This page contains the answers to frequently asked questions about using Moodle, Zoom, and Panopto for teaching at Lake Forest College. To search for specific questions, use the keyboard shortcut CTRL+F (CMD+F on Mac) and enter your search terms.
Moodle Questions
Confirm that you are logged into webmail at mail.lakeforest.edu with your Lake Forest account. You can then log in to moodle.lakeforest.edu with your Office 365 credentials.
If you cannot get into your Office 365 account, you may need to reset your password. Please contact the IT Help Desk for assistance with resetting your password.
Refresh the page and try again. If it still isn’t working, contact the IT Help Desk (contact information on the left side of this page).
You may be connected to an old version of the server. Close your browser, then open it again and log in at moodle.lakeforest.edu. If you continue to have problems, please contact the IT Help Desk.
Please contact the IT Help Desk for assistance.
The Scheduler module in Moodle helps you in scheduling appointments with your students. Teachers specify time slots for meetings, students then choose one of them on Moodle. Teachers in turn can record the outcome of the meeting - and optionally a grade - within the scheduler.
Group scheduling is supported; that is, each time slot can accommodate several students, and optionally it is possible to schedule appointments for entire groups at the same time.
Turn editing on, select “Add activity or resources,” then select “Zoom meeting.” It will walk you through creating a link on your page.
Here are additional instructions for using Zoom with Moodle:
Faculty Guide to Using Zoom Through Moodle
If you want to link to a single Zoom meeting (for example, for virtual office hours) for different courses, create the meeting in Zoom first, and then link to it from each of the Moodle courses. Here is an example.
Turn editing on, then scroll down to the bottom left and select “add a block.” You should see quickmail in the list. If you don’t see it, it might already be in your course.
Yes, select the “all in course” option under “Compose course message” in Quickmail.
Your courses can be viewed from the Dashboard tab. Here is a video explaining how to view your courses.
If a student has followed the steps above and still cannot see the courses, please have them verify their course enrollment and then contact the IT Help Desk.
If you are a new faculty member and cannot see your course, please contact the IT Help Desk for assistance with getting your account set up for the first time.
Click Edit Settings in the Course Administration menu. In the course settings, under General settings, you can set the course Visibility options to Hide or Show. Make sure to scroll down and click Save when you have made your selection.
This is due to FERPA restrictions about student access to others’ grades and assignments in a course. If you need to add an instructor, please contact the IT Help Desk. Be sure to include the course name, number, and the name of the person who you would like to add as a Teacher.
In order to import content from an existing Moodle course, you must first be added to that course as a Teacher. You should contact the Help Desk with the course name, number, and the name of the faculty member you would like added in the Teacher role.
If you would like two or more sections of a Moodle course combined into one large course please contact the Help Desk and request a metacourse, including the course name, number and sections that you would like combined.
Please contact the IT Help Desk for assistance with setting this up. Please refer to the contact information on the left side of this page.
To create a custom scale follow these instructions:
- Click the "Add a new scale" button click on the Gear icon, go to Gradebook Set up > Scales tab.
- Scroll to the bottom and "Add a new scale," give your scale a name in the Name box that will identify it among other scales. 'Standard' scale is a scale which can be applied to every course in Moodle. Only those with site permissions such as administrators can make a new scale 'standard'. A regular teacher can only create a scale for their own course.
- Creating a new scale screen: Name, Scale, Description areas
- In the Scale box, create your scale. Each item in the scale should be separated by a comma. You can use as many options here as you require. You must order the comma separated elements in increasing order of value. For example, an A,B,C,D scale must be entered as D,C,B,A. or 1,2,3,4
- Write a detailed description in the Description box to remind you (or other teachers) of how the scale is to be used.
- Save the changes.
No, there is no automated way to do this. You will have to enter grades manually.
The answers must be true, false, or multiple choice. If you think multiple choice answers will extend beyond one line, use this same procedure as for questions.
Video Instructions for Importing Multiple Choice Questions Into Moodle
- Turn on editing in your course (top right blue button),
- Click on Add an activity or resource where you want to locate the file,
- Click on the Resource called "File."
- Follow the prompts to upload the file
- Click save and return to course.
There are two options for doing this, “collapsible weeks” and “stealth activities.”
First use the default course format on the site which is "Collapsible Weeks Format". This format is perfect for courses that may have a lot of content because your students are able to collapse the weeks as they wish. Another format that may meet this need is "Weekly format" and then you could set the "course layout" to show one section per page. The benefit of this format is that it will only show one section (or week) to students at a time. This would also cut down on the page seeming overwhelming to students.
