Welcome to the Moodle 2.6 Documentation¶

Getting Started for Administrators
Getting started for Teachers
Getting started for Students

Table Of Content¶

About Moodle¶

Moodle is a software package for producing Internet-based courses and web sites. It is a global development project designed to support a social constructionist framework of education.

Moodle is provided freely as Open Source software (under the GNU General Public License). Basically this means Moodle is copyrighted, but that you have additional freedoms. You are allowed to copy, use and modify Moodle provided that you agree to: provide the source to others; not modify or remove the original license and copyrights, and apply this same license to any derivative work.

The word Moodle was originally an acronym for Modular Object-Oriented Dynamic Learning Environment, which is mostly useful to programmers and education theorists. The heart of Moodle is courses that contain activities and resources. There are about 20 different types of activities available (forums, glossaries, wikis, assignments, quizzes, choices (polls), scorm players, databases etc) and each can be customised quite a lot. The main power of this activity-based model comes in combining the activities into sequences and groups, which can help you guide participants through learning paths. Thus, each activity can build on the outcomes of previous ones. There are a number of other tools that make it easier to build communities of learners, including blogs, messaging, participant lists etc, as well as useful tools like grading, reports, integration with other systems and so on.

Moodle is used by a variety of institutions and individuals, including Universities, High schools, Primary schools, Governmentdepartments, Healthcare organisations, Military organistaions, Airlines, Oil companies, Homeschoolers, Independent educators Special educators

Moodle Key Features¶

Moodle is a free, online Learning Management system enabling educators to create their own private website filled with dynamiccourses that extend learning, any time, anywhere. Whether you’re a teacher, student or administrator, Moodle can meet your needs.

If you are an Administrator, you can...

Authenticate and enrol your users in over 50 ways.

Create an attractive, mobile-friendly learning environment with themes which can integrate with your website.

Bulk upload and delete courses and create course templates.

Enhance your Moodle with add-ons that you can update from inside your site.

Sign up to Community Hubs such as Moodle.net to share free courses.

More Advanced Features

If you are a Teacher, you can...

Drag your favourite teaching resources straight onto the page.

Search for and embed multimedia

Award badges

Direct your students’ learning path.

Get your students working and learning together in forums, wikis, glossaries and more.

Assess and feedback with self-grading quizzes.

Set them inididual, group or anonymously graded assignments with a marking workflow and rubrics.

Annotate students pdf submissions directly in the browser.

Provide opportunities for them to peer and self assess in workshops.

If you are a Student, you can...

Manage your files through file picker.

Track your progress in your course.

Create your own personal dashboard.

Moodle Site - basic structure¶

The Front page¶

The Front page of a Moodle site - the page you reach from your browser - usually includes information about the establishment itself and can be highly customised. (Note that it is also possible to lock the front page down so that all a user sees when they click on the Moodle URL is a log in screen.) How users join a Moodle site depends on the establishment: they might be given logins; they might be allowed to make accounts themselves, or they might be signed in automatically from another system.

Inside Moodle¶

Moodle’s basic structure is organised around courses. These are basically pages or areas within Moodle where teachers can present their learning resources and activities to students. They can have different layouts but they usually include a number of central sections where materials are displayed and side blocks offering extra features or information. Courses can contain content for a year’s studies, a single session or any other variants depending on the teacher or establishment. They can be used by one teacher or shared by a group of teachers. How students enrol on courses depends on the establishment; for example they can self -enrol, be enrolled manually by their teacher or automatically by the admin. Courses are organised into categories. Physics, Chemistry and Biology courses might come under the Science category for instance.

Teachers, students and other Moodle users¶

You don’t enter Moodle with the “teacher” or “student” role. Everyone who logs into Moodle has no special privileges until they are allocated roles by the administrator according to their needs in individual courses or contexts.

Finding your way around¶

A logged in user can access areas of Moodle such as their courses or profile from the Navigation block and Administration block. What a user sees in these blocks depends on their role and any privileges granted them by the administrator. Each user has their own customisable page, accessed from the My home link.

Getting Started in Moodle¶

Administrators¶

Site Setup¶

This document will show you how to setup a moodle site.

Moodle Installation¶

Moodle is primarily developed in Linus using Apache, PostgreSQL / MySQL / MariaDB and PHP .

Basic Requirements

Sever Hardware¶

Specific hardware requirements for your project will depend on the volume of anticipated concurrent users and should be discussed with your team IT team if you are hosting the server yourself, or company with whom you are hosting. As minimum are:

Disk space : 160MB free (min) plus as much as you need to store your material. 5GB is probably a realistic minimum.

Memory : 256MB (min) , 1GB or more is strongly recommended. Moodle can support 10 to 20 concurrent users for every 1GB of RAM

Server Software¶

Operating System : A linux based system is recommended for high performance. Example- CentOS, Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, Mac OS X . Moodle can also be installed on Window 7 / 2012

Web server : Apache is recommended . Others also wok such as IIS, lighttpd, nginx, cherokee, zeus and LiteSpeed.

PHP : Minimum version is 5.3.3. recommended PHP 5.5 and newer if available.

Database : Minimum versions of following -

MySQL - version 5.1.33 (mostly recommended)

PostgreSQL - version 8.3 (mostly recommended)

MariaDB - version 5.3.5 ( drop-in replacement for Oracle’s MySQL)

MSSQL- version 9.0 (fully supported but documentation and online help are not as comprehensive)

Oracle - version 10.2 (not recommended)

Browser : Mimimum browser for accessing Moodle: recent firefox, Internet Explorer 9, Safari 6, recent Gooogle Chrome 11 .

Set up your server¶

Depending on your particular choices of software set up your basic server . If you are using a hosted server all this should be done for you by your hosting provider.

Download and copy files into place¶

Download your required version from http://download.moodle.org/ and unzip it .
Then place the whole folder in your web server documents directory, in which case the site will be located at http://yourwebserver.com/moodle , or you can copy all the contents straight into the main web server documents directory, in which case the site will be simply http://yourwebserver.com .
Secure the Moodle files: it is vital that the files are not writeable by the web server user. Files are owned by administrator / superuser and are only writeable by them, readable by everyone else. If you want to use built-in ad-on installer you need to make the directory writeable by web server user.

Create an empty database¶

Create a new, empty database for your installation. You need to find and ake a note of following during information for final installation stage :

dbhost - the database server hostname. Probably ‘ localhost ‘ if the databse and web server are the same machine, otherwise the name of the database server.

dbname - the database name. Whatever you called it example - moodle .

dbuser - the username for the database.

dbpass - the passowrd for the above user

Create the data (moodledata) directory¶

Moodle requires a directory to store all of its files (all your site’s uploaded files, temporary data, cache, session data etc.). The web server needs to be able to write to this directory. So create a directory and set the permissions for anyone on the server to write here.

Start Moodle Install¶

Go to your Moodle’s main URL using a web browser.
The installation process will take you through a number of pages. You should be asked to confirm the copyright, see the database tables being created, supply administrator account details and supply the site details. The database creation can take some time - please be patient. You should eventually end up at the Moodle front page with an invitation to create a new course.

Technical Specification¶

Sever Hardware¶

Specific hardware requirements for your project will depend on the volume of anticipated concurrent users and should be discussed with your team IT team if you are hosting the server yourself, or company with whom you are hosting. As minimum are:

Disk space : 160MB free (min) plus as much as you need to store your material. 5GB is probably a realistic minimum.

Memory : 256MB (min) , 1GB or more is strongly recommended. Moodle can support 10 to 20 concurrent users for every 1GB of RAM

Server Software¶

Operating System : A linux based system is recommended for high performance. Example- CentOS, Redhat, Ubuntu, Debian, Mac OS X . Moodle can also be installed on Window 7 / 2012

Web server : Apache is recommended . Others also wok such as IIS, lighttpd, nginx, cherokee, zeus and LiteSpeed.

PHP : Minimum version is 5.3.3. recommended PHP 5.5 and newer if available.

Database : Minimum versions of following -

MySQL - version 5.1.33 (mostly recommended)

PostgreSQL - version 8.3 (mostly recommended)

MariaDB - version 5.3.5 ( drop-in replacement for Oracle’s MySQL)

MSSQL- version 9.0 (fully supported but documentation and online help are not as comprehensive)

Oracle - version 10.2 (not recommended)

Browser : Mimimum browser for accessing Moodle: recent firefox, Internet Explorer 9, Safari 6, recent Gooogle Chrome 11 .

Managing a Moodle Site¶

A user with the role of Administrator is typically in charge of a Moodle site once it has been installed, although some tasks may be delegated to others by assigning them a role such as Manager. The links below provide more information about how to manage your Moodle site.

Authentication - different methods of adding new users to your Moodle

Managing accounts - how to search for, edit, delete or perform bulk actions on users

Enrolments - different methods of adding users to courses.

Roles and permissions - how to add or remove permissions from students, teachers and other users on your Moodle

Security - how to keep your Moodle safe

Performance - ways to check the efficiency and smooth running of your Moodle

Backup - how to backup your site and courses

Site appearance - ways to change the display and navigation of your site

Language - how to add new languages and alter the default terms used.

