Teaching with Moodle

Hi Everyone,

We are seriously considering using Moodle as the learning system for a study course.

But we have some key questions that need answering. If anyone could help, we would very much appreciate it.

The questions are:

1. Can Moodle courses be setup so that individual students progress through the course at different rates? i.e. Student A starts the course in March and is confronted only with lesson 1, they complete lesson 1 then lesson 2 becomes available to them. Some time later Student B joins the course. We need it to be that Student B can only see lesson 1 (until he has completed it). Is this possible some how? Student A and Student B both need to be able to see each other on the course and communicate in common forums.

2. One of the course templates in moodle is a weekly view. How do you configure moodle to release each weeks content at the start of that particular week? i.e. when it is week 1 the students should only be able to see week 1, and as soon as we move into week 2, week 2 becomes visible.

3. When a student submits something to an assignment the teacher then is able to comment on that submission. That's great, but is there a way for the student to be able to reply to the teachers comment? In other words how can there be a dialogue between teacher and student on each assignment.

Many thanks in advance

Alex