FAQ

SSO stands for Single Sign On as well as Single Sign Off and is designed to make it easier for you to use the university platforms. Thanks to SSO, all you need to do is log in for one platform. You are then automatically logged in on all other platforms when you want to access them.

All persons with a UniAccount can log in via "Login mit UniAccount".

All persons with an account from the University of Duisburg-Essen or the Ruhr-Universität Bochum can log in via "UA Ruhr Login"

External users can apply for an account by sending an e-mail to service.itmc@tu-dortmund.de. Details can be found at [Can I use Moodle even if I do not have a UniAccount? ].

Yes, this is possible.

Moodle accounts can be created for people without a university account who do not come from the UA Ruhr. Members of the TU Dortmund can apply for an account for these persons using the form "Application for an e-learning account".

For the account, we always need the first and last name, an e-mail address and a date from which the account is no longer required.

The E-Learning Service Team will contact you as soon as possible.

Go to moodle.tu-dortmund.de

• Members of the TU Dortmund University, use the Login mit UniAccount with the data of the UniAccount (login name starts with sm, zm or m)
• Visiting students, lecturers and all others without a UniAccount use the Login ohne UniAccount
• all from the RUB or the UDE use the UA Ruhr Login

You can log out at the top right next to your name. Please always make sure that you have logged out and close the current browser window.

Make sure you keep your web browser (e.g. Mozilla Firefox, Chrome, Safari) up to date and set it correctly. To use Moodle, you must allow cookies (important for the login process). Only then can you use the platform without restrictions.

By clicking on your name at the top right of the page, you will find the sub-item "Language". In the language settings you can choose between English and German.

If an individual course is displayed in English, then the teacher has set it that way. Unfortunately, you have no influence on this.

UniAccount: If you have forgotten your password for your UniAccount, please contact the ITMC Service Desk.
IMPORTANT: Bring a valid form of identification.

External account: as a user of an external account you can reset your password here.

UniAccount: Changing your password is not possible on Moodle. You can change your central UniAccount password in the ServicePortal. The changed password is then also valid for Moodle.

External account: Click on your name at the top. Under Settings > Change Password you can change your password.

Go to your name at the top and then to [Profile]. With a click on "Edit profile" you can adjust your data.

Note that not all data can be edited. There you can also upload a personal photo of yourself.

Any person with a Moodle account can create courses. Courses created by UniAccounts are created immediately.

Course requests from external accounts must wait for course review and confirmation. This can take up to two days.

Follow the path:
Navigation > Alle Kurse / Navigation > All courses
Here you will find the function "Neuen Kurs anlegen" /  "Create new course"

Under Main Navigation > "Course Search" you can search for keywords. These can be teacher names or words in course names or course descriptions. The entire Moodle instance is searched.

In order to distinguish between courses with the same name, pay attention to the teachers and semester names given. You can also see which semester the course is in by clicking on the course name above.

For LSF-linked courses, you will also find the link to the Moodle room on the course page in LSF.

If you want to find a course in which you are already enrolled, you can use the course search on the page Main Navigation > My Start Page.

In the course overview on "My start page" you can filter the courses by "past", "current", "future" or "favourites". The time classification refers to a setting that teachers configure in the course and does not have to correspond to the current semester period.

You can customize your start page according to your wishes.

To do this, you must first activate the edit mode by clicking on the edit button in the top right-hand corner.

Your start page is divided into blocks that are either in the middle or in the right margin bar. You can delete a block by clicking on the gear icon in the upper right corner. If you are missing something on your start page, you can choose from different available blocks by clicking on [Add Block].

In addition, you can move the blocks by drag&drop if you keep pressed on the cross.

Possible reasons are:

1. You were never enrolled.
2. The instructor has hidden the course.
3. You have been removed from the list of participants.
4. The course is not in the category that is currently displayed in the course overview. If you are looking for a course, it is best to set it to "All (except hidden)".

Click on your profile picture and select the entry "Settings".

Under "System messages" you can filter which messages you want to receive by e-mail. Note, however, that teachers may assume that you receive all e-mails.

If e-mails are missing from your mailbox, this may also be due to spam filters in your e-mail programme!

The upper limit is 2GB, but can be set lower by teachers.