Server settings - registration, maintenance and default settings

Site-wide reports - a list of useful reports for administrators

Admin tools - a list of useful tools, such as DB search and replace and database transfer

Developer tools - how to debug your site, purge caches and tools for test sites only

Web services - how to connect other systems to Moodle to perform operations

Community hubs - search for, download, enrol in or add your own courses to public directories.

More features - Blogs, Comments, Tags, Messaging, Notes, RSS feeds, Calendar

Advanced Features¶

The advanced features in Administration > Site administration > Advanced features contains a number of features that may be enabled / disabled globally by the site administrator.

Outcomes

Outcomes are specific descriptions of what a student has demonstrated and understood at the completion of an activity or course. Each outcome is rated by some sort of scale. Other terms for outcomes are Competencies and Goals.

They are similar to sub components of a grade. A grade is an assessment of overall performance that may include tests, participation, attendance and projects. Outcomes assess specific levels of knowledge through a series of statements, that maybe coded with numbers or letters. Thus an overall grade can be given for a course, along with statements about specific competencies in the form of outcomes.

Comments

A comments block can be added to any page in Moodle, enabling users to easily add comments. A similar interface enables comments to be added to glossary, database activity and blog entries. The comments interface uses AJAX so that comments are added instantly without needing a page refresh.

Tags Functionality

Tags allows students and teachers to describe their interests in a way that is easy for people with similar interests to find them. The user’s profile has a place to enter interests, which will create or add the user to an existing tag. Tag pages can be viewed and blog posts can be tagged.

Notes

The Notes feature is a way to attach information about a user by another user. For example, a teacher might attach a note to a specific student about the hobbies and interests that seems to engage that student.

Users must have the permissions to View notes and Manage notes in order to use this feature in any context. Thus students might be allowed to view or even manage notes within a course.

Portfolios

Portfolios in Moodle make it easy for a student to export their work to an external portfolio. For example, student work might include forum posts or assignment submissions that they believe demonstrates their knowledge.

Web Services

Web services enable other systems to login to Moodle and perform operations.

Messaging

Messaging refers both to automatic alerts from Moodle about new forum posts, assignment submission notifications etc, and also to conversations using the instant messaging feature.

Notification email override

For allowing users to enter a different email address in Administration > My profile > Messaging .

Statistics

If statistics are enabled for the site, graphs and tables of user activity may be generated.

RSS feeds

RSS (really simple syndication) feeds in Moodle enable people to stay up to date with forum posts, glossary entries and other events within Moodle.

Blogs

Blogs in Moodle are user based - each user has their own blog. Users can also register their external blogs, such as Blogger or Wordpress, so that entries are automatically included in their Moodle blog.

Networking

The Moodle network feature allows a Moodle administrator to establish a link with another Moodle or a Mahara site and to share some resources with the users of that Moodle.

Completion tracking

Completion tracking is a process that assists Course completion and Activity completion features. It must be enabled in Advanced settings before it can be used anywhere in the site.

Conditional access

Conditional activities enable teachers to restrict the availability of any activity or even a course section (in Moodle 2.3 onwards) according to certain conditions such as dates, grade obtained, or activity completion. When it is enabled by the administrator, a “Restrict access” setting appears in the settings of activities or resources .

Plagiarism plugins

Plagiarism is when a student submits content they have copied and the real author was not given credit for the words. Plagiarism prevention detects when this form of cheating or academic dishonesty has happened.

Badges

Badges are a good way of celebrating achievement and showing progress. Badges may be awarded based on a variety of chosen criteria and are fully compatible with Mozilla Open Badges. They are displayed on a user’s profile.

Upgrading¶

Upgrade from Moodle¶

You can only upgrade to Moodle 2.6 from Moodle 2.2 or later. If upgrading from earlier versions, you must upgrade to 2.2 first .

Check the requirements - Check that your server meets all requirements for 2.6 in Administration > Site administration > Server > Environment.
Before you upgrade your site for real - We advise that you test the upgrade first on a COPY of your production site, to make sure it works as you expect.
Backup important data - The three should be backed up:
- Moodle software (For example, everything in server/htdocs/moodle)
- Moodle uploaded files (For example, server/moodledata)
- Moodle database (For example, your Postgres or MySQL database dump)
Put your site into maintenance mode - You should put it into maintenance mode to stop any non-admin users from logging in.
Install the new Moodle Software - Steps to follow:
1. Move your old Moodle files to another location.
2. Unzip the Moodle package there so that all new files are in the location the old fles used to be in on the server.
3. Copy your old config.php back to the new moodle directory.
4. If you have any custom plugins, themes, add-ons on your site you should add them to the new code tree now.
Finishing The upgrade - Last step to follow:
Enter the moodle URL in your browser.
Then go to Administration > Site administration > Notifications.
Moodle will automatically detect the new version and file systems upgrades that are necessary. If there is anything it can’t do itself then you will see messages telling you what you need to do.

Automatic Update Deployment¶

An administrator can enable updates deployment in Administration > Site Administration > Server > Update notifications. Then when updates are available, ‘Install this update’ buttons are shown on Plugins overview and Plugins check pages.

Assignment Upgrade Helper¶

Assignment upgrade tool

The Assignment upgrade tool is an administrator tool for upgrading assignments in Moodle 2.2 and older to the new assignment module in Moodle 2.3 onwards. It is recommended that admins upgrade all existing assignments to use the new assignment module as soon as possible, then disable the old assignment module (called ‘Assignment 2.2’ in Moodle 2.3 onwards), to avoid the confusion of having two assignment modules.

Upgrading assignments

To upgrade existing assignments to use the new assignment module

Go to Administration > Site Administration > Assignment Upgrade Helper.

Click List assignments that have not been upgraded to display a list of assignments created in a previous version of Moodle. This page lists the assignments created with an older version of Moodle that have not been upgraded to the new assignment module in Moodle 2.3. Not all assignments can be upgraded - if they were created with a custom assignment subtype, then that subtype will need to be upgraded to the new assignment plugin format in order to complete the upgrade.

Select the assignment(s) you wish to upgrade and click the Upgrade selected assignments button in the Batch operations box at the bottom of the screen. Or click the Upgrade all assignments button in the Batch operations box.

Confirm by clicking Continue.

A confirmation screen will appear.

Disabling the old assignment module

Once all existing assignments have been upgraded, the old assignment module can be disabled.

Go to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Manage activities

Hide the Assignments 2.2 module by clicking on the eye in the hide/show column

Teachers will then have only the new assignment module available for selection in the activity chooser.

Question Engine Upgrade Helper¶

The question engine upgrade helper is an admin tool for sites which have been upgraded from a pre-Moodle 2.1 version. Moodle 2.1 onwards uses a new question engine. A site administrator can run the question engine upgrade helper in Settings > Site administration > question engine upgrade helper.

Note: You can reset any quiz that has been converted and then re-do it, but you should only do that if you have a good reason to do so and you don’t have to.

Users¶

Accounts¶

An administrator can perform various tasks relating to user accounts in Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts. The links below provide more information:

Browse list of users¶

An administrator can browse and search the list of all user accounts in Settings > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Browse list of users.

Administrators can search for a particular user, using their name or email address as the search term, and then edit their profile. Editing a user’s profile is a way to reset the user’s passwords when they are unable to log in. Another reason for needing to edit a user’s profile is to disable their email address if the site is receiving lots of undelivered mail.

If you are using Email-based self-registration and a user has a problem confirming their account, you can confirm their account for them by clicking the confirm link opposite their name.

Table Sorting¶

All of the columns in the browse list may be sorted in alphabetical (or numerical) order either ascending or descending, by clicking on the column heading. Your first column click sorts the user data A-Z, the second click sorts the data Z-A.

Filters¶

You can search for users, using particular criteria or Filters. These criteria can be configured to display data as per the following limits:

contains

doesn’t contain

is equal to

starts with

ends with

is empty

For example, if you wished to search for all users with Abhinav in their First Name or Last Name you would enter ‘John’ in the Full name filter and select the ‘contains’ limit.

Clicking the Show Advanced button will provide you with additional search Filters and data limits. The Filters under the Advanced area will also include any custom user profile fields that have been created within your Moodle installation

After applying a Filter to a user search, click the Add Filter button to run the user search. All Filters applied to the search are listed above the search results. You can add or remove (using the corresponding tickbox) Filters to your search criteria as required. These filters are saved within a single Moodle session.

Add a new user¶

An administrator or manager can create new user accounts in Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Add a new user.

General¶

Username - The user will use this username to log into the Moodle. It should be unique.

Authentication method - Accounts created by an administrator use the Manual Accounts method, and accounts created by the user themselves using the email sign-up method use the E-mail based self-registration method.

Suspended account - Suspended user accounts cannot log in or use web services, and any outgoing messages are discarded.