A second option is to use "Stealth Activities". Stealth activities would allow you to place all of the Moodle Assignments in a topic at the bottom of the course page. Then, you could hide the Assignments but also make them available to students. This could be done for each Assignment through the settings for the Assignment. This would mean that students would not "see" the Assignments on the course page, but they would still have access to the Assignments. You could then link to the Assignments. Links to the Assignments could be placed within the topic description or within a Label or even a Page.
Stealth activities are a great way to clean up a course page. There is a link below to the Moodle.org documentation on stealth activities. There is also a video on the documentation page that quickly shows you how stealth activities work.
Log in to Moodle and click the Dashboard. You can see all the previous courses you have taught dating back to 2015.
Yes, if they are multiple choice or true/false questions. Here is a tutorial video.
It is recommended that you use part of the question in the file title for the question bank, so that it will be easy to find later.
- On Moodle, go to the course gear, more, Users tab, Groupings tab. Create a group for each subset of students that you need.
Here is a video that starts explaining groupings at 2:07 minutes. - Set your assignment to “visible groups.” You will be able to filter by group when you are viewing their submissions.
This may happen if your events are for specific groups of students rather than all participants within the course. The students are still able to see their upcoming sessions. However, you can add one “fake” attendance day that is not set to a group, which will cause all other events to show up in the Upcoming Events block.
This is a feature called "Activity names auto-linking." You can disable it at the course level by entering into your course and clicking on the gear at the top right and then select Filters.
Then from filters select the drop-down menu next to Activity names auto-linking and choose Off. This may happen if your events are for specific groups of students rather than all participants within the course. The students are still able to see their upcoming sessions. However, you can add one “fake” attendance day that is not set to a group, which will cause all other events to show up in the Upcoming Events block.
The Section Links block is incompatible with the Collapsed Weeks course format. You will be able to add the block if you change the format of your course.
You can go into both a Quiz and an Assignment and put in a user override. You can learn more about user overrides here.
To re-open a closed quiz for one student, you could use the user override option within a Quiz activity. You can read more about the user override feature here.
No, there is only one gradebook for each Moodle course.
The Student Assistant Grader can hide and unhide items in your course. Advise them not to do this.
For Panopto links that are from videos outside your course, you add it as a URL resource on your Moodle page. The Panopto block in Moodle is an automatic list of any videos you have added to your Course folder in Panopto, so you will not need it for a single link.
Yes, you have the ability to change the course title to whatever you want. Just click "edit settings" from the gear icon.
Please contact the IT Help Desk with the name of the course and the name of the person you would like added in the Teacher role.
Your name in Moodle comes from your college Office 365 account. If you try to change your profile in Moodle, it will get overwritten when the system syncs overnight. If you would like to update your name, please contact the IT Help Desk.
Yes, you will have to connect to the VPN and then to the file server in order to choose files to upload.
If you click on "view submissions" then find a student and click “grade”, you'll see the file. PDFs will show up in the page. If they uploaded something else, you'll have to download it or click on it.
If you don't want to create another topic, the simplest way to divide a section would be to turn editing on, then insert the "label" resource. Then just put in a bunch of dashes or underscores and it will show up on the page. You can also move it after that if you like by using the cross hairs on the left.
If you want to create another section, turn editing on. Click 'Add topics/weeks' underneath the bottom section. Select the number of extra sections you wish and press 'Add topics/weeks'
You can then click the cross on the left side to move it up the page.
No, there is no way to edit the My Courses list.
If you would like to edit the notification, you can do that within your profile. If you navigate to your name in the upper right hand side of Moodle and click on "Preferences", you will see different preferences you can change. Emails from Moodle fall under “Notification preferences.”
In the new Boost theme, you can get to your class logs with these steps:
1. Click on the gear icon in the upper right corner above the Turn editing on button.
2. Select More… from the dropdown menu.
3. Under the Reports heading of the Course administration window, click on Logs.
4. You can leave everything set to the default settings and click on Get these logs to see everything, or you can filter down to the participant and day.
You can hide either automatically or hide grades and feedback manually by following the instructions shown here.
If you want to hide the activity altogether, as well as the grades, you can make the activity invisible manually, as well.
You can view all annotated/graded submissions via the View All Submissions page for the assignment to verify the status of submissions made and last modified dates.
Whenever we see this error it's almost always caused by the Quickmail block. Removing it from the original/source course tends to clear up the issue.
Zoom Questions
1. Log out of any existing account on the Zoom desktop application
First you will have to log out of whatever existing account you are logged into. Click on the little icon in the upper left hand corner and select "logout."
2. Start Login Process
After you have successfully logged out of the account, it’s time to login to your LFC paid account. Select "Sign in with SSO"
3. Select your Domain
After you have picked SSO, you will need to type in your domain name. In this case it is "lakeforest.zoom.us" Then click “continue.”
