If you are a regular teacher using Moodle alongside all your other tasks, the last thing you want to do is have to keep clicking, typing and scrolling more than you absolutely have to. So here are three simple time-savers which your friendly admin can set up for you:
1. Drop your descriptions:
Activity descriptions are often useful and sometimes essential. But imagine you upload a presentation sensibly named 'Presentation from Lecture April 1'. Are you one of those teachers I've seen who then copy that title and paste it into the description because it's required? You don't have to. Ask your admin kindly to turn off required descriptions from Site administration>Plugins>Activity modules>(name of activity) See for example File resource settings and also Folder resource settings.
2. Freeze your students:
Moodle's gradebook can be quite cumbersome, especially if you have many assignments. Admins can set the student column to be static from Site administration>Grades>Report settings>Grader report so that when you scroll across, you still see who did what. A small feature that can make a big difference. See Grader report settings.
3. Plan your posts:
Forward planning allows for better work-life balances. If you use your course news forum for regular announcements, you can schedule posts to display on certain dates. Your friendly admin can enable timed posts in Site administration>Plugins>Activity modules> Forum It's an experimental setting but I haven't heard of it exploding on anyone yet. See Forum settings