Generate password and notify user - Moodle will generate a temporary password and email the user with instructions on how to log in and change it. The email message (as in the screenshot below)may be changed in Site administration > Administration > Language > Language settings. Select ‘moodle.php’ and the string identifier newusernewpasswordtext

Password - This is the user’s password.

First Name - The user’s first name.

Surname - The user’s surname.

Email address - Password reset notices, forum digests and other messages are sent to this email address from the Moodle site.

Email display - This setting controls who can see the user’s email address.

Email format - This setting can be used such that Moodle will send text-only emails to the users.

Email digest type - This setting set whether the user will receive an email for each new forum post in subscribed forums, or if new posts should be sent once per day in a digest, and which type of digest.

No digest (one receives individual emails),

Complete (a single digest daily) or

Subjects (a single digest daily with only the post topics included).

Forum auto-subscribe - If a user subscribes to a forum, new posts will be sent in the digest as specified. This setting sets whether a user is automatically subscribed to forums or if a manual click on the subscription button in each forum is required.

Forum tracking - This setting specifies whether new posts written since the user’s last visit should be highlighted a such.

When editing text - This setting specifies whether the user prefers to see the WYSIWYG text editor or just a plain text box.

City / town - The user’s city or town.

Country - The user’s country.

Timezone - This setting is used to adjust the times of messages and assignment/quiz due dates to match the user’s local time.

Preferred language - This will cause the Moodle interface to be displayed in the specified language. Note: Content will not be translated automatically, but if multi-language content is entered the appropriate language content will be displayed, if available.

Description - Information about the user that other users can see.

User Picture¶

The user’s picture can be displayed next to the user’s name, to any content he/she has posted in Moodle activities such as forum.

Additional names¶

Here you can fill additional names if you required.

Interests¶

The list of interests can be used as a way of connecting users with similar interests. Tags must be enabled on the site.

Optional¶

These include: Web Page, ICA number, Skype ID, AIM ID, Yahoo ID, MSN ID, ID number, Institution, Department, Phone, Mobile Phone, Address.

User profile fields¶

Administrators can create new user profile categories and fields in Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts > User profile fields.

Profile fields may be a menu of choices, text area, text input or a checkbox and may be required or not.

New profile fields will appear on each user’s profile page unless “Who is this field visible to?” is set to “Not visible” in which case only the administrator can see the field. The fields can also be displayed on the signup page if “Display on signup page?” is set to “Yes” (although note that they will never be displayed if set to “Not visible”).

You can set the order in which your custom profile fields appear under the associated profile category using the up/down arrows on the User profiles fields page.

To create a new profile field, select the profile field format you require from the dropdown list.

Common Settings¶

All new fields must be given a unique Short Name and a Name (this is displayed on the profile page). You may also choose to enter a Description for the field for your own reference. There are also a number of configuration options common to all custom profile field types:

Is this field required? This option specifies whether this is a mandatory or optional field for user accounts.

Is this field locked? This option determines whether once information is populated in this field, it cannot be edited by the user.

Should the data be unique? If you need the information populated in your field to be unique across the system (such as an ID number) select Yes to this option and the profile page update will perform a validation check on the data entered.

Display on signup page? Depending on the authentication method in use on your Moodle site, you may have some users creating their own accounts. If you would like this custom field to appear on the registration or signup page, select Yes.

Who is this field visible to? Each custom field can be given one of three visibility settings:

Visible to everyone

Not visible

Visible to user

The Not visible setting would typically be set by an administrator who wants to hold private data on the users. The Visible to user setting would normally be selected for a field that holds sensitive information, while the Visible to everyone setting can be used for any type of information.

Specific Settings¶

There are also a few field type Specific Settings requiring configuration around default value and size.

Important

If the site administrator bulk uploads user data via .csv file, it is essential to use the correct convention to represent the new profile field. The convention is profile_field_shortname

Replace ‘shortname’ with the actual short name used for the new profile field eg. dob. So the field should read something like profile_field_dob.

Also, you will need to visit Administration > Site Administration > Users > Accounts > User Profile Fields > Create new Profile Field before attempting to upload a file using it. Creating an upload file first with custom profile fields without creating the User Profile Fields first in Site Administration will result in the error .

Cohorts¶

Cohorts, or site wide cohorts, enable all members of a cohort to be enrolled in a course in one action, either manually or synchronised automatically.

Creating a cohort¶

Cohorts can be created by site administrators and other users with appropriate permissions.

Access Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Cohorts

Click the Add button

NOTE In the dropdown you can choose between making your cohort available throughout the site “system” or in a named category.

Complete the details and save the changes.

Follow the assign link opposite the cohort name in the list of available cohorts.

Select potential users from the list then click the Add button.

To synchronise cohort members with course participants, the Cohort sync enrolment plugin should be enabled in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Manage enrol plugins.

Adding users to a cohort in bulk¶

Access Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Bulk user actions

Find users by setting an appropriate filter

Add users from the available list to the selected list

Choose ‘Add to cohort’ with selected users

Uploading users to a cohort¶

An administrator can upload users via CSV file to existing cohorts as follows:

Access Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Upload users

Upload a text file with the following format:

Cohort¶
username	password	firstname	lastname	email	cohort1
john	user*123	John	Teacher	john@example.com	first
tanisha	user*123	Tanisha	Student	tanisha@example.com	second

Where first and second are the cohort ids of existing cohorts not their names.

Searching cohorts¶

When a site has a large number of cohorts, keywords may be enetered into the search cohort box to search for the available cohorts.

Managing category cohorts¶

Cohorts which have been created for a category rather than the system can be located by selecting the appropriate category and then clicking the Cohorts link in Administration > Category (name) > Cohorts.

Upload users¶

An administrator can upload multiple user accounts via text file in Administration > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Upload users.

Upload user process¶

Steps to be followed:

Create file for uploading.

Go to Settings > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Upload users

Add file to upload

Upload users preview - check settings and default user profile settings

Upload users preview - click “Upload users”

Upload users results - shows list of users, exceptions made in upload and summary of number of users

Upload users results - click “Continue”

Returns to Upload users screen

File formats for upload users file¶

You can use a spread sheet program to create the file with the required columns and fields. Then save the file as “CSV (comma delimited)”. These files can be opened with simple text editors for verification.

File can include the following:

Required fields : username,firstname,lastname,email

Validity checks are performed for:

username can only contain alphabetical lowercase letters , numbers, hypen ‘-‘, underscore ‘_’, period ‘.’, or at-sign ‘@’

email is in the form: name@example.com .

Password field : “password” field is optional if “Create password if needed” setting is chosen (default).

If included, values should meet the requirements for the site’s Password policy. To force password change for a particular user, set the password field to changeme.

If omitted, a password will be generated for each user (during the next Cron job) and welcome e-mails sent out.

Note: the text for the welcome e-mail is in the language settings. Please refer to this forum threadfor details.

Optional fields : To provide values other than the default include one or more of these

institution,department,city,country,lang,auth,timezone,idnumber,icq,phone1,phone2,address,url,description,mailformat,maildisplay,htmleditor,autosubscribe

Additional name fields

Country : use a country TWO LETTER CODE

Custom profile field names : (Optional). xxxxx is the real custom user profile field name (i.e. the unique shortname)

profile_field_xxxxx

Special fields : Used for changing of usernames or deleting of users

oldusername, deleted

Enrolment fields (Optional) : course1,type1,role1,group1,enrolperiod1,enrolstatus1/course2,type2,role2,group2,enrolperiod2/enrolstatus2 etc.

Cohort field (Optional) : cohort1

Upload user pictures¶

Every user on Moodle is able to have their own personal profile picture (or “avatar”) which can be uploaded via their profile. If no picture has been uploaded then the default is shown.

Updating user picture¶

Users can update their picture by editing their user profile in Settings > My profile > Edit profile.

TThere is a delete box when checked will delete the picture when the profile is saved.

TThere is a browse button for the user to find and upload a picture file.

TThe picture description appears when the mouse rolls over the picture.

Uploading user pictures in bulk¶

An administrator can upload a zip file containing user images in Settings > Site administration > Users > Accounts > Upload user pictures.

The image files should be named after the username, the idnumber or the id of the student (along with the correct image file extension.) For example, a student with the username jbrown98 would have a picture called jbrown98.jpg

TImage types supported include gif, jpg, and png.

TImage file names are not case sensitive.

Gravatars¶

An administrator can enable the use of gravatars in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > User policies. If a user has not uploaded a user picture, Moodle will check whether the user’s email address has an associated gravatar and if so, will use the gravatar as the user’s picture.

Permissions¶

User Policies¶

This is where you can select what actions are taken in specific role circumstances, for example, if someone wishes to sign in as a guest the default role allocated to that person can be specified.

The following settings may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > User policies.

Role for visitors Users who are not logged in to the site will be treated as if they have the role specified here, granted to them at the site context. The role of Guest is the default and the recommended setting for standard Moodle sites. The user will still be required to login to participate in an activity.

Role for guest This option specifies the role that will automatically be assigned to the guest user. This role is also temporarily assigned to non enrolled users when they enter a course that allows guests without password.

