UUZ VLE Student Guide
UUZ VLE Student Guide
Table of Contents
1 Introduction 3
2 Definitions 3
9 Dashboard 13
10 Profile 14
17 Calendar 20
17.1 Add Events to the Calendar (User events) 21
17.2 View the Events 22
18 Messages 23
18.1 Sending messages 24
18.2 Messages Area 25
18.3 Adding and messaging contacts 26
18.4 Deleting Messages 27
19 Preferences 28
19.1 Edit profile 28
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19.1.1 Preferred Language 28
19.1.2 Forum Preferences 28
19.1.3 Editor Preferences 29
19.1.4 Calendar Preferences 29
19.1.5 Message Preferences 29
19.1.6 Notification Preferences 30
20 Assignments 30
20.1 Accepting the Turnitin Agreement 30
20.2 Submitting an Assignment 31
20.3 Submission notifications 35
20.4 Viewing the Similarity Report 36
21 Forum 36
21.1 Getting familiar with the VLE forum 37
21.1.1 Main Area 37
21.1.2 Autosave 38
21.2 Using VLE forum 38
21.2.1 Creating new thread 38
21.2.2 Edit thread 40
21.2.3 Thread navigating 40
21.2.4 Reply to post 41
21.3 Subscription 41
21.3.1 Forum Subscription 41
21.3.2 Thread subscription 42
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1 Introduction
The main aim of this guide is to provide students with an introduction to the University’s online
resources and more specifically the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE).
Our university is using a virtual learning environment called Moodle to model authentic, real-world
education by integrating a set of virtual concepts for classes, examinations, resources, etc.
The guide uses pictures with captions for a better understanding of what is being described. When
arrows and numbers appear near the pictures, simply follow the sequence in the description. All pictures
are identified by their topic name and number; some instructions can refer to picture number.
2 Definitions
1. VLE: It is a Virtual Learning Environment, where you will be reading, submitting your
assessments and interacting with your teachers and classmates. You will gain access to the VLE
only when you successfully register to at least one module.
2. Email / Username: It is your personal email address you used to register with us. Unless you’ve
requested to change your email address in our records then, use the new email address as
username.
3. Password: It is the password you received via email when you apply for the university. In case
you change that password, the latest password you entered is the valid one.
If you are already doing all of the above and still facing issues, you may proceed with resetting your
password using the following instructions VLE Password Reset for the VLE.
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Access to VLE is granted to whomever has been registered to any module at least once.
If a student has not registered to at least one module yet, then access to the VLE is not provided at
that point.
Note:
If you forgot your VLE password, you can reset it by using the “Forgot your password?” link located
LE Password Reset)
on the login page. (Ref: V
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Make sure when you copying your credentials from the email, to not copy any white spaces on the sides.
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Password Change
Once you log in for the first time you will need to change your password to proceed further.
1. In the “Current password” box (1), enter the password you received in the email. (Image 1)
Make sure there are no spaces before or after the password when you copy and paste it.
2. In the “New password” box (2) t ype in your new password which must follow specific criteria
(4). (Image 2)
3. In the “New password (again)” box (3) type in your new password again to confirm it.
4. Requirements for the system to accept your password.
5. Then to save your changend password, click on the “Save changes“ button.
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Type in your email address in the "Search by email address" box. Use the email address which you used
to register with our university.
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Once you click the “Search” button you will view the following message as shown on the image below.
Click “Continue”.
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In the next screen, type in your new password twice, next to the “New password” (1) and “New
password (again)” (2). Make sure to meet the password criteria (3), otherwise your new password will
be refused.
Once you click “Save changes” (4) your new password will be set and you can use it to log in.
You will be automatically logged in to your VLE account.
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The colors of the boxes on Image 1 are associated with the colors of the headers below.
Header
In the header, you will see the “Navigation bar”, from which you have quick access to the “Courses
menu”, the “Bell icon” where you will see your notifications, the “Speech bubble icon” where you can
quickly access your messages and the “User menu”. From the user menu, you can access the dashboard,
your profile page, your grades, your messages, your preferences and the Help Center which contains
useful information.
Left-Column
Here you see the “Navigation drawer”. In the Navigation drawer, you will find the “Dashboard”, the
“Calendar”, the “Private files” and the “My Courses” category which will only show when you have
access to at least one module.
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Profile View or edit your profile details, grades overview, forum posts.
Help Center Help Center provides VLE guidance, student guide and the FAQ
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9 Dashboard
In the “Dashboard” page you are able to see your courses and your progress in each course. Here you
can also find the Clock block which shows you the server’s time that the platform operates on. Also the
calendar block.
You may access the dashboard either from the “Navigation Drawer” or from the “User Menu”.
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10 Profile
The “Profile” page may be reached from the “User Menu” top right and then clicking Profile.
