Moodle for Faculty (Working Document - Last Updated 3/10/20)
Remote Instructions Resources - a Moodle course for faculty
Student Remote Learning with Moodle (Working Document - Last Updated 3/10/20)
Moodle Status (Moodle is currently hosted by MoodleUS, formerly Moonami; this link takes you to their Twitter feed)
Common Problems and Suggested Steps
NOTE: P stands for Problem, S stands for Suggested Steps.
P: I can't log in to Moodle!
S: First check https://twitter.com/MUS_Updates. If nothing is reported there, are you able to log in to TreeHouse or your Drew email?
If not, please email helpdesk@drew.edu with information about what is happening: what browsers have you tried? What error do you get?
P: How do I email my class?
S: Look here, Emailing a course (employees only), for instructions on emailing through Google or using Quickmail within Moodle.
P: I am getting a 500 error when logging in/logged in to Moodle.
S: Drew’s Moodle Site is hosted by a company named MoodleUS. Check their Status Page for degradations in service or outages: https://twitter.com/MUS_Updates. A 500 error is typically resolved in under 10 minutes.
P: My “Quick Grading” page in Moodle is taking a long time to load.
S: We recognized and worked with our Moodle host to resolve a problem with grading recently. If you have not cleared your browser cache and cookies, please try that; you can also try using a different browser to see if the behavior improves.
P: My “Quick Grading” page in Moodle isn’t showing any of my students’ work.
S: Please make sure that any filters in the “View all submissions” screen are reset to default. For example, look at the Students’ first name/last name filter and make sure it says “All.”
P: I am trying to message my students using Quickmail and no one is receiving an email.
S: Please make sure to select “All in course” when composing an email.
P: I am trying to message my students from the Participant List, but it reads, “"formatnotsupported". No message went out.
S: Sending a message in Moodle from the “Participant” tab is not a reliable way to send a message. Please use either the Announcement Forum (remember, there is a 30 minute editing time-delay by default), or use “Quickmail.”
P: My students can’t see their course.
S: First, please double check that your course is visible to students by going to “Edit Settings” and choosing “Show” next to “Visibility.” Remember to click Save and display.
P: One of my students need extra time on an exam.
S: Watch this tutorial about Adding a student override to a quiz.
P: My professor says the course is visible, but I cannot see it.
S: Please confirm in TreeHouse on your course schedule, or with the Registrar’s office, that you are enrolled in the course. If you are, please email helpdesk@drew.edu with the course information (name, number, section) and professor’s name.
If the suggested steps above do not resolve your problem, please reach out using any of our support resources (help.drew.edu, helpdesk@drew.edu, 973-408-4357, 973-408-3001) to request help. Please be prepared with the course number, including name and section, and the assignment details if relevant.
Moodle 2 Server To Be Decommissioned
The following announcement was sent to Faculty on 10/15/2020. It does not affect students.
Moodle 2 courses are on a locally hosted server that will be decommissioned in early 2021. To prepare for the server going offline, we are shutting down Moodle 2.0 on December 31, 2020. Therefore, we need all faculty to check to see which Moodle courses they may have in Moodle 2 needing to be moved to our current version, Moodle 3 by December 31, 2020.
In Summer of 2017 Drew moved from Moodle 2 to 3. At that time we restored the upcoming courses for Fall 2017 to Moodle 3. Every semester we’ve been moving classes manually from Moodle 2 to Moodle 3 as requested by faculty. In August 2020 we moved all of our Moodle 3 classes to a cloud hosted provider.
Please remember we’re looking at courses that faculty have not taught since Spring 2017. In most cases, if the course has been taught since then and the instructor used Moodle, the course has already been brought over to Moodle 3 in our new cloud hosted environment.
If you think you may need us to retrieve a course, please go to Moodle 2 to find the course you’re looking for and place a course restore ticket for us to restore the course for you. If you have further questions please place a helpdesk ticket and someone from our staff will get back to you.
Thank you,
Instructional Technology
Reviewed 5/31/23