Deny Guest Access to a site altogether Go to Site administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication and there is a switch there that allows you to turn the Guest Access button off altogether.

Default role for all users It is recommended that the default role for all users is set to Authenticated user. To set it to a custom role, the custom role must be assignable in the system context and have role archetype set to none.

Auto-login guest If not set, then visitors must click the “Login as a guest” button before entering a course which allows guest access.

Note: If auto-login guest is set, the guest login button also needs to be set to show (in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication), even though visitors won’t necessarily use it.

Hide user fields The following user fields appear on users’ profile pages. Certain user fields are also listed on the course participants page. You can increase student privacy by hiding selected user fields. Description, city/town, country, web page, ICQ number, Skype ID, Yahoo ID, AIM ID, MSN ID, last access, My courses and first access and groups.

Show user identity Any of the following fields may be shown to users with the capability moodle/site:viewuseridentity when searching for users and displaying lists of users.

ID number

Email address

Phone number

Mobile phone

Department

Institution

This setting is useful for sites with large number of users, where the likelihood of users with the same name is high.

Maximum users per page You can choose here the maximum number of users to be displayed when searching in courses, groups, cohorts etc. The default is 100 but if your Moodle site is very large you can increase the number here.

Enable Gravatar Gravatar (an abbreviation for globally recognized avatar) is a service for providing globally unique avatars.

Gravatar default image URL If gravatars are enabled, an alternative default user picture may be specified. The options are:

A gravatar default image.

A specified image - by entering the image URL

If the field is left empty then the theme’s default user picture is used.

Site Administrators¶

Site administrators have permissions to do anything.

Users may be assigned the role of site administrator by another site administrator in Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Site administrators, but the role itself cannot be edited (or deleted!).

Note: The primary administrator (created when the site was created) cannot be removed from the site administrator role.

Define Roles¶

A role is a collection of permissions defined for the whole system that you can assign to specific users in specific contexts. The combination of roles and context define a specific user’s ability to do something on any page. The most common examples are the roles of student and teacher in the context of a course.

For example, you may have a role called ‘Trainer’ set up to allow trainers to do certain things (and not others), once this role exists you can assign it to someone in a course to make them a ‘Trainer’ for that course. You could also assign the role to a user in the course category to make them a ‘Trainer’ for all the courses under that category, or assign the role to a user just in a single forum, giving that user those capabilities just in that forum.

Permissions¶

You have three permission levels for each task

Allow: The role is assigned in the stipulated context.

Prevent: By choosing this you are removing permission for this capability, even if the users with this role were allowed that permission in a higher context.

Prohibit: This is rarely needed, but occasionally you might want to completely deny permissions to a role in a way that can not be overridden at any lower context. A good example of when you might need this is when an admin wants to prohibit one person from starting new discussions in any forum on the whole site. In this case they can create a role with that capability set to ‘Prohibit’ and then assign it to that user in the site context.

Managing roles¶

Managing overall role capabilities can be done by an administrator using Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles. This is the place to add custom roles or modify existing roles.

Manage roles¶

The ‘Manage roles’ tab contains a list of roles on your site. The Edit column contains icons for editing and deleting roles, and for moving them up or down in the list (affecting the way that roles are listed around Moodle).

To edit a role:

Go to Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.

Click the edit icon opposite the role you want to edit. For example “student”.

On the editing role page, change permissions as required for each capability.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save changes” button.

Add a new role¶

To add a new role:

Go to Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.

Click ‘Add a new role’ on the ‘Manage Roles’ page.

On the ‘Add a new role’ page, give the role a name.

Give the role a meaningful short name, the short name is necessary for Moodle plugins they refer to the system roles.

Give the role a description (optional).

You can base a new role on the permissions set for an existing role, so that you do not start from scratch. Select from the Legacy role type option to do this.

Set the required permissions.

Click ‘Add a new role’ to save your new role.

Resetting a role¶

To reset a role back to the default permissions:

Go to Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.

Click on the name of the role, for example “student”.

Click the ‘Reset to defaults’ button.

Note that if you have students who have been given extra permissions at course and/or activity levels (such as forum ratings), then they will no longer be able to do this once the role has been reset to its default. A teacher would need to go back and set up these extra permissions in the course/activity levels again.

Allow role assignments¶

The “Allow role assignments” tab allows (or does not allow) a specific role to be able to assign specific roles to a user.

Enabling teachers to assign other teachers

By default, teachers can only assign other users the roles of non-editing teachers, students and guests. If you want teachers to be able to assign other teachers in their course, you can allow the role assignment:

Click on Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.

Click the Allow role assignments tab.

Click the checkbox where the teacher row and column intersect.

Click the “Save changes” button.

Allow role overrides¶

The “Allow role overrides” tab allows (or does not allow) a specific role to be able to override specific roles for a user. For example, it might allow a teacher role to override a student’s role to a non-editing teacher’s role. Note : Note that the settings only apply to roles that have the capabilities moodle/role:override or moodle/role:safeoverride allowed.

Allow role switches¶

The “Allow role switches” tab allows (or does not allow) a specific role to be able to temporarily change their role to another specific role. For example, this might allow a users assigned to a custom role in a course to see “Student” in the Settings > Switch role list.

Note: the selected role must also have the moodle/role:switchroles capability to be able to switch.

Assign System Roles¶

You are here Administration > Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Assign System Roles .

In Moodle users do not normally have a global, site-wide role. In other words in Moodle you may have a teacher role in the course you teach in but a studentrole in another course.

Role assignment is within a defined context - for example site and course. When you create a new role or edit a pre-existing role via Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles, you are asked in which context(s) you want the role to be assigned.

System context¶

Administration > Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Assign system roles

Any roles assigned here apply to the whole Moodle site.

Front page context¶

Administration > Site Administration > Front Page > Users > Permissions > Assigned roles

Those with a role in the system context do not need to be assigned a role here as well.

However you might want to allow a teacher to manage items on the front page; in this instance, you would assign them the role on the Front page.

Course Category context¶

See Category enrolments

Users may be enrolled in the category to save enrolling them in each individual course in that category.

Course context¶

Go to Administration > Course administration > Enrolled users

Click the “Enrol users” button and click those users you wish to enrol

The dropdown menu at the top shows roles for which you are allowed to enrol; typically those users with lower roles than you.

Block context¶

(Within the block) Administration > Assign roles

You may wish to assign roles to a block if, for instance you want specific people to see the block but for it to be hidden from others

Activity Module context¶

(Within the activity settings) Administration > Locally assigned roles

An example of this is assigning a student the teacher role locally in an individual activity like a forum so they can moderate their classmates’ posts while still retaining the student role in the rest of the course.

User context¶

The most common use of this is for the Parent role.

When the Parent role is created via Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles the “user” context box is checked.

To assign a parent the role in the context of their child (so they can see their child’s grades etc) click the child’s profile and then go to Administration > Roles > Assign roles relative to this user

Hierarchy¶

By assigning a role to a user in a certain context, you grant them the permissions contained in that role for the current context and all lower contexts.

The list of contexts in hierarchical order is as follows:

System (no parent)

Front page (parent = system) -

Course category (parent = parent category or system)

Course (parent = category or system)

Module (parent = course or system)

Block (parent = course or system)

User (parent = system)

Roles can be inherited. For example if a user is assigned a Teacher role in a specific course category then the user will have this role in ALL courses within the category. Tip: use the override feature in a specific context for exceptions.

Roles will only work if the role assignment is made in the correct context. Some examples: a Teacher role should be assigned to a user in the course or course category context, a Forum moderator for a particular forum should be assigned in that specific forum.

Hidden roles¶

If you want to provide users with access to the course, but don’t want them to be visible in the participants list, use the Other users link in the course administration menu (Administration > Course Administration > Users > Other Users). Assigning roles here provides course access, and editing rights according to the permissions set for the role assigned without actually enrolling the user in the course. This is similar to the functionality of the “hidden user” check box in previous versions of Moodle.

Check System permissions¶

You are here Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Check system permissions .

The check permissions feature provides a method to view the capabilities for a selected user based on their role assignments. These capabilities determine whether or not the selected user is allowed to perform associated tasks within the system or course.

Checking system permissions¶

Enter the user’s name into the ‘Search’ field and press Enter.

Select the correct user from the list.

Click ‘Show this user’s permissions’.

A list of all permissions for the selected user is displayed.

Note: Use the filter to search the permissions list.

Capability Overview¶

You are here Administration > Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Capability Overview

An administrator can generate a capability overview report in Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Capability report.

The report allows the administrator to select a capability and one or more roles. The report shows the role and its permission level for that capability. The report also shows if that capability was overridden for the role anywhere in the site.

For example, it might show the gradereport:user view capability for a student role is set at the system level as “Allow” and for Course 1 it is set to “Prohibit”.

Unsupported Role Assignment¶

Unsupported role assignments are role assignments in contexts that make no sense for that role, such as the course creator role in the course or activity context, or the teacher role in the user context.

