Learn@Illinois Moodle - Glossary Activity

Learn how to use the glossary activity. The glossary activity is a tool that allows the instructor and/or students to create and maintain a list of definitions of key terms.
For a permanent link to this information, please use: http://go.illinois.edu/MoodleGlossary

Glossary

Examples of Using Glossary Activity

  • Students compile key terms with definitions
  • Instructor created study tool with key terms and definitions

Frequently Asked Questions

  1. Can I approve entries that students create?
    Yes! In the "Edit Settings" menu under the "Entries" category, you will want to changed the "approved by default" option to No.
  2. Can I grade the Glossary Activity?
    Yes! Check out our documentation on the UI Activity Grader.
  3. Should I use Glossary or Database?
    Glossary is great if you want simple unstructured definitions of terms. A Database is great if there are key fields within each definition that you want to cover. For example, one course has a database of dinosaurs. For each dinosaur,  there are many different descriptors that students find about it like origin, habitat, diet, etc.

Best Practices

  • Use clear descriptions of activity in the description field including:
    • How students will be graded including any grading guides and rubrics
    • Formatting rules
    • File types that will be accepted
    • Examples of exemplary submissions
  • Communicate dates in a way that is easy to maintain
    • Rarely use hard due dates (e.g. September 22, 2017) - opt for relative dates (e.g. Tuesday of Week 1) whenever possible
    • Use the year when typing hard due dates so that if it does not get updated, it will be clear that this is the wrong date.
    • When you would like to collect submissions at midnight, consider using 11:55pm instead. Students are often confused when something is due on Monday at midnight, but the system says that it is due on Tuesday at 12:00am.

Groups and Groupings

  • The Glossary Activity cannot be used with groups and groupings. 
  • See our Groups and Groupings page for more information.

Related Topics

Moodle.org Documentation