Moodle: Workshop

The workshop activity enables the collection, review, and peer assessment of students' work. This can be done whether students submit through Moodle's text editor or by attaching files.

Add a workshop

1. Toggle the Edit Mode button on (if you haven't already). 
2. Click +Add an activity or Resource in the section in which you want the Workshop to appear.
3. From the activities menu that opens, choose Workshop.
4. Give the workshop a Workshop Name and Description. 
5. Click Save and return to course

The steps below add a Workshop activity to your course, but it will not be immediately visible to students. We recommend thinking through the settings you want to use before making your workshop visible to your students.

Change Settings

1. Open the activity in Moodle.
2. Select Settings.
3. Modify the following settings as you see fit, although keep in mind that none need to be changed from their default values. If a setting is not mentioned, LITS recommends leaving its default value in place.
   • Open the Grading settings menu. The first thing you'll decide is your grading strategy. You will have four options:
     • Comments: Instructors may leave comments in specific sections, but no grade is calculated.
     • Number of errors: Specific assertions are graded either "Yes" or "No".  Instructors may also leave comments.
     • Rubric: Instructors grade work against pre-set criteria. 
     • Accumulative grading: Different parts of the assignment have their own grades, which are added to make your total grade. Instructors may also leave comments. LITS does not recommend using this setting!
   • Open the Submission settings menu. This is where you'll set the ways students can submit their work. You will have several options: 
     • Instructions for submission: Use if you have particular directions to give students about how they should submit.
     • Maximum number of submission attempts
     • Submissions Types: This determines the file type(s) students may use to submit.
     • Maximum submission attachment size
     • Late Submissions: This determines whether students will be able to submit late
   • Open the Assessment Settings menu. Use this if you have specific instructions for how students should look at each other's work. Click on the checkbox Students may assess their own work if you want students to self-assess their submission.
   • Open the Feedback menu. Determine which of the following features you would like to enable:
     • Overall feedback mode: Provides a text field at the bottom of the assessment form where reviewers can write out their assessment and any additional commentary. You may choose to have it Disabled, Enabled and Optional, or Enabled and Required. 
     • Maximum number of overall feedback attachments: to be used if you are having students attach anything to their feedback.
     • Conclusion: if you want to provide any wrap-up thoughts to students at the end of the activity.
   • Open Example Submissions menu. Click Example submissions are provided for practice in assessing if you want students to look at a sample submission before their classmates' work. You will then have to choose between three options for Mode of examples assessment:
     • Assessment of example submission is voluntary
     • Examples must be assessed before own submission
     • Example are available after own submission and must be assessed before peer assessment
   • Open Availability menu. Choose the dates when students can submit, as well as the dates for when they can assess each other's work.
4. When finished, click Save and display or Save and return to the course to save your work.

Once this is done, you will be taken to a new page. In it, there will be a table that shows the different phases of the workshop.=Depending on the phase, different information will appear on the page, although a course will always show the open and closing dates for submissions and assessments until you move into Grading evaluation phase.

Change Assessment form

1. Open the activity in Moodle.
2. Select Assessment form.
3. By default, you will see Aspect 1, Aspect 2, and Aspect 3 listed on the page. For each aspect you want to be included in students' assessments of each other's work, fill in the following details:
   • If you selected Comments in the Grading Settings menu:
     
     • Description of the aspect. This will be written with the TinyMCE text editor, so it can include things like attached files or Panopto links.
   • If you selected Number of Errors in the Grading Settings menu:
     • Description of the aspect. This will be written with the TinyMCE text editor, so it can include things like attached files or Panopto links.
       
     • Word for the error
     • Word for the success
     • Weight
   • If you selected Rubric in the Grading Settings menu:
     • Description of Criterion 1 in your rubric. This will be written with the TinyMCE text editor, so it can include things like attached files or Panopto links.
     • Level grade and definition for each possible score on Criterion 1.
     • A repeat of the Description and Level grade and definition for Criterion 2, Criterion 3, etc.
   • If you selected Accumulative Grading in the Grading Settings menu:
     • Best possible grade / Scale to use, which will determine how students assess this aspect. You can select Point (which requires including a Maximum grade), Scale (which requires selecting from several options, such as Bryn Mawr College Grading Scale, or None.
     • Weight will determine how this aspect will be included in students' grade for the overall activity.
4. Use the Blank spaces provided for 2 more aspects button if you want to include them. Although you cannot delete aspects, any aspect left blank will not be included in students' assessments. 
5. Click one of the following to save your work:
   • Save and continue editing if you want to edit the aspects further after saving.
   • Save and preview if you want to see how the form will look to students.
   • Save and close if you want to return to the main workshop page.

Change Submissions allocation

1. Open the activity in Moodle.
2. Select Submissions allocation.
3. Choose your preferred method of distributing submissions to students for review:
   • Manual allocation: use this if you want to make all choices on which student reviews another's submission. Although the Visible Groups menu may be used to limit which students you see on the page, you may assign students from different groups to each other's work. You will not be able to assign any students, however, until you get your first submission.
   • Random allocation: use this if you want allocations handled by Moodle. That said, you may set the following parameters on how Moodle makes its decisions:
     • Number of Reviews: can be used to limit reviews per submission or per reviewer.
     • Prevent reviews by peers from the same group: can be enabled or disabled.
     • Remove current allocations: use if you want Moodle to redo its allocations.
     • Participants can assess without having submitted anything: can be enabled or disabled.
     • Add self-assessments: can be enabled or disabled.
   • Scheduled allocation: this is a form of random allocation, except it's only done one time, after the Submission phase ends. You can expand the Allocation settings menu to set parameters on how this random allocation will be done
4. When finished, click Save Changes 

Change grade settings

1. Open the Workshop activity
2. Move the assignment into Grading evaluation phase if you haven't already.
3. There will be a field Grading evaluation method. 
   • As of now, there is only one option, Comparison with the best assessment, although Moodle is developing other options.
   • The grading evaluation method determines how the grade for assessment is calculated. 
   • You can let it re-calculate grades with different settings until you are happy with the result.
4. Select your preferred Comparison of Assessments: very lax, lax, fair, strict, very strict. The stricter you make this setting, the more Moodle will punish submissions that receive a wide range of grades.

Videos & Further Reading on Moodle Workshop

• Video: Workshop in Moodle (4.0 and 4.1)
  
• MoodleDocs: Workshop Activity
• MoodleDocs: Workshop FAQ
• MoodleDocs: Using Workshop

Questions?

If you have any additional questions or problems, don't hesitate to reach out to the Help Desk!

Phone: 610-526-7440 | Library and Help Desk hours
Email: help@brynmawr.edu | Service catalog
Location: Canaday Library 1st floor