The course short name is used to describe the course uniquely throughout the system. It is also sometimes used instead of the course name. Thus, it is important that this name is meaningful so that you can clearly assign which course it is.
The course short name must be fixed from the beginning and cannot be changed during the semester.

There are different variants here:

1. Your course is synchronised with the LSF: Then all admitted students in the LSF are automatically synchronised with Moodle.
2. You activate self-enrolment with enrolment key (access only with password) or without enrolment key (then the course is open to all!):
   Go to your course > Course menu -> Participants > Options menu (top left under the course menu) -> Enrolment methods > use the cogwheel on the right to configure self-enrolment (enter enrolment key if necessary) and save. Do not forget to activate the self-enrolment method by clicking on the eye. Self-enrolment.
3. You enrol all students manually by hand:
   You go to your course > Course menu -> Participants:inside > Enrol users.
4. For exams in Moodle you can use the Moodle-BOSS synchronization. You can find instructions in the topic special "Digitale Prüfungen an der TU" (Please ask for enrollment key via ticket to service.itmc@tu-dortmund.de).

To change the role, go to "Participants" in the course navigation. Here you will find a list of all users enrolled in the course and their roles.

Click on the pencil symbol to edit the role of the person in the row. Save the change by clicking on the disk symbol.

Be careful not to accidentally take the teacher role yourself!

Go to the desired course, then click on "Settings" in the course navigation at the top.

If you want to change the course format because another format might support your didactic concept better, you can go to "Settings" in the corresponding course.

There you can select a format under course format, the most commonly used formats here are the

• Weekly format, where your materials can be sorted into the appropriate week in which they are to be bahandled.

• Topic format where you can sort by topics and name each topic block manually.

No, there is no way to merge two moodle courses. However, you can of course add a second teacher to your course.

In the course settings you can switch your course from "Visible" to "Hide". During the period when the room is hidden, you can edit it in peace and only other teachers can see the room.

After you have created the course, set the setting to "Show". While the course is hidden, the course name will be displayed differently.

Be sure to set the course start and end dates appropriately. If participants filter by "Current" or "Future" courses, a current course may be missing from their overviews.

Synchronisation with the LSF works with Moodle. To do this, you must log in with your UniAccount.
Call up "My homepage" in the main navigation. At the bottom of the page you can click on the link "Create course from LSF" to display a list of your LSF courses. Select the event for which you want a course to be automatically created in Moodle.

All participants who are admitted to your course in the LSF will be synchronised in Moodle. However, this process can take up to a day, so you may not see your students at the beginning.

Please note that users who are enrolled in a synchronised course cannot unenrol from the Moodle course themselves.

To export the participant list of your Moodle course, you can proceed as follows:

• Open the course from which you want to export the list of participants.
• Select the tab "Students" in the course menu.
• Select the participants you want to export.
• Below the list of participants go to the options menu for selected users.
• Select the desired file format for the export in the options menu under "Download table data as".
• Finally, save the file on your computer.

To do this, you must switch on the editing function in the course, then you can hide entire topic blocks or individual materials via the eye symbol.

To do this, you need to turn on the editing function in the course, then you can hide entire topic blocks or individual materials using the eye icon.

Yes, here it is important that you go via Ctrl + c and Ctrl + v, because the variant with the right mouse button does not work.

Yes, they are available. You can apply for training courses for a minimum of 6 people at moodle.itmc@tu-dortmund.de .

Otherwise, the ITMC E-Learning Service Team provides general training.

More information

1. Procedure for saving: In the course menu, go to the tab "more" and select the option "reuse courses" at the bottom. Click on the option-menu (left), which offers you the options import, backup, restore and reset. Select backup. In the following steps, moodle will ask you which course content to back up and offer to check your settings. Click on backup to create a backup file. You can download this file and save it locally on your computer.
2. Procedure for Restore/Import: You can restore the previously saved course/content as follows. In a course, go to the tab "more" in the course menu and select the option "reuse courses" at the bottom. Click on the option-menu (left) and select "restore".
   A box will appear into which you can "drag and drop" the previously created backup file. Below this you have the option of a list of courses you have backed up. When you have decided on one of the two options, then select "restore". The backup details, backup settings, sections etc. will be displayed. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click "next".
   You will then be offered three options to restore the course:

• Restore as new course
• Restore to this course
• Restore to an existing course

Select the option "restore in this course" and go through the following steps. After you have made and checked the respective settings, always continue with "next" and finish with "restore".

