GAP (Moodle) Teaching & Course-Management Cheat-Sheet

Home breadcrumb: Always clickable to return to the front page of the course.
- Location: upper-left corner string (e.g., Home ▸ My courses ▸ Prof Sanchez).
Icons vs. text: College of Business shells use icon tiles for most links; other colleges may use text.

Can be pre-loaded before term starts.
Scheduling (“drip-release”):
- Edit the announcement ➜ Display period ➜ Enable ➜ choose “Start” date (e.g., $(25\,\text{May})$ ).
- Use to have items appear automatically “Week 3 = 19 May,” etc.
Cancelling edits: Click Cancel rather than Save if you experimented.

Access: Click your picture (upper-right) ➜ Edit profile.
Picture: Drag & drop new image in the “User picture” area.
Bio: Paste or write a short introduction; full formatting bar available (bold, italics, links, underline, paragraph formats).

Route: Navigation block ➜ Participants.
“Select All” box (upper-left of list) chooses every student plus you so you receive a copy.
Messages behave like a medical “patient portal”:
- Students receive an external e-mail that a message is waiting.
- In GAP they see a red badge counter over the call-out/message icon.
Download roster:
- Participants ➜ “Download as” ➜ CSV or Excel ⇒ build personal tracking spreadsheet.

Message icon (speech bubble) → collapsible lists:
- “Private” = individual threads with each student even when sent as a bulk e-mail.
- New replies produce a red number badge.

Click a student name ➜ landing page tabs.
Course details ➜ “View more” shows every class they have taken.
Reports
- All logs: Timestamp of every click (proves whether they opened/ submitted).
- Complete report: One continuous page with everything—posts, submissions, your feedback, grades, and resource clicks.
- Nicknamed “GAP-stalking” (Dr Broding).

Attendance tool (left column, week 3 & 7 for an 8-week hybrid):
- Mark Present / Late / Left Early / Absent.
- ≥ $40\text{ min}$ missed (arrive 20 late + leave 25 early) ⇒ Absent.
- No points attached—pure compliance record.
Participation grade (weekly rubric):
- Camera must be ON; must answer when called.
- Sample quantitative rubric the presenter uses:
- $4\text{ meaningful inputs} \Rightarrow 100\%$
- $3 \Rightarrow 75\%$
- $2 \Rightarrow 50\%$
- $1 \Rightarrow 25\%$
- $0 \Rightarrow 0$
- Feedback required for every grade; 1–2 descriptive words suffice (“excellent,” “adequate,” etc.).

Current official rubric was updated ≈ 1 year ago.
Some shells still show the older version (contains “Attendance — on-time/late/left early”).
- Report outdated rubric ➜ curriculumchamps@westcliff.edu or Program Chair/Dean.

Writing Center provides APA 7 templates (papers + Virtual Class Session assignment).
VCS template includes all title/reference formatting & hanging indents; instructions sit inside the body—students replace with their content.
Access example: Week-3 VCS icon ➜ template download.

Administration block ➜ Users ➜ Groups.
Create Group ➜ name “Group A,” Save.
Add/Remove users ➜ select students (Ctrl-click) ➜ «Add».
Repeat for Group B, C, …
Caveat: When assigning the second group, the list still shows all students; you must remember which ones are already in Group A.
Verification: Home ➜ Participants ➜ right pane now lists group labels.

Max file size in GAP: $5\text{ MB}$ .
Students should NOT upload raw video; instead:
- Record in Zoom, YouTube, or phone.
- Store on YouTube (unlisted) or Google Drive (Westcliff account).
- Submit an APA title-page document containing the share-link.

Students cannot see Week 8 Reading/Reflection until they complete the End-of-Course Survey.
- They may do the survey as early as Week-6/7.
- They always possess the assignment prompt via the syllabus; only the submission portal is gated.

All Turnitin reports appear inside the grading view.
If grade is impacted (warning, point deduction, zero), you must file a report:
1. Click “Faculty-only plagiarism reporting form.”
2. Fill student/course/session fields.
3. Download Turnitin marked-up PDF and attach.
AI specifics:
- Grammarly and translation tools are AI; permissible only if student manually applies changes in the original doc.
- Directly submitting the AI-generated file (accept-all-changes) mirrors ChatGPT output and is an infraction.

University hosts ≈ $7{,}500$ students; large uploads strain storage & Amazon S3 fees.
Standard doc/pdf should be < $5\text{ MB}$ ; multimedia via external link.

Faculty Training Drive: linked in Week-8 block; contains videos, rubrics, templates, grading walkthroughs.
New Faculty Orientation (Acorn) → Paylocity videos recommended re-watch.
Faculty Lounge (Zoom): Fridays $13{:}00–14{:}00$ PT for live Q &A.
Escalation paths:
- curriculumchamps@westcliff.edu for course-shell corrections.
- Program Chair/Dean for policy clarifications.

Pre-load all announcements at course build-time; schedule release.
Grade after the due date even if submissions are early to prevent revision/resubmit gaming.
Maintain a personal Excel tracker (downloaded roster + participation counts).
Have participation rubric visible on a second monitor for rapid tallying.
Use breadcrumbs instead of browser Back/Forward to avoid navigation confusion.
Four-screen users: label or dedicate one monitor to GAP only to avoid window-hunt.

Transparency: Students can audit their own activity but not at the “GAP-stalking” depth.
Equity: Enforcing camera-on policy but allowing phone as backup for broken webcams.
Academic integrity: Mandatory reporting ensures repeat offenders are identifiable across courses.

“My camera is broken” — grant one-week grace; next session require phone webcam.
“Another professor never told me” — use Course Details to verify cross-course consistency.
Early submitters wanting iterative feedback — wait until due date before releasing grades.

Message badge = unread count. Slide-out shows “Private” threads.
VCS rubric appears only when you first open the assignment; print or keep a copy.
Icons can differ per college because GAP (Moodle) is open-source and locally customized.
Use Control key for multi-select when building groups.
Breadcrumb click on your own name is faster than multiple Back presses.