An administrator can check for any unsupported role assignments across the site in Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Unsupported role assignments.

Courses¶

A course in Moodle is an area where a teacher will add resources and activities for their students to complete. It might be a simple page with downloadable documents or it might be a complex set of tasks where learning progresses through interaction. Progress can be tracked in a number of ways.

Manage Courses and Categories¶

Course categories organize courses for all Moodle site participants. The default course category on a new Moodle site is “Miscellaneous” (although this can be renamed) A Course creator, Administrator or Manager can put all courses in the Miscellaneous category. The list of courses within a category by default shows the teachers and the summary of each course.

To know more about Course categories

Add a Category¶

Most people organize their courses by department and college or by topic. Be sure to test the organizational scheme with a few users before entering a large number of courses, to save time in moving them later.

Adding categories is very simple:

Go to Administration > Site administration > Courses > Add a category

Complete the details required and click ‘Create category.’

Alternatively, you can go to Administration>Site administration>Courses>Manage courses and categories and click the link ‘Create new category’.

If the category is visible, the course category description will be displayed to users when they enter the category, above the list of courses.

Course Default Settings¶

You are here: Administration > Site administration > Courses > Course default settings

Course default settings allow you to set the default settings used for new courses.

The following defaults are included:

Format

Number Weeks/Topics

Visibility of hidden sections

Number of News Items to show

Showing of Gradebook to learners

Showing of activity reports

Maximum upload size

Metacourse

Completion Tracking

Completion tracking beings on enrolment

Course Tagging

See Course Settings to learn more about these settings.

Course Request¶

The course request feature can be enabled by an administrator in Settings > Site administration > Courses > Course request.

An admin can set the default category for course requests, whether users can select a category when requesting a course, and who can receive notification of course requests (from a list of users with the capability moodle/site:approvecourse).

A ‘Request a new course’ button will then appear on the ‘All courses’ page. The All courses page can be accessed via a link in the Courses block.

If course requests are enabled, by default all authenticated users can make course requests.

Backup¶

A backup allows a site administrator to save everything associated with a moodle site. These backups can be restored to bring a site back to the point in time when the backup was made.

Default settings for course backups can be set by a site administrator in Settings > Site administration > Courses > Backups > General backup default.

Selected settings may be locked, so that they cannot be changed when creating a course backup. By selecting a time in the “Keep logs for..” dropdown, it is possible to specify how long backup logs information is kept before being deleted. As this information may be very large, it is recommended the length of time chosen be quite short.

See Automated Course Backup for scheduling automatic backup.

Upload Courses¶

An administrator can upload multiple courses via text file in Administration > Site administration > Courses > Upload courses. In addition to creating new courses, this functionality may also be used to update or delete courses, or import content from another course.

To know more about Upload courses.

Grades¶

General Settings¶

Default values for all grade settings can be set by an administrator. The easiest way to do so is to log in as admin then browse a course gradebook and follow the ‘Change defaults’ links.

The following additional grade settings can be found in Administration > Site administration > Grades > General settings. The settings will affect all gradebooks used by all teachers.

Graded Roles¶

Graded roles are the type of user that will appear in the gradebook. Most of the time “student” is the only one needed.

User profile report¶

The default user profile report setting has just one option, ‘User report’, unless a custom user report has been added to the site.

Teachers can view the user reports for all or selected students in the course in Administration > Grades administration > User report.

Include scales in aggregation¶

Scales can be included as numbers in all aggregated grades across all gradebooks in all courses. Changing this setting will force all aggregated grades to be recalculated.

If this is checked (and it is by default) then all custom scales will have a corresponding value that is assigned based on the number of options in the scale (ie. three values will have values of 1,2,3) and this will be included in the grade aggregation.

Enable publishing¶

Grade publishing is a way of importing and exporting grades via a URL without being logged in to Moodle. Grade publishing is intended for administrators only. Security implications should be thoroughly considered before allowing non-admin users to publish grades.

Grade publishing may be enabled by checking the gradepublishing box. If enabled, administrators are provided with grade export publishing settings in each course gradebook.

Recover grades default¶

When manually enrolling a student in a course, there is an option ‘Recover user’s old grades if possible’, however this checkbox is easy to miss. Enabling ‘Recover grades default’ results in ‘Recover user’s old grades if possible’ being ticked for every course.

Unlimited grades¶

Teachers can enter grades over 100% directly in the gradebook if the unlimitedgrades setting is enabled.

Grade Category Settings¶

Grade category settings in Settings > Site administration > Grades > Grade Category Settings enable administrators to choose which options appear for teachers when adding/editing a grade category in their course gradebook, and their default values. Settings are applied site-wide.

There are 2 check boxes next to most features on this page. The “Force” check box eliminates any options the teacher will see. For example, the teacher will only see and be able to use the “mean of all grades” as an aggregation. The “Advanced” checkbox will hide the specific feature until the “Show advanced” button is used by the teacher. This will reduce initial menu choices for teachers but allow them to see them if they wish.

Hide forced settings¶

The default is to show the forced settings (see below). If these are not to be used check this box to hide them. Unchecking the “Force” setting will simply restore each category’s setting to its previous state, prior to the application of the forced global setting. Administrators can thus experiment with these settings without fear of losing any specific category settings.

Aggregation settings¶

Select the type of aggregation method from a pulldown menu from 1 of 9 choices. However there are two check boxes which will effect this default, in addition to the Hide forced settings.

The “Force” checkbox only allows the selected aggregation method to apply. This results in switches and drop-down elements being disabled in all course gradebooks. For example, if the Aggregation Type setting is forced as “Mean”, teachers will no longer have the option to change the aggregation type of each grade category separately, the option will not be there in the category edit form.

Available aggregation types¶

Administrators may reduce the number of aggregation types available for teachers to use.

By default, all existing aggregation types are available (Mean of grades, Weighted mean of grades, Simple weighted mean of grades, Mean of grades (with extra credits), Median of grades, Lowest grade, Highest grade, Mode of grades, Sum of grades). This list may be reduced to only a few types, with additional types being enabled as/when teachers request them.

Note that reducing the number of aggregation types simply results in disabled aggregation types not appearing in the aggregation type dropdown menu. All existing grade category calculations remain the same, regardless of whether the aggregation type is later disabled by an administrator.

Aggregate only non-empty grades¶

The default is no.

Include outcomes in aggregation¶

The default is no.

Aggregate including subcategories¶

The default is no. Yes will include subcategory grades in the aggregation.

Keep the highest¶

Keeps only the X number of highest grades in the report

Drop the lowest¶

Drops the lowest X number of grades from the report.

Grade item settings¶

Location: Administration > Grades > Grade item settings

Grade item settings are the various settings that the administrator is able to edit for all gradebooks used by teachers. These settings will change what items are displayed for each grade. As administrator, you would turn on or off various settings and the teacher would input the actual data.

Grade display type¶

This is the type of grade that is to be shown for each individual grade. Different school districts use different grading systems so this can be changed to suit your district.

Real - Grade from minimum to maximum range indicating total points received. Default from 0-100 but may be arbitrary.

Percentage - Grade from 0 - 100% indicating the total points received divided by maximum possible amount times 100.

Letter- Grade in the form of a letter representing a range of percentages.

Overall decimal points¶

This setting is for display purposes only. Grade calculations are made with an accuracy of 5 decimal places and grade letters, if used, are assigned accordingly.

If rounding of grades in grade calculations is required, the round(number, count) function may be used.

Advance grade item options¶

In Moodle 2.0 Course administration > Grades > Category & Items > Add grade item, or Simple view>edit item brings up the Grade item page with the “Show advanced” button.

These features can be set or viewed:

Item info ID Number Grade Type Scale Minimum Grade Maximum Grade Grade to pass Offset Multiplicator Grade display type Overall decimal places Hidden Hidden until Locked Locked after

Both Full and Simple views have “Add category” and “Add grade item” buttons at the bottom of the page.

Scales¶

Scales are a way of evaluating or rating a students’ performance. Moodle offers a standard set of numeric scales. Scales may be used in Forums, Glossaries and Assignments for rating and/or grading a student’s activity.

Letters¶

Grade letters, also called letter grades, are symbols used to represent a range of grades. For example “A” could be used to represent grades of 80% and above, “B” to represent grades between 70 and 80%, and so on. Alternatively, you could have “Pass” for grades above 50% and “Fail” for grades below 50%.

Setting grade letter site-level defaults¶

To set grade letter site defaults :

Login as an administrator.

Access Administration > Site administration > Grades > Letters.

Change grade letters and/or boundaries as required.

Scroll to the bottom of the page and click the “Save changes” button.

Report Settings¶

The gradebook report settings determine the appearance of gradebook reports in all courses on the site. The site administrator will find the default and enabled/disabled settings in the administration area. There

Teachers can use the “My report preferences” link in any course to essentially change their defaults and the way a report will display. These preferences become the new defaults for that teacher until they are changed by the teacher.

