Digital Education Wiki Spaces

Accessibility — Assessment — CampusPress Guides — Digital Education — Gradescope Guides — Learning Technology Good Practice — Lecture Recording — Moodle for Learning — Moodle Baseline — Moodle How-Tos — Multimedia — Student Online Learning — Zoom

Blog (OU blog)

Owned by Anastasia Leyva (Unlicensed)
Last updated: Aug 10, 2023 by Sonja Grussendorf
3 min read

Why use it?

The OU blog activity allows course participants to create a personal blog or contribute to a shared blog.

Comments on a post can be enabled or turned off. Users can edit and delete their own comments.

Blogs support multimedia content and are a great tool to encourage structured, reflective, collaborative discussions.

Step 1: Add a OU blog

Go to the course page and Turn editing on. Scroll to the section where you want your activity to be displayed, click Add an activity or resource and pick OU Blog.

Step 2: Settings

Tip: Click on the question mark icon next to any setting to display extra help or click on Moodle Docs for this page link at the bottom of each page in Moodle for accessing context-specific documentation.

General

Give the activity a Blog name and type the blog Intro.

Allow comments (if chosen for post)

Choose whether to allow comments and by whom.

  • Yes, from logged-in users - allows any users logged into Moodle to be able to view the blog and comment on posts.

  • Yes, from everybody (even if not logged in) - allows anyone who with access to the blog to comment on posts, regardless if they are logged into Moodle. As a course editor, you will receive a notification to be able to approve comments from users who are not signed in.

  • Comments not allowed - disables comments for the entire blog.

Individual Blogs

Set who should view and edit posts.

  • No (blog together or in groups) - enables users to view all posts.

  • Separate individual blogs - only allow users to view their own posts.

  • Visible individual blogs - users can only post on their own blog but can view other’s posts.

Maximum visibility

  • Visible to participants on this course - only enrolled users can view the blog.

  • Visible to everyone who is logged into the system - all logged-in users with access to the course can view the blog.

  • Visible to anyone in the world - anyone who has access to Moodle and the course can view the blog regardless if they are logged in.

Set the Maximum number of attachments that can be attached to a blog post and limit the Number of posts per page.

Contribution time period

Set an optional availability date and time to allow users to post and comment.

Grade

Use Grade if you wish to assess blog posts.

Ratings

Enabling post ratings is optional.

 

Click Save and display.

Step 3: Add a post

  • On the course home page, click the blog name.

  • On the blog page, click New blog post. Next, enter a post Title and Message.

    • It’s possible to embed images and other media within your message. To embed an image click on the embed image icon within the message editor tool bar (circled below) and then choose your image.

Screenshot of Moodle text editor toolbar with the 'embed an image' icon highlighted

Resize your image before embedding it within your blog post, especially if you have taken the image straight from your phone/camera or have downloaded it from somewhere like Unsplash. You can resize images using an image editor (Windows, MacOS, Apple iOS, Android, Web) and an image that’s 1024 pixels wide (or smaller) is usually a good size for a blog post.

  • Optionally, add post Tags. These will help you filter and search for your post among others.

  • Choose whether to Allow comments for this post.

  • Upload any Attachments if you wish.

  • To finalise, click Add post.

  • The new post will be displayed on the blog page form where you can Edit or Delete it.

Step 4: Add a comment

On the blog page, find a post to comment on. Click Add your comment.

Type your comment Title and text.

To finalise, click Add comment.

The comment will be displayed on the blog page below the post, where you can Edit or Delete it (if Comment is enabled in the blog settings).

 

These pages are created by the LSE Digital Education Team and licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License CC BY-SA 4.0