Information for Surgical Technology Instructors

This is a brief guide to the courses I worked on in the ST program. I've done my best to make everything in the courses themselves self-evident, but this page should help you get set up for the first time teaching one of the newly designed courses. The most important part to look at is Getting Your Course Ready.

— Amy Spielmaker, September 30, 2020

Disclaimer: The information below is accurate as-of September 2021, but LBCC's Moodle is always improving so the specifics may change.

Terminology in This Guide

Assignments

I use this generally to refer to anything under the "Assignments" heading in each topic. These are the things that are graded in some way. It includes multiple activity types (assignments, quizzes, forums, etc.).

Activities

I use this interchangeably with assignments.

Activity Type

The actual Moodle activity type. For example, I call all items under the "Assignments" heading in each topic an assignment, but there are different types of assignments (e.g. there's an "assignment" activity type and a "forum" activty type and a "quiz" assignment type, etc.). The activity type of a particular item is easy to tell based on the icon.

• "quiz" activity type
• "forum" activty type
• "assignment" activity type
• "H5P" activity type

Dashboard

What you see when you first log in to Moodle (moodle.linnbenton.edu/my).

Development Shell

The course that has all the changes and updates made by Amy (instructional designer). There is a development shell for every ST course.

Importing a Course

Transferring content from one course to another.

"Real" or "Actual" Shell

The course that students will be enrolled in and is attached to a CRN in banner.

Shell

Used interchangeably with "course," though more often used when referring to courses that don’t have students in them.

Courses on Your Dashboard

There are likely a lot of courses on your Moodle dashboard that have similar names. The two most important ones (for the first term the new courses are taught) are the development shell and the real course shell.

Real Course vs. Development Shell

	Real Course	Development Course
Title	Contains the course CRN (a long string of numbers)	Contains "Development shell for…"
Who’s enrolled	The students that are taking the class and the instructor	Just the instructor(s), eLearning team, program chair, and HOC dean (no students).
How to access it	These courses will appear on your Moodle dashboard (if you’re listed as an instructor) once they’ve been created, which happens sometime before the start of the term.	These courses should be visible on your Moodle dashboard (if you’re listed as an instructor in the course). If you do not see the development shell you’re looking for, make sure the filter at the top of your Moodle Dashboard is set to "All (except removed from view." If you still don’t see it, you’re probably not listed as an instructor in the course. To be added, contact the eLearning support team at [email protected].
Content	Starts out empty (no content)	Contains all the course content

Other courses you may see on your Moodle dashboard:

• Courses from past terms: These courses will either have a term name and date in their title (e.g. "ST 151 Essentials of Human A&P II | Fall 2019") or a CRN in their title, e.g. "ST102-20190226433").There’s nothing you need to do with these courses. Think of them just as archives.
• Copies of the original ST courses: These courses have "Original Shell for …" in their title. These are the versions of the courses that existed before Amy (instruction designer) made any changes. There’s nothing you need to do with these courses. You may just want to hide these courses from your Dashboard.

Getting Your Course Ready

Follow the instructions in the video below before the course opens for students. There are 9 steps, which will probably take you 30-60 minutes to complete.

1. (0:08) Set the open and close dates
2. (1:32) Import the development shell into the real course
3. (2:38) Update the course title, photo, and format settings
4. (4:36) Delete blocks and empty topics
5. (5:35) Update syllabus if needed
6. (6:05) Update term schedule link
7. (6:57) Check your due dates
8. (8:31) Verify everything's ready to go
9. (9:12) Change the course visibility from "Unavailable" to "Available"

After the first time the new courses are taught, instead of importing from the development shell into the current term course, you can just import from the previous term. For example, let’s say the program starts again in Fall 2021 and you’re teaching ST 102: Medical Terminology. You’d import from the development shell for Fall 2021 and then when the course is taught again in the Spring (2022), you can just import from your Fall 2021 shell. Then in Fall 2022, you’d import from your Spring 2022 shell, and so on. This way, you’re always working from the most recently updated course (presuming you make some tweaks to the course while you’re teaching it).

Course Content Overview

Each topic has a "Learning Materials" section and an "Assignments" section. Learning materials are things like readings, videos, and slides. These are not graded. Assignments are what students are actually responsible for completing. These are graded (automatically or by you).

Most topics in most courses have a quiz along with some other assignment due.