Here you can edit your profile, upload your photo, etc. You can also view your forum posts and forum
discussions. You can access the Grade overview.
Image 1: Profile
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You can access your grades overview for all courses via the “Grades” link in the “U
ser Menu” (top right
of each page). This lists all courses you are enrolled. If you click on a course name, you will be taken to
your user report showing activities and their grades in that course.
Under “My Courses” (2) you will see the courses you currently have
access.
Once you are located in the course, the navigation drawer allows you to
see other course participants, your grades, and will allow you to jump to
a section in your course.
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You will view the "Search" box. Simply type in your Offer ID (#####), click “Go” and you will find your
course.
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The center column of the course main area is the most important column since it contains all the
module material as well as module’s announcements, contacts, and events.
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The center column of the course main area has two parts:
a) The first part is the general introduction message accompanied by introductory material to the
course.
b) The second part is the topic section. Each topic is easily identified by the greyish background
color behind each topic’s title. The user has the option to Open all or Close all topics at once by
using the buttons shown in the image below. Each section has its own introductory text and a
number of different types of files such as PDF’s, audio recordings, videos, presentations, word
documents, text files, and links to other sites.
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The main purpose of the Course Contacts block is to provide an easy way to communicate with fellow
students and the Instructor. This block is only located in the module area (bottom right corner) since
each course has different participants.
In order to send a VLE message to a contact, you have to click on the (1) dialog icon located under each
contact’s name. A new page will open where you can compose the message and click on the Send
Message button.
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17 Calendar
In the calendar, you can view your deadlines for assignments and quizzes, chat times and other course
events or you can create your own events.
1) Global Events: These events are global and visible to every user in the VLE.
2) Category Events: These events are related to a specific category and are only visible to the
participants of that category.
3) Course Events: These events are related to a specific course and are only visible to the
participants of that course.
4) Group Events: Students and Instructors of a specific module are part of a group. These events
will be visible only to people belonging to this group.
5) User Events: User scheduled events are only visible to the user who has created the event.
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17.1 Add Events to the Calendar (User events)
To open the calendar, first click on the “Calendar” (1) link from the navigation drawer, then click on the
“New event” (2) button.
General
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1) Event title Type in the title of the event.
2) Date Start date of the event.
3) Type of event You are allowed to create only 'user' events.
4) Description It's optional, but you can describe the event as well.
Duration
5) Without duration Instant event, no continuation
6) Until Specify the date by which the event should end
7) Duration in minutes Specify the minutes by when the event should end
Repeated events
Check the box if you wish the event to repeat on a weekly
8) Repeat this event
basis
Specify how many weeks the should the event last or
9) Repeat weekly, creating altogether
repeat itself
10) Save Click to create the event
Calendar Block (Image 1) . As you can see from the image, we
have scheduled the event on 28-Aug-19, that’s why the ‘28’ on
Wednesday is highlighted. If you specify the end date of the
event you will see that the ending date is also highlighted.
1) Hover with your mouse over the highlighted day. In this case,
it’s ‘28’.
Upcoming Events Block (Image 2). As the name of the block suggests,
you are able to view upcoming events. On the image, our event starts
“Today” with no ending date.
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18 Messages
You can send instant messages to your Instructors or your fellow students directly in the VLE. The VLE
messaging system notifies you when there are new posts in forums (if you are subscribed), assignment
submission etc.
New messages are highlighted with a number in the messaging menu at the top of the screen:
Note that the number reflects the number of people who have sent new messages, and not the actual
number of new messages.
By clicking the “speech bubble icon” (1) new messages are shown, along with the option to send a new
message (2), to mark all as read (3) , to go to your preferences page (4) to change how messages are
received, and (5) to view all messages.
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You can access the messages from the user menu located at the top right hand corner of the page (1).
Then clicking on the “Messages” (2) option.
Image 3: Messages
● By clicking “New Message” from the Message menu as in the screenshot above (image 2) and
then searching for a user.
● By clicking the “Messages” link in the user menu (image 2).
● By clicking on a user's name or picture in a course, for example in a forum thread
● From the “Course Contacts Block”.
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To add a contact, click on the contact’s name or picture and you will see a screen similar to the one
below.
Contacts may be accessed from the “Contacts” (1) link and then either messaged, blocked or removed
(2).
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Note that messages are only deleted for that particular user, not others involved in the conversation.
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19 Preferences
ser Menu) then click on the “Preferences”.
To access your preferences, click on the “User menu” (Ref: U
Image 1: Preferences
Forum auto-subscribe
This setting lets you decide if you want email copies of posts that are added to forums. If you set this to
subscribe, the system will automatically email you copies of new posts in discussions that you post in,
unless you manually override it when posting.
