Frequently Asked Questions About SKSM’s Populi LMS

To log in to your SKSM’s Populi site:

• Go to SKSM Populi URL: https://sksm.populiweb.com/
• Enter your username. If you are using your own computer, click Remember to have Populi remember your username whenever you log in.
• Enter your password. This field hides what you are typing by showing your characters as black dots. If need be, click Show so you can see what you are typing.
• Your screen should look like the following:

• If login approvals are required for your account and you are logging in on a new device or web browser, Populi will ask for a verification code. It will either be texted to your verified number OR generated by the authenticator app on your smartphone. Enter the code to complete the login on the new device.
• Click Log in or press Enter on your keyboard.

Our SKSM Registrar creates all courses and adds the faculty. After that, students can access the courses in two ways:

• Via the Courses panel found on your Home page:

• Use the Dashboard or All Courses list shown on your My Courses view:

After accessing your course instance in Populi, you can post and edit it by adding different resources and activity modules.

SKSM policy is that Faculty open a new lesson every week. The week before the beginning of the term, you will be able to access the first lesson. Faculty work on every lesson every week to ensure the class is receiving the highest standard of education. Therefore, only when a lesson is ready for the class to proceed does the Faculty open it. Please be patient and kind with the time, efforts, and dedication of the SKSM Faculty to offer you quality lessons!

Actually not so different, except for the layout of the platform. Moodle coding constitutes the basis for Populi as a platform, so both systems are not entirely different. However, Populi was created exclusively for the University setting, while Moodle is an open-source platform for any educational setting. That implies that they work very closely even when they may look different. The following table highlights some of the similarities between both systems:

Moodle	Populi
Asynchronous learning	Asynchronous learning
Synchronous learning with third party apps	Synchronous learning with third party apps
Mobile learning	Mobile learning
Video conferencing	Video conferencing
Documentation hosting	Documentation hosting
Integrated gradebook	Integrated gradebook
Communication with faculty via email	Communication with faculty via email
Forums	Forums
Linking of external sites	Linking of external sites
Chat	Chat
Integration with third party apps	Integration with third party apps

In other words, you can do in Populi everything that you were used to in Moodle and much more! Before the beginning of the academic term, you will receive a complete guide to navigate Populi.

Although Populi is not that different from Moodle, it uses different terminology for functions used in Moodle. Following is a table with some of the new terminology from Populi that you may want to remember:

Moodle	Populi
Course shell	Instance
Units/weeks	Lessons
Forums	Discussions
Announcements	Bulletin Board
Forum "Please introduce yourself"	Discussion "Please introduce yourself"
Week 0 (where the syllabus and other information was located)	"General" in Lessons
Syllabus in Week 0	Syllabus in the navigation menu (left side of the screen)
Activities	Assignments
Participants	Roster
Latest News	The Feed
Upcoming Events	Calendar
Recent Activity	The Feed

 

SKSM is committed to save the Moodle course related content from Summer 2018 until the end of the calendar year 2021 (Fall term) in Populi. The retained content only includes course content that the instructor established in Moodle.  Student responses or posts are not retained in the data migration from Moodle to Populi. Starting March 1^st, 2022, SKSM will work with the GTU to ensure all existing data in Moodle is deleted by the end of March 2022.

You can access and save your files from the courses in Moodle. If you have content (files, posts, papers) you’ve shared through Moodle and you would like to save that content, you’ll need to download that data prior to the end of February 2022.

All courses that you have registered for are available although not all of them may appear in your “in-progress” tab in Moodle. Therefore, to find the courses you need to check the option of your “past” courses in the dashboard:

The GTU Moodle is set for the documents to download automatically. For that, please click on the hyperlink of the document (over the name), and it will download:

Please remember that you will be able to download files from the GTU Moodle until March 1^st, 2022.

SKSM has a subscription to the DTL2 (Digital Theological Library) that you should already have access to.

You just need your barcode (found in your Populi URL) to access it (see below for reminder where to find your barcode). You can also email Registrar@sksm.edu if you are having trouble finding your barcode.

The use of the DTL2 is intuitive, and there are tutorials here: https://dtl2.libguides.com/howtouse. The tutorial videos will show DTL1, but the principles are the same (besides cosmetic differences) for DTL2.

To Log In:

• Go to: https://dtl2.libguides.com
• Select “Starr King School for the Ministry” from the dropdown list of schools:

• Input your barcode
• Click on the “Log in” button

Users log in upon clicking on a specific resource either in the A-Z list or the catalog. Users can browse without logging in. Once a user is logged in, the users will not have to log in again during that current browser session.

To log in, upon selecting a resource, you should select “Starr King School for the Ministry” from the institution dropdown menu and enter your Populi barcode.

The number at the end of the URL is the eight digit barcode number that you see on the right end of the Populi address when you are logged in to your account:

Example: sksm.populiweb.com/router/contacts/people/12345678

Please contact Registrar (Registrar@sksm.edu) for any questions or issues regarding library access.

On Tuesday, November 30^th, the LMS team provided a live demo session, followed by a question-and-answer period.  That event was recorded and is available to view here.