Grader report settings

Overview report settings

User report settings

Badges¶

Badges are a good way of celebrating achievement and showing progress. Badges may be awarded based on a variety of chosen criteria and are fully compatible with Mozilla Open Badges. Badges created in Moodle may be displayed on a user’s profile or pushed to their Open Badges backpack and public badge collections in their backpack will display in their Moodle profile.

There are two categories of badges:

Site badges - available to users site-wide and related to the site wide activities, like finishing a set of courses.

Course badges - available to users enrolled in the course and related to the activities that happen inside the course.

Badges Settings¶

Site administration settings¶

Badges are enabled by default and can be disabled in Administration > Site administration > Advanced features.

The site settings for badges are located in Administration > Site administration > Badges > Badges settings .

Default badge issuer - Here you set the name and email address of the issuer. The name will appear where the badges are displayed and might typically be the name of the organization.

Salt for hashing recipient’s email address - If a hash is used (numbers and letters only) then backpack services can confirm a badge earner without exposing their email address.

Enable connection to external backpacks - This should be enabled in order to connect to, for example Mozilla Open Badges. Note that this will not work on a Moodle hosted locally/offline.

Enable course badges - Ticking this box will allow teachers to add and manage badges in their courses.

Course administration settings¶

A teacher can add and manage badges in their course if the administrator has enabled course badges in Administration > Site administration > Badges settings.

They will see a link to badges in Administration > Course administration > Badges. where badges may be managed and added.

Individual user settings¶

A user can manage badges from Navigation > My profile > My badges.

A user can view available course badges from Navigation > Current course > Badges.

Manage Badges¶

Badges may be managed at the course or site level. (Note that teachers in a course cannot by default access site badges unless they have been given a system role with badge managing capabilities). Individual users can manage their badges from their profile.

See Managing Badges for more details.

Add a New Badge¶

To know how to add badges please refer Using Badges .

Location¶

You are here Administration > Site administration > Location > Location settings. This menu item allows you to specify the default country location and also time zones.

Location Settings¶

Default timezone - This sets the default time zone for date display.

Force default timezone - Pull down menu to force the user to be in a specific timezone or allow users to individually select their timezone.

Default country - Select the country to appear by default on a new user account page form.

IP address lookup

GeoIP City data file - Location of GeoIP City binary data file. This is a non-invasive way to determine geographical and other information about Internet visitors in real-time. This file is not part of Moodle distribution and must be obtained separately from MaxMind. There is a GeoIPLite version for free.

Google Maps API key - Google Maps for IP address lookup visualization key. The Google Maps API lets you embed Google Maps with JavaScript. This is free.

After updating the information in this section, IP’s that are displayed as a link, such as in reports, when clicked will open new window with a Google Map indicating the location of the IP, if found and if not a private address.

Update Timezone¶

The update timezones page Administration > Site administration > Location > Update timezones provides administrators with the option to update their local database with new information about world timezones. This is important because of daylight saving changes that many countries use.

If the update is completed with success, Moodle will inform you how many entries were updated and which location was used as a source.

Language¶

Language option allows you to customise language settings and edit language packs in Moodle.

Language Settings - including the default language for the site.

Language Customization - for changing any word or phrase (in any language) used in Moodle.

Language Packs - for making the Moodle interface available in other languages.

Plugins¶

Plugins also called “Modules”, Plugins contains

Plugins overview¶

A list of all plugins used on the site. It also shows total number of installed plugins, disabled plugins and add-ons used on the moodle site.

Install add-ons¶

To install an add-on, its source code must be put (deployed) into the appropriate location inside the Moodle installation directory and the main administration page Administration > Site administration > Notifications must be visited. There are three ways how the add-on code can be deployed into Moodle.

Activity modules¶

Manage Activities¶

An administrator can manage Moodle’s activity modules for the site in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Manage activities, including any contributed modules that have been added.

Number of activities¶

The activities column lists how many activities for each module there are on your Moodle site. If you click on a number, the list of courses containing that activity will be displayed.

Version¶

The numbers against the modules tell you the version (or age) of the module. It is useful to know how up to date each module is and, particularly with contributed modules, it is important to ensure you have the most up to date version that matches your version of Moodle. The first four digits relate to the year of the module.

Hiding a module¶

The hide/show column allows selected modules to be hidden i.e. they do not appear in any course “Add an activity” dropdown menu and cannot be used in any course. To hide a module, click the eye icon so that it changes to a closed eye.

The Feedback module (which will eventually be replaced by a newer survey module) is hidden by default.

Module deletion¶

Apart from the Forum module, any module can be deleted using the link in the delete column. There is no reason for standard modules to be deleted, however contributed modules may need to be deleted before upgrading.

Note: To delete a module completely, in addition to deleting it on the manage activities page, you also need to remove/delete the actual module folder from the moodle/mod folder, otherwise Moodle will reinstall it next time you access the site administration.

Module settings¶

Many of the modules have additional settings, mostly enabling default values to be set, which can be accessed via the links in the settings column.

Assignment¶

The assignment module allows teachers to collect work from students, review it and provide feedback including grades. The work students submit is visible only to the teacher and not to the other students unless a a group assignment is selected.

Site administration settings¶

The following configuration options are available for an administrator under Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Assignment.

Assignment settings¶ _images/assignment_settings.png

Feedback plugin

The comments that are pushed to the gradebook from the assignment are limited to a single text only comment. An Administrator can specify which of the feedback plugins will be push comments to the gradebook. On a standard Moodle install the choices are “Feedback comments” (default) or “Feedback file” but there may be additional options if your Moodle install contains additional feedback plugins.

Show recent submissions

This option allows everyone to see notifications of submissions in Recent activity reports and the Recent Activity Block, within a course context. Note that the default for this option is No which means students will not be able to see when classmates have submitted or updated any Assignments.

Send submission receipt to students

This switch will enable submission receipts for students. Students will receive a notification every time they successfully submit an assignment.

Submission Statement

An administrator can enter text in the box here which will appear when students are about to submit their assignment. If it is left as the default “No”, then teachers will have the choice within their own assignments to force this or not.

Default assignment settings

The administrator can specify here the default assignment settings which may be set as ‘Advanced’ (ie, they will appear when clicking ‘Show more’) or ‘Locked’ (ie the teacher cannot change them.)

Submission plugins¶

Manage assignment submission plugins

Here you can change the order, check the settings or uninstall a particular submission plugin.

File submissions

Enabled by default - If set, this submission method will be enabled by default for all new assignments.

Maximum submission size - An Administrator can specify the maximum size of any individual file uploaded within the assignment module across all courses on the site. This limit may be equal to or less than course file upload limit.

Online text submissions

Enabled by default If set, this submission method will be enabled by default for all new assignments.

Submission comments

Enabled by default If set, students will be able to send a message to their teacher when submitting their assignment.

Feedback plugins¶

Manage assignment feedback plugins - Here you can change the order, check the settings or uninstall a particular feedback plugin.

Feedback comments - Enabled by default If set, this submission method will be enabled by default for all new assignments.

Annotate pdf - Here you can upload stamps for teachers to use when annotating student pdfs. You can also check the ghostscript path. If the default stamps are deleted by accident, they can be found in mod/assign/feedback/editpdf/pix and re-uploaded.

File feedback - Enabled by default If set, this submission method will be enabled by default for all new assignments.

Offline grading worksheet - Enabled by default If set, this will be enabled by default for all new assignments

Book¶

The Book module makes it easy to create multi-page resources with a book-like format.

Site administration settings¶

The administrator can set the default values for chapter formatting, the available options for chapter numbering and whether or not to require a description from Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Book.

Require activity description - you can disable this option if you do not want to force users to enter description of each activity.

Available options for chapter formatting - site admin can set default options which teacher can choose for displaying chapters and subchapters in the table of contents.

Chat¶

The chat module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Chat. They depend on the chat method which has been selected.

Chat method¶

You can select the any default chat method.

Ajax¶

This is the default method. It works everywhere but if many people are chatting it can put a large load on the server. Its particular settings are:

Refresh user list - choose the number of seconds after which the user list is refreshed

Disconnect timeout - choose the number of seconds after which we detect a user has disconnected.

Normal method¶

The particular settings for this method are:

Refresh room - choose the number of seconds after which the room is refreshed

Update method - choose how to update the chatroom - “Keep alive” or “Stream” strategy. Stream works better but your sever might not support it.

Chat server daemon¶

A daemon is a program that runs all the time in the background. In this case it’s a PHP script, listening to a particular port on your server, accepting and giving out chat information.If you intend to use the chat activity a lot, then you should consider using a chat server daemon to reduce server load.Its particular settings are:

Server name

Server IP address

Server port

Max users

Then you need to start the chat daemon script from the command line:

cd moodle/mod/chat

php chatd.php –start &

Database¶

Database activity defaults and additional settings may changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Database.

Enable RSS feeds¶

You can choose whether you want to enable RSS feeds for all databases or not.

Folder¶

The folder module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Folder.

Require activity description¶

This setting allows you to turn off the requirement for users to type something into the description box.