Topic Quizzes

• 10 or 20 questions.
• Questions are a mix of multiple choice, true/false, matching, and fill-in-the-blank.
• Students have 1 ½ minutes per question. So, quizzes with 10 questions have a time limit of 15 minutes and quizzes with 20 questions have a time limit of 30 minutes.
• 3 attempts.
• Graded automatically.
• Immediately after an attempt, students will see their score and what questions they got correct / incorrect. They will not see the correct answers until after the quiz closes.

Topic Assignments – "assignment" activity type

• Usually involve a Google Doc with free-response questions, charts, etc. Students can make a copy of the Google Doc, fill it in, and then submit a shareable link for the assignment on their Google Drive or they can download the Google Doc as a Word document, fill it in, and then submit their assignment as an uploaded Word/PDF file. See details about viewing and giving feedback on students' Google Doc submissions.
• Sometimes involve students submitting recordings, papers, presentations, infographics, or other media.

Topic Assignments – "forum" activity type

• Used for free-response questions that, generally speaking, do not have a correct answer, so those that are more abstract or ask about personal experience. Also used when sharing content would be useful (e.g. if students are creating presentation about different safety topics).
• Usually DO NOT require peer replies (though a couple do).

Topic Assignments – "H5P" activity type

Used for questions that are similar to those in quizzes (e.g. multiple choice, matching), but that benefit from being more visual or having more scaffolding.

Topic Assignments – "questionnaire" activity type (only in ST 103 and ST 180)

Used for free-response questions where the exact response from the student is not being assessed. In other words, these are simply graded on completion. If students respond to the questions, they get 100% (graded automatically by Moodle). In ST 103, the questionnaire is also used as a way for students to see their classmates’ responses to specific questions.

Other activity / resource types

The learning materials have various resource types, including URLs (could be a link to a videos, website, google slide deck, flashcard set in Quizlet, etc.), files (e.g. PDF), and pages.

ST 150, 151, and 160 also have the "Glossary" activity type. These glossaries are:

• Used as a place for students to share a specific project series (disorder reports in ST 150 and ST 151 and surgical cases in ST 160). You can think of them as project collections. The glossary is similar to a forum except it’s easier in glossaries to sort and filter alphabetically, which is useful for collections.
• Not graded (students also submit their project in a – graded – assignment area within each topic).
• Only one glossary in each course, located in the first section so it’s easy to find when students have something to add. Students will add each project in the series to this single glossary activity, which creates quite a nice collection by the end of the course.

What To Grade

Activities that need to be graded manually by the instructor:

• Assignment activity types.
• Exams (quiz activity type, but have the word "Exam" in then rather than "Quiz").
• Forum activity types.

Activities that do not need to be graded by the instructor:

• Quiz activity types (with the exception of exams).
• H5P activity types.
• Questionnaire activity types (this activity type is currently only used in ST 103 and 180).
• Glossary activity types (this activity type is currently only used in ST 150, ST 151, and ST 160).

How to Set Due Dates

I've set all assignments to be due at 11:59 p.m. (23:59) on the day the topic is due (based on the term schedule). When you import to a new course shell, you'll likely need to update these.

For the most part, the only dates I've set on assignments are the due dates. I have not set cut-off dates, open dates, "expect completed on" dates, or "remind me to grade" dates. Here's why:

• I haven't set cut-off-dates because the cut-off date is when the assignment (or forum) will stop accepting submissions and I figure I’d rather allow students to submit things late than get a bunch of emails about extensions and not being able to submit assignments or post in forums. Even without a cut-off date set, you’ll still be able to see when students submitted their assignment or posted their posts so can tell if something was turned in late.
• I haven't set open dates because it doesn’t really apply to these courses (students are fine to work ahead).
• I haven't set "expect completed on" dates because it's superfluous if the assignment already has a due date.
• I haven't set "remind me to grade" dates because it’s one less date to worry about updating (though you can change this if you like to get notifications).

Activities that should have due dates

Anything listed under the "Assignments" heading in each topic should have a due date so students know when they're supposed to complete each assignment.

"Assignment" activity types:

• Set the Due date (under "Availability" in the assignment settings) to the due date listed for the topic on the term schedule. Make sure the time is set to 11:59 p.m. (23:59) to keep it consistent with all the other due dates. Setting the due date communicates to students when they should complete the assignment (in both the Moodle calendar and on the assignment page). It will not prevent students from submitting the assignment past that date.
• Do not set any of the other dates in the "Availability" section.
• Do not set an "Expect completed on" date.

