Moodle Activities: An Introduction
Activities are things for students to do in the course while logged on to the system. The following are activities available typical Moodle server installations. Your server may have some, all, or even more activities available for your use in developing a Moodle Course. See your site administrator to discuss activity module installation and activation options.
Creating activities for your course can be challenging, especially the first time you try doing them. Make frequent use of the context-sensitive help buttons 
that are liberally sprinkled on the various activity construction pages. Some activity set-up screens are anything but intuitive. Ask a colleague, or your trainer, if you get stuck. Also, refer to the more detailed handouts available for each activity topic.
Assignment: Teacher specifies a task that requires students to prepare digital content (any format) and submit it by uploading it to the server. Typical assignments include essays, projects, and reports and so on. This module includes grading tools. See “Assignments” handout for detailed instructions.
Chats: Real-time synchronous discussion via the web in text form. Though perhaps scheduled as part of an online course, I can see some use of this in classroom settings for “silent” ongoing discussion. See “Chat” handout for detailed instructions.
Choice: Teacher asks a question and provides a choice of multiple responses. This is useful to poll understanding of the class after a lecture or to encourage thinking about a topic. See “Choice” handout for detailed instructions.
Database: This activity allows participants to enter data in a form decided by 3 the teacher of the course. The entries can then be sorted, searched etc. Entries can contain text, images, and other kinds of information. See “Database” handout for detailed instructions.
Feedback: This is a quick polling tool… much quicker/easier to set up than a questionnaire. See “Feedback” handout for detailed instructions.
Forum: A discussion board or threaded discussion Based upon attributes selected by the instructor the forum can be used for general class discussion with postings and replies by teachers and/or students. Its a sort of organized approach to class discussions on topics. See “Forum” handout for detailed instructions.
Glossary: A dictionary-like tool to create definitions or examples of terms incorporated into the course text. Entries can be searched or browsed. Hyperlinks to the glossary terms from within course text can be easily made. See “Glossary” handouts for detailed instructions.
Lesson: Use this module to present information bit by bit as in a tutorial environment. Typically some information is provided then a question is asked, to which students respond. Based on the students answer choice, he can be sent back to review other information, go forward to another topic or branch to a related topic. See “Lesson” handouts for detailed instructions.
Questionnaire: Use this to create surveys or polls using short answer, rating scales, multiple choice, yes/no, and other options. See “Questionnaire” handouts for detailed instructions.
Quiz: Design or import quizzes and tests that consist of multiple choice, true-false, and short answer (alpha or numeric) questions. Questions are kept in a database, and can be re-used within or among. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts, can be automatically graded with/or without user feedback for each question or at the end of the quiz. See “Quiz” handouts for detailed instructions for setting up and creating different quiz types.
Wiki: Create a starting page for a wiki topic, then select it within the wiki activity to create a place for collective development of a definition, background information, or even brainstormed list of ideas or strategies to teach a particular topic, with all participants able to edit the page. See “Wiki” handout for detailed instructions.
Workshop: Teacher can post a document to allow peer assessment but the teacher can also manage and grade the assessment. This flexible module supports a wide range of possible grading scales. See “Workshop” handouts for detailed instructions.