Show subfolders expanded¶

If set to ‘Yes’, subfolders are shown expanded by default; otherwise they are shown collapsed.

Forum¶

The forum module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Forum and, for ‘Maximum time to edit posts’, in Administration > Site administration > Security > Site policies.

Use email address in reply¶

By default, a user’s email is set as the ‘From’ address for forum notifications (unless the user has hidden their email address in their profile) so that recipients can choose to reply personally rather than via the forum. To set noreply@yourmoodlesite.org as ‘From’ address for all forum notification emails, untick the forum_replytouser checkbox.

Long and short posts¶

The long and short post setting determine how forum posts on the site front page, social format course pages, and user profiles are displayed.

Enabling timed posts¶

Timed forum posts may be enabled i.e. having the option to set a display start and end date for a new discussion. Timed posts can then be created by users with the capability to view hidden timed posts (normally admins and teachers).

Maximum time to edit posts¶

This specifies the amount of time people have to re-edit forum postings, glossary comments etc. Usually 30 minutes is a good value. The setting may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Security > Site policies.

Read tracking¶

Sets the default ‘Read tracking’ selection when creating new forums. If ‘Forced’ is selected, the ‘Allow forced read tracking’ checkbox (below) must be ticked, otherwise ‘Optional’ will be the default setting.

Allow forced read tracking¶

With this option set, “Forced” will be an option for “Read tracking” when creating or editing Forums. Forced forums have read tracking enabled regardless of user preference.

This setting can place additional load on servers. With this setting disabled, users who set their profile setting to not track read posts see faster load times of courses pages. With this setting enabled, that performance increase is lost, and all course views see the same performance as if the users personal setting was on.

Mark post read after ‘X’ days¶

This setting is forum_oldpostdays and specifies the number of days after which any post is considered to be read. E.g. If this is set to 14 days then any post older than 14 days will be considered read. If you set this to 0 then ALL posts are instantly considered to be read. If you don’t want any posts to be considered read without the user reading them then set a high figure (e.g. 1000)

Glossary¶

The glossary module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Glossary.

Glossary level default settings¶

Entries shown per page - Number of Glossary entries shown per page. Default is set to 10.

Duplicate entries allowed - Whether or not the Glossary will allow duplicate entries. Default is set to “No”.

Allow comments on entries - Whether or not the Glossary will accept user comments on its entries. Default is set to “No”.

Automatically link glossary entries - Whether or not a glossary should be automatically linked. Default is set to “Yes”.

Approved by default - Whether or not the Glossary will define the approval status of an entry posted by a student. Default is set to “Yes”.

Enable RSS feed - Enabling of RSS feeds for all glossaries. Default is set to “No”. Note: feeds will still need to be turned on manually in the settings for each glossary.

Entry level default settings¶

Automatically link glossary entries - Whether or not glossary entries should be automatically linked. Default is set to “No”.

This entry is case sensitive - Whether or not an entry is case sensitive when linked. Default is set to “No”.

Match whole words only - Whether or not an entry should match the case in the target text by default when linked. Default is set to “No”.

Display formats setup¶

To hide or show any of these entries, simply click on the “eye” icon next to the entry. Clicking on the “writing hand” icon will take you to the settings page for that entry.

IMS Content Package¶

The IMS content package module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > IMS content package.

Require activity description¶

This setting allows you to turn off the requirement for users to type something into the description box.

Label¶

The label resource has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Label.

Media drag and drop¶

This setting offers you to create a label when media files are dragged and dropped onto a course.

Resize drag and drop width¶

When a label is created from a dragged & dropped image, a teacher can resize it if it is wider than this many pixels (0 for no resize)

Resize drag and drop height¶

When a label is created from a dragged & dropped image, a teacher can resize it if it is higher than this many pixels (0 for no resize)

Lesson¶

The lesson module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Lesson.

Slideshow width¶

Sets the width of the slideshow only when this feature is enabled in a Lesson’s “Change settings”.

Variable name: lesson_slideshowwidth, Default 640.

Slideshow height¶

Sets the height of the slideshow only when this feature is enabled in a Lesson’s “Change settings”.

Variable name: lesson_slideshowheight, Default 480.

Slideshow background colour¶

Background colour to for the slideshow if it is enabled.

Variable name: lesson_slideshowbgcolor, Default #FFFFFF.

Show close button¶

Displays a close button as part of the popup generated for a linked media file

Variable name: lesson_mediaclose, Default No.

Number of high scores displayed¶

Sets the number of high scores to display

Variable name: lesson_maxhighscores, Default: 10

Maximum number of answers¶

Default maximum number of answers per page for site

Variable name: lesson_maxanswers, Default: 4.

Action after correct answer¶

The default action to take after a correct answer

Variable name: lesson_defaultnextpage, Default: Normal - follow lesson path

LTI¶

An administrator can configure external tools in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > External tool so that they are available across the site. There are tabs to add an external tool, to view those which are pending and to view those which have been rejected.

Page¶

The page module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Page.

Require activity description¶

This setting allows you to turn off the requirement for users to type something into the description box.

Available display options¶

This setting allows you to add different ways the resource may be displayed on the course page.

Default values for activity settings¶

Here you can set the defaults for this resource. You can also choose which setting(s) to class as “Advanced”. These settings will only then appear if the user clicks “Show advanced” in the settings.

Quiz¶

The quiz module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Quiz. The values you set here define the default values that are used in the settings form when you create a new quiz. You can also configure which quiz settings are considered advanced.

Time limit¶

Default time limit for quizzes in seconds. 0 mean no time limit.

When time expires¶

What should happen by default if a student does not submit the quiz before time expires.

Submission grace period¶

If what to do when time expires is set to ‘Allow a grace period to submit, but not change any responses’, the default amount of extra time that is allowed, in seconds.

Last submission grace period¶

There is a potential problem right at the end of the quiz. On the one hand, we want to let students continue working right up until the last second - with the help of the timer that automatically submits the quiz when time runs out. On the other hand, the server may then be overloaded, and take some time to get to process the responses. Therefore, we will accept responses for up to this many seconds after time expires, so they are not penalised for the server being slow. However, the student could cheat and get this many seconds to answer the quiz. You have to make a trade-off based on how much you trust the performance of your server during quizzes.

Attempts allowed¶

Restriction on the number of attempts students are allowed at the quiz.

Grading method¶

When multiple attempts are allowed, which method should be used to calculate the student’s final grade for the quiz. Options - Highest grade, Average, first and last.

Maximum grade¶

The default grade that the quiz grade is scaled to be out of.

Shuffle questions¶

If you enable this option, then the order of questions in the quiz will be randomly shuffled each time a student attempts the quiz.

Automatically start a new page¶

When adding questions to the quiz page breaks will automatically be inserted according to the setting you choose here.

Shuffle within questions¶

If you enable this option, then the parts making up the individual questions will be randomly shuffled each time a student starts an attempt at this quiz, provided the option is also enabled in the question settings.

How questions behave¶

Default setting for how questions behave in a quiz. It can be configured in *Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Question behaviours > Manage question behaviours.

Each attempt builds on the last¶

If multiple attempts are allowed then each new attempt contains the results of the previous attempt.

Review options¶ _images/quiz_review_settings.png

Show user’s picture¶

Choose whether to show user’s picture on screen during attempts or not.

Decimal places in grades¶

Number of digits that should be shown after the decimal point when displaying grades for the quiz.

Decimal places in question grades¶

Number of digits that should be shown after the decimal point when displaying the grade for individual questions.

Show blocks during quiz attempts¶

Show blocks during quiz attempts.

Require password¶

Students must enter this password before they can attempt the quiz.

Require network address¶

Students can only attempt the quiz from these computers.

Enforced delay between 1st and 2nd attempts¶

If you set a time delay here, the student cannot start their second attempt until this much time has passed since the end of their first attempt.

Enforced delay between later attempts¶

If you set a time delay here, the student cannot start their third, fourth, ... attempt until this much time has passed since the end of their previous attempt.

File¶

The file module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > File.

Frame height¶

Here you can specify the height of the top frame (containing the navigation) if you choose the “in frame” display option. Note: If your theme has a large header then the resource_framesize variable should be increased to prevent horizontal and vertical scrollbars.

Require activity description¶

This setting allows you to turn off the requirement for users to type something into the description box.

Available display options¶

This setting allows you to add different ways the resource may be displayed on the course page. By default Moodle doesn’t enable “New window” or “In frame”, so you need to set them available here if required, and you can also disable other options if not applicable.

Default values for activity settings¶

Here you can set the defaults for this resource. You can also choose which setting(s) to class as “Advanced”. These settings will only then appear if the user clicks “Show More” in the settings.

SCORM¶

These options are available to the site admin in the Settings menu: Site administration > Plugins > Activity Modules > SCORM Package.

Default Value Settings¶

Many of the settings available in the SCORM Package administration simply set the default value for the SCORM activity module setup options provided within courses. Edit these settings to save yourself time when adding large numbers of packages, or to establish a standard for presentation across the site.