4. Sign in with LFC Credentials
After you hit continue, a pop up from a browser will come up, and prompt you to login with your credentials. Type in only your user name and password. Make sure to not use your full email as it is not needed.
5. Launch Zoom. After you put in your credentials your browser will prompt you to launch Zoom go ahead and push "Launch Zoom".
6. Signed In
When you launch Zoom, you should already be signed in. Any appointments made from this account will show up.
If you are still experiencing issues after following these steps, please contact the IT Help Desk.
Your passwords may be out of sync. Please contact the IT Help Desk for assistance with resetting your password.
You can’t sign in to a meeting more than once with a single Zoom account. However, you can have multiple people sharing screens at the same time. If you want to share from multiple devices, start the meeting from one device, then go to another device and join the session without signing in to Zoom.
If you don’t have the option to record to the cloud in Zoom, make sure you are signed on with your College licensed account. To verify, go in your browser to https://lakeforest.zoom.us. Choose Sign in to configure your account, and sign in using your College username and password.
In the Zoom app, sign out if you are logged in. When you sign in again, choose Sign In with SSO and enter your college email address. In a new meeting, you should see “record to the cloud.”
Recording to the cloud creates a video file that we can recover, and it automatically moves the processed video to Panopto into the Meeting Recordings subfolder of your My Folder. This move happens moments after Zoom sends the notification that the recording is done and available. You can then move the video from the Meeting Recordings folder to the appropriate class folder by following the documentation here.
We have limited space for recordings on Zoom, which is why we move all videos to Panopto. As such, once a video is moved to Panopto, it is moved to the trash folder in Zoom. It is retained in the trash folder on Zoom for 30 days, and then it is permanently deleted from that file system. Panopto’s version of the video is entirely independent of the Zoom source after the video has been moved, and it will remain available until you either delete it or change permissions to limit its visibility.
The recurring meeting option is more like a perpetual meeting. We do not recommend choosing it. Here is a video on how to establish multiple class meetings through Zoom and how to connect those to the grade book in Moodle to take attendance automatically.
Turn editing on, select “Add activity or resources,” then select “Zoom meeting.” It will walk you through creating a link on your page.
Here are additional instructions for using Zoom with Moodle:
Faculty Guide to Using Zoom Through Moodle
We recommend having different Zoom links in Moodle for different courses for security and to limit any type of Zoom crashing issues.
Zoom can be found in the Chrome Web Store on a Chromebook. It is an extension for Chrome.
We do not support Calendly or other 3rd party schedulers. Please use the Scheduler in Moodle.
You will need to schedule the meeting through the Web to pre-assign the Breakout Room participants. To do so:
1. Go to https://lakeforest.zoom.us and click on the Sign in button. In the login window that appears, enter your Lake Forest College Username (this is only the name and not your full email address) and the Password you use to login to Moodle, my.lakeforest, and email. Press the Login button.
2. Once signed in, click on Meetings in the left column. When the meetings window appears, click on the Schedule a New Meeting button. From that point, you will be able to follow this documentation from Zoom.
A caveat is that all of your students will need to have signed up for their Lake Forest Zoom account by following the directions at www.lakeforest.edu/studentzoom , and they will need to be signed in to Zoom when joining the meeting, so the meeting recognizes them.
You can admit individual people who are in your waiting room, or you can admit all who are in the waiting room at once. Some faculty choose to use the waiting room for classes so they can prepare things they may wish to share during class before letting everyone in.
A brief overview of using the waiting room is available here.
Use Panopto to host the large video files. To share a Zoom recording you’ve already saved to your computer, after logging in, go to the red Create button and choose Upload media. When the Add files to menu appears, choose your course, and select the video from your computer.
For your Zoom faculty account, when you record to the cloud, the video is saved in Panopto. For your next class, choose Record to the Cloud in Zoom. Zoom Cloud recordings automatically transfer to your Panopto account.
For more information about Panopto, please refer back to the main Teaching Remotely page.
With phones you can usually open the file, but not save the file. It has very limited functionality. We recommend using Zoom with a desktop client if possible.
When you share the screen there is a check box in the lower left to share sound too. This setting cannot be saved; when sharing a screen you have to check the box each time.
You can put them in a shared document and send a link to that doc in the chat prior to sending them into the breakout session. Alternatively, you could put them on Moodle as a page, or in a discussion forum, that you point the class to prior to sending them into breakout rooms.
There are a few applications that can open this type of file; one way is to right-click on the file and open it with Chrome. Then go to File – Print and save as a PDF.
