Library Skills training online

Moodle is UCL's Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and hosts content for almost all UCL's academic programmes. If you are developing asynchronous material for an academic programme, you are likely to be required to host it in Moodle.

Different roles in Moodle give users different permissions as to what they can access or edit in a Moodle course. e.g. A 'Student' role allows you to view content, participate in activities, submit coursework and view your own grades.

If you will be creating materials within a Moodle course, you will need to be granted an editing role by the Moodle course administrator, tutor or leader.

A 'Library Staff' role is available (new as of May 2025), which allows the following permissions:

• View course
• Post to forums
• Add selected content, including books, files, folders, pages, text and media areas, URLs, and the Library Resources block.

The 'Library Staff' role does not allow you to create any content that could be assessed, such as quizzes or interactive content. This is so library staff are not able to see students graded assessment marks.

Library staff are not automatically given 'Library staff' access to Moodle courses. Access must be agreed with and granted by the Moodle course administrator, tutor or leader. Where a member of library staff requires permissions to create quizzes or interactive content, the course administrator, tutor or leader would need to assign them 'Tutor' access, rather than 'Library staff' access.

If you are not granted editor access, you may prefer to create library skills materials outside of Moodle, using other tools, so you can develop and update them as needed, and request that the Moodle course administrator provide a link in Moodle. A useful tool for this is Sway, which can be used as a webpage for providing textural information, links to videos, online tutorials or quizzes, or as a tutorial in its own right.

Department heads can request for individuals to be assigned access to all Moodle courses in their department with a specified role. E.g. The Head of Department for Economics might request access for the librarian with responsibility for supporting the Economics department, with the role of 'Library Staff' at category level, giving that librarian 'Library staff' access to all Moodle courses within the department of Economics.

Library trainers are encouraged to re-use existing UCL online skills materials in skills training for academic programmes wherever possible. Here are some tips:

• Create a Moodle lesson and embed existing library skills videos from UCL MediaCentral. Follow these up with questions in the lesson to check understanding and provide feedback.
• Add links to existing resources in LibrarySkills@UCL LibGuides.
• Supplement generic material with subject-specific material. See our guidance on Library site and subject specific student inductions recommendations.

If you are given access to the Moodle course for an academic programme, you may find you receive email notifications, e.g. when new content is posted to the Moodle course. Notifications are connected to the settings in an individual's profile, so you can manage which notifications you receive. 

To manage your notification settings:

• Click on your profile picture in the bar at the top of the screen.
• Select Preferences.
• Under ‘User account’ select Notification preferences.
• You can amend individual preferences or check the box at the top of the list to ‘Disable notifications’.
• Some notifications may be ‘Locked on’ or 'Locked off', so can't be changed, but these are to do with your personal coursework submission, so are not relevant. 

The LibrarySkills@UCL Moodle course was set up to provide a platform to host asynchronous training when we first went into lockdown. Content on this Moodle course is being migrated into alternative formats and made openly available through LibGuides so as to remove authentication barriers and make our content openly available. Whilst Moodle does have a facility to set up guest access, learners accessing content as a 'guest' cannot utilise interactive features, such as quizzes. Eventually we shall retire the LibrarySkills@UCL Moodle course.