"Quiz" activity types:

The recommendation below is based on most ST instructors wanting quizzes to remain available for students to take after the due date listed on the term schedule.

• Set the Expect completed on date (under "Activity Completion" in the quiz settings) to the due date listed for the topic on the term schedule. Make sure the time is set to 11:59 p.m. (23:59) to keep it consistent with all the other due dates.
• Set the Close the quiz date (under "Timing" in the quiz settings) to some later date. This is the last date / time students will be able to submit the quiz. Most instructors make the close date one week after the due date listed on the term schedule or the end of the week. Whatever date you choose, I recommend making the time 11:59 p.m. (23:59) as this is consistent with all the other assignments.
• Leave the "Open the quiz" date unchecked (disabled), unless you only want students to be able to take the quiz after a certain date/time (for example, if it’s a proctored exam).
• Do not set a date in the "Activity Completion" section.

"Forum" activity types:

• Set the Due date (under "Availability" in the forum settings) to the due date listed for the topic on the term schedule. Make sure the time is set to 11:59 p.m. (23:59) to keep it consistent with all the other due dates. Setting the due date communicates to students when they should complete the assignment (in both the Moodle calendar and on the assignment page). It will not prevent students from posting in the forum past that date.
• Do not set a "Cut-off" date.
• Do not an "Expect completed on" date.

"H5P" activity types:

• Set the Expect completed by date (under "Activity Completion" in the H5P settings) to the due date listed for the topic on the term schedule. This will tell students when they should complete the H5P activity (in the Moodle calendar). It will not prevent students from completing the activity past that date.
• NOTE: In future updates of H5P, there may be a due date field. In this case, the settings will likely look similar to the forum settings and you should follow those instructions for setting the due date.

"Questionnaire" activity types (only in ST 103 and ST 180):

The recommendation below is similar to what I've recommended for quizzes.

• Set the Expect completed on date (under "Activity Completion" in the questionnaire settings) to the due date listed for the topic on the term schedule. Make sure the time is set to 11:59 p.m. (23:59) to keep it consistent with all the other due dates.
• Set the Allow responses until date (under "Availability" in the questionnaire settings) to some later date (e.g. one week later or the end of the week). This is the last date / time students will be able to submit the questionnaire. Make sure the time is set to 11:59 p.m. (23:59) to keep it consistent with all the other due dates.

Activities that should not have due dates

Do not set due dates or "expect completed on" dates on anything that's not under an "Assignments" heading. Even though you can set an "expect completed on" dates on things like URLs and pages, I would advise against it because that's more dates to keep track of and potentially confusing for students who then think they must actually complete and submit something that’s going to be graded.

Answers to Common Questions

The questions below are ones I've received from ST instructors over the past year.

How do I grant a specific student an assignment extension?

You do this by setting a user override. See how to add a user override on an assignment. In the override settings, you want to change the "Due date." Remember, students can always submit assignments late (past the "Due date" you've entered in the settings). When you add a user override to change the due date for a particular student, what you're doing is changing what the student sees for when the assignment says it's due.

How do I grant a specific student a quiz extension?

You do this by setting a user override. See how to add a user override on a quiz. In the override settings, you want to change the "Close the quiz" date.

How do I open the final exam for just one student?

You do this by setting a user override. See how to add a user override on a quiz. In the override settings, you want to change the "Open the quiz" date.

I can't find the user override option. What am I doing wrong?

I'm guessing the activity type you're looking at is something other than an "assignment" or "quiz" activity type (for example, a forum). You can only set user overrides on assignments and quizzes.

How do I grant extensions on things that don't have the user override option, like forums?

The short answer is you can't. The longer answer is that it doesn't really matter. I haven't set a cut-off date on any forums so students can always post late. Of course, this won't change what shows up on the student's calendar – the student you've okay'd to post late will still see the forum on the date that's set for the due date, but it's a better option than changing the due date globally.

How do I edit quiz questions?

You edit questions in your course's question bank. See how to edit quiz questions. If you need to regrade a quiz (so students' scores will reflect the corrected answers), follow the instructions for automatically regrading quizzes.

More Questions?

If you have questions about Moodle or these courses, you can reach out to the LBCC eLearning team at [email protected]. They've also put together a list of helpful guides to Moodle, Google Apps, and Zoom that you can check out: LBCC Faculty Support Help Guide Index.

You can also contact me if you're ever looking for something you think I might know about or have a question about some of the work I did. Just shoot me an email at [email protected].