If you set up a recurring Zoom meeting link from the Moodle page integration, students should go there for every class session. To start the meeting, you must login to Moodle, go to your course and into the Zoom activity, and then press the green Start Meeting button. The students must go into the Moodle course page, also to the Zoom activity. Instead of Start Meeting, they will see a blue Join Meeting button.
If you want to link to a single Zoom meeting (for example, for virtual office hours) for different courses, create the meeting in Zoom first, and then link to it from each of the Moodle courses. Here is an example.
Sometimes restarting Zoom will fix this issue. Otherwise, check your settings. If you have “prevent participants from saving chat” turned on, you will not be able to copy from chat.
Processing time is normally less than a few hours for standard classes, but it depends upon the load and traffic in the Zoom cloud. It is an aggregate of traffic load, so there are times that processing can take longer than others. If you lost connection while uploading, it will pause until you reconnect to resume uploading. You can rely on the the email notification as a confirmation, but if you have concerns about extended processing let the IT Help Desk know and we can investigate.
If you share an application (and not the screen) and drag to to the second monitor, it will freeze what was originally shown in the location when the share was initiated rather than showing any changes or scrolling. When you share in Zoom, the first row of icons show your screens and the second row (and below) show your open applications. If you choose the screen, to share it will show anything that you drag onto that screen and allow you to move between applications without resharing the next application.
Panopto Questions
If you go to https://www.lakeforest.edu/video, it will take you to Panopto. There is also a Panopto link in the Main menu block in Moodle that will take you there.
You can link directly to Panopto videos from Moodle. If needed, change the video sharing settings so that anyone with the link can view the video.
For any video in the Panopto block or on the Panopto site, you can copy the link. Then, in Moodle, turn editing on. Go to the week in your outline and choose Add a Resource. Choose a resource of type URL, name it and paste the link into External URL.
In Panopto, the Share screen allows you choose access for a video or a whole folder of videos. To share a video, you must be the creator of it—it has to be your video.
For your course in Moodle, there is a matching-name folder in Panopto. For Panopto course folders, only you as instructor are allowed to upload videos. Panopto uses the Moodle enrollments to check that only students in the course are allowed to access the course videos. The students are allowed to view any video you upload to the course folder, but they may not edit or delete it. If a video is in the course folder, Panopto will ask the viewer to sign in when they try to view the video from a URL. Panopto will only allow access to students enrolled in the course.
Copying a video makes a new file with its own URL. If you move a video, the URL stays the same.
When you copy or move a video from your personal folder to the class folder, the video inherits the permissions of the enclosing folder.
Make sure you are choosing “Record to Cloud.” Your Zoom meetings are automatically moved to the Meeting Recordings subfolder in your personal My Folder in Panopto as soon as they are done processing. It may take a while for the processing to complete. You can move the video from that folder to the appropriate class folder to share with your students.
If you cannot find a video in the course folder, check to make sure you have not accidentally placed it in a different folder such as Assignments. If you still cannot find the video or folder, please contact the Help Desk for assistance.
Zoom recordings are automatically moved from Zoom to Panopto into the Meeting Recordings subfolder of your My Folder. This move happens moments after Zoom sends the notification that the recording is done and available.
You can move videos from that folder to the appropriate class folder by following the documentation here.
From your Panopto folder where you created the video click on Share, choose to share within the organization or public (or whatever you want). Click on the link at the top and copy it. Paste the link in email, or in add a URL in Moodle, or a Moodle Label.
Please contact the IT Help Desk for help with this issue.
Please contact the IT Help Desk to get this set up if it did not happen automatically.
Create a new folder in Panopto and share the link with your student through permissions. They will be able to view any video you put in that folder.
Your Zoom recordings are not publicly viewable. After you log into Panopto, the main screen shows a mix of videos that are available to you, including your private videos and videos others have made available to you.
When you make a Zoom recording, Panopto transfers it to Meeting Recordings in your My Folder. Anything in My Folder is private to you. If you’ve moved your Zoom recordings to your class folders, the video is only viewable by the class.
For any video, you have control over who you share it with. Move your mouse over the video to show the Share button.
Yes, please contact the Help Desk with the name of your course to get this set up.
Yes, please contact the IT Help Desk with the name of your course and the names of the folders you would like to be hidden.
Yes. Use the Stats button on each of the videos to see the viewership.
At the top is a chart of the viewership totals per day. Below, Top Viewers shows the name of the viewer, the number of times they watched it, and for how long. Percent Completed records if they watched all of the movie, no matter how many times they took to watch it.
Information Technology Services
ITS Help Desk Contact Info:
On campus: x5544
Off campus or cell phones:
847-735-5544
ithelp@lakeforest.edu