Topics Covered In This Article

Introduction

The Glossary activity allows you and your students to create and maintain a collection of concepts and definitions for your course. The simplest example is a glossary of key terms, but Glossary is a versatile tool that can be used for a variety of purposes, creating an engaging and effective learning experience for your students. Glossary definitions can include text, images, audio, and video. Glossary entries can be browsed or searched.

Glossary is intended as a student activity, so the content entered into a glossary isn't automatically copied from the previous course offering.

The following video is supplemental to this written article.

Design Ideas

Here are some examples what you can have your students use Glossary for:

• Glossary of key terms. Students contribute key terms and definitions as move through the course material. Other students can leave comments. This can help build a shared understanding of course concepts and encourage active learning.
• Students can collect and organize resources related to the course, such as links to relevant websites, videos, or articles.
• Collaborative note-taking or study groups. Assign small groups of students to create a glossaries of terms or concepts for particular topics and have them present to the class.
• Have students submit potential quiz questions along with what they think the correct answer is for each course unit or module. Fellow students can dicusss the questions and answers in the comments.
• Create a list of acronyms or abbreviations commonly used in your field or discipline. This can be helpful for students who are new to the field or who are not familiar with the terminology.
• Have students create a list of key people, events, or movements related to your course. This can help students understand the historical or cultural context of the subject matter.
• Showcase student work or creativity. Encourage students to create entries that incorporate multimedia elements such as images, videos, or audio recordings.
• Annotated bibliography. Students create entries for sources they use in their research, including the citation and a brief summary or analysis of the source's content.
• Tips for teamwork.

How to create a glossary

1. Turn editing on. From the main course page, select the Turn Editing on/off button on the top right.

2. Locate the section in your course where you want to add the Glossary. At the bottom of the section, select Add an activity or resource.

From the pop-up window, choose Glossary.

3. Enter a Name to give this glossary a title. Add a Description so that students know how to complete or contribute to the activity.

Entries

Approved by default: If set to no, entries require instructor approval before they are viewable by other students.

Always allow editing: This setting specifies whether entries can be edited at any time or only during the editing window, which is 30 minutes after posting.

Duplicate entries allowed: allows the entry of more than one definition for a given term.

Allow comments on entries: Students and teachers can leave comments on glossary entries.

Automatically link glossary entries: If the Glossary auto-linking filter is enabled for the course, enabling this allows individual entries in this glossary to be automatically linked whenever the concept words and phrases appear throughout the rest of the same course. This includes forum postings, internal resources, week summaries, and so on.

Appearance

Display format

That specifies the way that each entry will be shown within the glossary. The default formats are:

• Simple, dictionary style - Like a conventional dictionary with separate entries. No authors are displayed and attachments are shown as links.
• Continuous without author - Shows the entries one after other without any kind of separation but the editing icons.
• Encyclopedia - Like 'Full with author' but attached images are shown inline.
• Entry list - Lists the concepts as links.
• FAQ - Useful for displaying lists of frequently asked questions. It automatically appends the words QUESTION and ANSWER in the concept and definition, respectively.
• Full with author - A forum-like display format showing author's data. Attachments are shown as links.
• Full without author - A forum-like display format that does not show author's data. Attachments are shown as links.

Approval display format

When approving glossary items you may wish to use a different display format.

Entries shown per page

This sets the number of words and definitions that students will see when they view the glossary list. If you have a large number of automatically-linked entries, you should set this number lower to prevent long loading times.

Show "All" link

Show "Special" link

If enabled, participants can browse the glossary by special characters, such as @ and #.

Allow print view

This provides a printer-friendly version link for students. (Instructors are always provided with a printer-friendly version link.)

4. When you have finished setting up the forum, click Save and return to course. If you want to review the Glossary, click Save and display.

How to add entries to a glossary

For more information on adding entries to a glossary, refer to the official Moodle documentation.

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