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Forum tracking
Enabling forum tracking means highlighting the posts you have not read yet, which should improve your
forum navigation.
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20 Assignments
Important note:
In case a student is unable to upload his/her assignment on the VLE, he/she must immediately send
an email to his/her tutor informing him/her about the technical issues and attaching the
assignment file as proof of evidence. The student should also contact the Technical Team informing
them about the technical issue. Please be as descriptive as possible when reporting the issue.
After you click on the “Add submission” button in the assignment activity.
You will see the following message, where you need to click on.
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Then a pop-up will show up with the agreement which you will need to agree by clicking on the “I agree”
button.
**If you are having issues viewing the Turnitin agreement please try using a different browser or clear
your browser cookies and caches.**
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You should then see a screen similar to the image below.
Step 2: Click the “Add submission” button (1) to bring up the file upload page.
Step 3: Upload and save the file. (Note: Saving your file is not considered that you have submitted for
marking). (Image 2)
There are two ways to upload a file. First one is to browse for a file (1) and the second is to drag-and
drop the file (2) from your desktop or folder to the big blue arrow where it says “You can drag and drop
files to add them”.
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When the upload completes and your file(s) appear in the Files area, click the “Save changes” button
(3).
There are some assignments that are restricted to specific file type(s), meaning that you are allowed to
submit only a specific file type(s). As shown in the image below (image 3) for example were here the
assignment only accepts Word files to be submitted.
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Your document has been saved as a draft (1). That means you have the opportunity to revise your
document until the due date. Please do not forget t o submit for marking before the due date. When you
submit the document, your tutor will know that it’s ready for marking.
If the assignment link has Turnitin enabled, your document will be checked for plagiarism. You should
see the “Turnitin status: Queued” below the document that you have uploaded (2). Come back later to
see your “Turnitin status”, if the similarity report is too high you can edit your submission until you will
be satisfied with the result.
To edit your submission click “Edit submission” (3). This will take you back to “Step 3”, where you can
replace your document. Click on your document then click on the delete button and then the update
button. After that upload a new document, as described above in the “Step 3”.
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When you finish with the revision you must finalize your submission. To submit your document for
marking, click “Submit assignment” (4) button.
Step 5: Click the “Continue” button. Once you finalise your assignment submission, you will not be able
to make any other changes on it.
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Upon successful submission you should receive a receipt email that the assignment has been submitted
successfully.
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If the Turnitin is activated on that specific assignment, then you will be able to view the similarity
report.
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21 Forum
The forum activity module enables participants to have asynchronous discussions i.e. discussions that
take place over an extended period of time. The “Announcements Forum” though it’s an exception, due
to it’s not made for discussions but for informing students relatively to the course, about different
announcements and news, used just by the teachers. Hence you may not reply nor create a discussion in
there.
After you click on the forum link you will see a screen similar to the image below.
1. Button for adding new thread to the forum.
2. This is the search engine of the forum.
3. Title of the thread (click to open).
4. Author of the thread.
5. Shows how many replies the thread has.
6. The settings of the forum.
7. The closed envelope icon indicates you are subscribed to the thread, you can click to unsubscribe.
8. The open envelope icon indicates you are not subscribed to the thread, you can click to subscribe.
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21.1.2 Autosave
While you are writing new thread, you may notice every minute below the text editor a notification
appears and informs you the thread you are writing got saved. To retrieve the saved
thread, simply start a new thread, you will see your thread recovered and the notification below the text
editor .
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3. Choose whether you want to be subscribed to your own thread and receive notifications when
someone replies back, or to be unsubscribed and to not receive any notification about this
thread (not recommended).
4. Here you can attach a file to your thread by simply dragging and dropping into the upload box
area, considering the restrictions of the course mentioned above the upload box.
5. And finally when you are done click on the “Post to forum” button.
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Image 1: Forum (Creating new thread)
You will see a success message informing you that you have 30 minutes to make changes to your post.
Then at the bottom right-hand corner of your post, you will see Edit, Delete and Reply. Click on the Edit
link and you will see the form to edit the post.
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21.3 Subscription
You can subscribe either to the whole forum and receive notifications from all of the threads or you can
subscribe to one or multiple individual threads of your interest (recommended).
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The link will change to “Unsubscribe from this forum”, and of course by clicking it again, you will be
unsubscribed.
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If you have VLE related questions, please take a look at our Student Help Center using the
following link: https://zm-vle-uu.unicaf.org/course/view.php?idnumber=help
And, finally, if neither the SIS Help Page nor the Student Help Center could help, please
contact us using this link: https://zm-sis-uu.unicaf.org/help/support.
In order to help you and to respond efficiently to your message, be sure to include a meaningful
subject line, keep your message focused, and be as descriptive as possible.
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