Yes, this is possible by clicking on the arrow next to your profile picture in the top right corner of your course and then selecting "Change Role".

You can use the announcement/message forum for an e-mail message to all participants. The announcement/message forum is created automatically in every new course and is located in the first section of the course. In the role of the instructor, you can post here, which Moodle will send as an e-mail and then save as a forum post. These can then be viewed by participants at a later time. Even if the e-mail message does not reach the participant, they will still have access to important messages.

It is important to know that your contribution will always be sent as an e-mail. The option "Send immediately as e-mail" appears in the form. This refers to the timing, not the method. If you do not select this option, you will have about 5 minutes to review your contribution before sending it and adjust it if necessary.

Recipients of the e-mail are all users of a course, the instructors will also receive a copy of the e-mail.

Go to "More" in the course menu and select the item "Delete course" from the drop-down list.

If you select and confirm this link, your course will be deleted and moved to the recycle bin of the course area. It will remain there for 28 days and will no longer be visible to participants.

Before deleting the course, you should consider whether you still need the materials to use them again. Otherwise, they are very difficult to recover.

In order to be able to select the corresponding faculty in the category, you must assign the corresponding faculty in the LSF of your course.

You can change the subscription settings of the announcement forum by clicking on the forum and selecting the tab "Administration" in the course menu forum. On the right you will see the options menu for selecting the different modes of a subscription. You can choose between four options at this point:

• Mandatory - This is the default setting: all participants receive e-mails and cannot unsubscribe from announcements.
• Optional - Participants must actively subscribe to the announcements or they will not receive e-mails.
• Automatic - All participants will receive e-mails, but can unsubscribe from announcements.
• Disabled - No subscriber will receive e-mails.

You can view the current subscribers (and thus recipients) of the announcements in the forum administration under the item "Subscribers". Please note that changing the subscription setting does not apply retroactively to announcements that have already been created.

To do this, you must first activate the editing function for the course. Behind the activities on the right, three dots are displayed that you can use to open a drop-down list.  In this list, you will find the option "Delete" at the bottom.
After clicking on the delete button, the materials/activities are not irrevocably deleted, but are moved to the "Recycle bin" for the time being. The documents can also be restored from there if they are needed later.

Go to "Course search" in the main navigation and search for the course in the search field displayed below using the meaningful keywords.

You can also search manually by faculty and subject area. To do this, select "All courses" above the input field.

Some courses require an access key. Please contact your lecturer(s) to hand over the access key.

There are courses for which registration only works via LSF. In these cases, registration via Moodle is not possible.

Under "My Courses" in the left navigation bar, all courses in Moodle for which one is registered are listed.

No, because not all courses in the LSF have a supplementary Moodle course. Every teacher is free to request a supplementary Moodle course for his or her course if desired.

However, you can see whether a supplementary Moodle course exists on the event page in the LSF, where a supplementary course is shown to you via a link.

Access keys are assigned by the instructors for their courses. This ensures that only a certain group of users can access the course in Moodle.

When a course is created, it can be set to Hidden. This has the purpose that the course can be edited by the teacher in peace. Occasionally it can happen that the teacher forgets to release the course for participants. Unfortunately, the support is not authorized to make courses visible. Please contact your instructor by mail or phone, he/she will be able to help you.

The instructors and responsible persons are all listed under the course name.

This can have two reasons:
First, it may be that the instructor has not yet uploaded any materials. 
Secondly, it may be that materials have already been uploaded, but the instructor is still hiding them and will only make them available during the course of the semester. Thus, you should always look into courses and not just download everything at the beginning and never look into the course again, you might miss important files.

In the corresponding course you will find the option "Deregister yourself from course 'Course name'" in the drop-down menu under "More".

Please note that users who are enrolled in a synchronized course cannot log out of the Moodle course on their own.

Keep calm and make contact with your instructors, because instructors are people too and will be understanding about missing the deadline as long as you have a good reason.

Contact your teacher directly. He or she will either explain the issue to you or give you tips on where to look up answers to your questions.

Moodle does not display an extra enrollment button. You can enroll in the desired Moodle course by simply clicking on the link of the course name. However, whether or not it is possible to log in to the Moodle course depends on the course settings made by the instructor.