End of Semester: Reusing your online courses

Kia ora koutou,

It's the end of Semester One already! Here are some guidelines from Learning and Teaching Development on what to do when your online course finishes for the year.

These guidelines include how and where to save your assessment data as per the NZQA record keeping rule for Retention of Assessment Materials for Retrieval, as introduced in December 2020.

Reusing your Moodle course

Please note: Step 1 Back up course, was updated in November 2020, to reflect the NZQA record keeping rule for Retention of Assessment Materials for Retrieval.

Complete the following steps once your learners have completed their courses for the semester:

1. Back up course - Create a backup of your course at the end of the semester which includes all learner data (i.e. includes all assessments, resources, activities and online interactions). Please note: you must do this before you Reset your course (step 4), ready for next semester
   
   
2. Back up Gradebook results - Export a copy of your course Gradebook results for safe keeping
   
   
3. Remove learners - Break the link between EBS and Moodle for the current occurrence(s)
   
   
4. Reset course - Deletes all learner data (Forums posts, Assignment submissions, Quiz attempts etc)
   
   
5. Clean up course - Delete previous backups, files and any courses that are no longer in use
   
   

Click on the links above for detailed instructions on how to complete each of these steps.

Important! If you're teaching a fully online or blended course, your programme may have a different approach to reusing your courses (e.g. Midwifery, Vet Nursing or AIC). Please check with your Programme Coordinator or Ed Tech Champion.

Reusing your Class Team

For the courses using MS Class Teams, you need to leave your 2021 Semester One Class Team as it is and it will be retained for 2 years as per the NZQA record keeping rule for Retention of Assessment Materials for Retrieval. For Semester Two, you will need to set up a new Class Team using the following recommended naming convention: Year > Course Code > Course Name > Occurrence.

If you're not already using MS Class Teams, please do not start using them, as these have not officially been rolled out and are not currently supported by LTD and ISS. There will be a rollout project for Class Teams once they have been thoroughly tested and documented.

Archive any Moodle courses no longer in use

If your course is no longer in use, please follow the instructions under Archive course for safe keeping before removing your course from Moodle.

This is important as our Moodle disk space is at capacity, so we would greatly appreciate you archiving any courses that are no longer required. We will be in touch with our Ed Tech Champions soon about this, as we need your help.

Moodle training suite

The following modules are available from My learning on Tūhono, where you can enrol now for an online self-paced option (where you can either complete the full module and earn your badge, or dip into to gather just-in-time support) or in any face-to-face workshops that are currently available. More dates will be added in the new year.

• After Delivery – perfect for the end of year/semester and includes the steps above to reuse your course in preparation for next year
• Before Delivery – prepare your course ready for the new semester, including enrolling students and a handy ‘New semester checklist’
• Orientation and Assisting Students – useful if you are new to using Moodle at OP or you want to orient yourself with how to navigate and update your Moodle preferences
• Resources, Learning and Assessment Activities – useful if you are updating or adding new activities and resources to your courses, ready for Semester one
• Moodle Templates – useful if your course uses the Blended course template and you want add or update any sections of your course

Additional online training modules are also available.

Need help?

Please contact your Ed Tech Champion if you need any help with the above, or create a case in Service for Learning and Teaching Development.

We hope you all have a lovely mid-semester break.

Image: Laptop coffee table by rawpixel, licensed under  CC0 / Adapted from original