Using the 'optional subscription' feature

To receive email copies of posts made on this forum, click on 'Subscribe to this forum' in the 'Forum administration' menu (the gear icon on the right side). You can unsubscribe at any time. Alternatively, you can subscribe to specific discussion topics within a forum.

Percentage completion figure in Moodle Mobile app

If you use the Moodle Mobile app on your mobile device to access a course, you may see a percentage completion figure under your course on the app homepage (after you've logged in). This figure may be inaccurate in some cases -- this is a shortcoming of the Moodle app and not something we at INASP can control. Please do not use this figure to determine your progress in the course. You may as well ignore it. What is important is to check the completion criteria for the course and any other information given in the course on how to track your progress.

How to check if you have assessed the submissions allocated to you

To check whether you have indeed completed the assessments, go to the activity page and scroll down to view the submissions assigned to you. If you see the phrase 'Already graded' under a submission, it means you have assessed that submission. You can click on the 'Re-assess' button in case you'd like to change anything in your assessment.

Checking or editing your own entry in a database activity

Once you have added an entry, you can check or edit it if you'd like to. To do this, you have to first search for your entry by putting your name in the search box in the database. You should then be able to see your entry. To edit your entry, click the icon that looks like this:

How to edit an entry you have added in a database

To see or edit your own entry in an activity that is set up as a database, you have to first search for your entry, for example, you can put your name in the search box and click search. You should then be able to see your entry. Then click the gear-shaped icon alongside your entry.

How to reset your password

  1. Go to the login page: https://learn.inasp.info/login/index.php
  2. Click on the link titled 'Forgotten your username or password?'
  3. Under 'Search by email address', put in the email address you used when you created your user account, and click 'Search'. Alternatively, if you remember your username, put that under 'Search by username', and click the 'Search link' next to this box.

You will then receive an email with instructions to reset your password.

[Anonymisation of survey responses]

We may combine or correlate the responses in the feedback survey with the responses in the pre-course survey to understand the influence of different factors on course participation. However, in doing any such analysis, we will be using anonymised numeric identifiers and not real names. Further, for reporting purposes we may use anonymised data or quotes from this survey. (You can also look at our privacy policy to learn how we use the data we collect.) While we ask you to complete this survey to meet the completion criteria for the course, your actual responses will not have any bearing on your course completion status.