Other Important Settings¶

The following options provided which do not simply set a default value for the SCORM activity editing page view.

Auto-update frequency - If not using a standard SCORM package uploaded using the filepicker and the SCORM package is hosted outside your Moodle installation the option to auto-update the package will be available - you can elect to have the package updated on every entry to the package or daily via the Moodle cron.

Enable external package type - If selected, presents a text field to paste a URL to a remote imsmanifest.xml (in an unzipped remote SCORM package), as well as the file picker option provided by default. Note that the content is played from the designated location, and not unpacked into the Moodle file system. So if the base url is different from your moodle url then browser security will block cross-domain communcation and no grades/tracking information will be passed back to Moodle.

Enable downloaded package type - If selected, presents a text field to paste a URL to a remote package.zip SCORM package. Package is downloaded and unzipped into the Moodle file system.

Enable IMS package type - Enables a package to be selected from within an IMS repository

Force users to enable JavaScript - Since the SCORM API uses JavaScript to save data to Moodle, this is a great idea!

Activate API debug and tracing (set the capture mask with apidebugmask) - Turns on debugging for SCORM activities. In Moodle 2 you no longer have to also turn on debugging in the developer options.

API debug capture mask - .* will debug for admin user only: You can use the mask to enable debugging under certain conditions. For example, if you are logged in using the admin user (username admin) you can set the api mask to: admin.* Users not logged in as admin will not see the debugging log. The “Default” api mask is .* which translates roughly to everybody.

Enable direct AICC url - Makes it easier to connect to externally hosted AICC content as the teacher doesn’t have to create an AICC package and is able to link directly to the external AICC url.

Enable external AICC HACP - The SCORM activity can also support external AICC HACP Communication where the AICC package is hosted on an external content providers site and passes back http requests directly from the external server instead of within the users web browser session - this is disabled by default.

URL¶

The URL module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > URL.

Frame height¶

Here you can specify the height of the top frame (containing the navigation) if you choose the “in frame” display option. Note:If your theme has a large header then the height should be increased to prevent horizontal and vertical scrollbars.

Require activity description¶

This setting allows you to turn off the requirement for users to type something into the description box.

Password¶

Here you can add a password that will connect your users to a secure site. See this forum post for more details.

Include role names in parameters¶

Available display options¶

This setting allows you to add different ways the resource may be displayed on the course page. There are a number of defaults but you can add or change them here. Other display options are:

In frame - show the Moodle heading and the file description, with the file displayed in a resizeable area below

New window - very much like ‘in pop-up’, but the new window is a full browser window, with menus and address bar, etc.

Default values for activity settings¶

Here you can set the defaults for this resource.

Workshop¶

The workshop module has additional settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Activity modules > Workshop. The settings enable default values to be set for all edit workshop settings.

Grade for submission¶

Default maximum grade for submission in workshops.

Grade for assessments¶

Default maximum grade for assessment in workshops.

Decimal places in grades¶

Default number of digits that should be shown after the decimal point when displaying grades.

Maximum submission attachment size¶

Default maximum submission file size for all workshops on the site (subject to course limits and other local settings)

Grading strategy¶

Default grading strategy for workshops.

Mode of examples assessment¶

Default mode of examples assessment in workshops.

Number of reviews¶

Default number of submissions to be randomly allocated

Course formats¶

An administrator can enable, disable or delete course formats for courses in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Course formats > Manage course formats. They can also change the order in which available course formats are displayed to teachers in the course settings.

Blocks¶

Manage blocks¶

An administrator can manage Moodle’s blocks for the site in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Manage blocks, including any contributed blocks that have been added.

Instances¶

The blocks page lists the number of instance for each block. Clicking on a number results in the list of courses containing that block being displayed.

Version¶

Listed with each block is its version number — in the format 2012061700. This is helpful to ensure that you have the latest version of each block.

Hiding a block¶

The hide/show column allows selected blocks to be hidden i.e. they do not appear in any course “Add a block” dropdown menu and cannot be used in any course. To hide a block, click the eye icon so that it changes to a closed eye.

To reduce the length of course “Add a block” dropdown menus, you should hide blocks which will not be used, such as mentees (unless you have added a mentor role) and network servers (unless you are using Moodle Networking).

Protecting blocks from deletion¶

By clicking the padlock against a block in this column, you are preventing it from being deleted on the site. The Administration block and Navigation block are already padlocked, as major difficulties arise if these blocks are deleted. Only unlock them if you are absolutely sure you understand the consequences and have alternative settings and navigation features in place.

Block deletion¶

Blocks can be deleted using the link in the delete column. There is usually no reason for standard blocks to be deleted (they are usually hidden) However, non-standard blocks may need to be deleted before upgrading.

Note: To delete a block completely, in addition to deleting it on the blocks page, you also need to remove/delete the actual block folder from the moodle/blocks folder, otherwise Moodle will reinstall it next time you access the site administration.

Block settings¶

Certain blocks have additional settings, which can be accessed via the links in the settings column.

Block capabilities¶

Manage My home page blocks

Edit blocks in tags pages

Manage blocks on own public user profile

Manage blocks on user profile of other users

Edit a block’s settings

View block

Manage blocks on a page

In addition, every block has an addinstance capability (e.g. block/comments:addinstance) and most blocks also have a myaddinstance capability (e.g. block/comments:myaddinstance) for controlling whether a user with a particular role can add the block to a page or to their My home page respectively.

Courses¶

The Courses block lists and allows navigation between all of the courses in which the logged in user is enrolled in. The block title shows as “My courses” and allows one-click access to a course’s home page.

There is a also the option to list All courses... available within the Moodle site. This will display a list of course types and a click on one of the types will reveal all the courses in that category. There is also a search all courses option on this page.

A brand new user to a Moodle site, who has not enrolled in any course, will see the block title as “Course Categories”.

When a student enters an unassigned course using the course block, they will be asked to enroll.

Note: The Navigation block also includes a list of all courses a user is enrolled in.

Site administration settings¶

The courses block has some settings which may be changed by an administrator in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Course list.

Admin view - This determines what administrators see in the block. Hide ‘All courses’ link - This enables you to hide the “All courses” link at the bottom of the block from everyone except administrators.

Course overview¶

The Course overview block is visible on a user’s My home page and shows a list of all courses in which a user is enrolled/has an assigned role.

By default this block appears in the central content block on the My home page but can be moved to the left or right column.

Customising the course order¶

When a user clicks the “customise this page” button, they can then rearrange their courses by dragging them into different places. They can also choose how many courses they wish to display.

HTML block¶

A HTML block is a standard block used to add text, multimedia, widgets etc to a site front page or course page. The title bar may be left blank if desired.

The block is flexible and can incorporate a variety of functions and uses in the content area. It has the standard Moodle Text editor for formatting text, adding images or creating links, switching to code view and allows any valid HTML mark-up to be used. This enables embedding video, sounds, Flash, and other files which can add unique elements to a course or site page.

Site administration settings¶

To aid with styling the block, an administrator can, from Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > HTML, toggle the ability to allow additional CSS classes to be set in individual block instances. If it is enabled, a field appears at the bottom of HTML block instance’s configuration forms.

Please note that if additional CSS classes have been added and the administration setting is then disabled, the form settings are saved in the database and will reappear if this is re-enabled.

Adding a Twitter feed block¶

An HTML block can be used to display the latest tweets from any Twitter account.

Log in to Twitter

Go to https://twitter.com/settings/widgets/new

Enter the Twitter username e.g. moodledev then click the ‘Create widget’ button

In another tab or window add a new HTML block to your Moodle front page or course page

Configure the new block, adding a title if desired

Click the ‘Edit HTML source’ button (< >) then copy and paste the code provided by Twitter into the HTML source

Click the ‘Save changes’ button

Online users¶

The Online users block shows a list of users who have been logged into the current course. The list is updated on a regular basis (the default is every 5 minutes but this may be changed - see below).

Note that even though a user may have been logged into a course within the last 5 minutes, it does not necessarily mean that this user is still online.

If you hold the cursor over somebody’s name, you will see how long ago that person was last “seen” in the course

If you click on the envelope icon next to somebody’s name, you will be able to send a private message to that person (using Moodle’s messaging system)

Note: If separate groups are enabled in a course and this block is added onto the course page, only members of the group will be displayed in the list.

Site administration settings¶

The online users block has one setting which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Online users.

Remove after inactivity - The number of minutes after which users will not be displayed in the list. The default is 5 minutes. You may want to adjust this if the list of users displayed is too long or too short.

Remote RSS feeds¶

The RSS feeds block enables RSS feeds from external websites to be displayed within Moodle. As the information on the other site (for example, news headlines or recently added documents) is changed the block will update to show the latest information.

One or more RSS feeds can be added to a course by selecting them from an existing list. Site and course home pages are common places to place an RSS feed block(s).

Configuring RSS feeds block¶

After adding an RSS feed block, select the edit icon on the Remote News Feed block. The default will open up the Configure this block tab.

Display each link’s description?: Choose yes or no from the drop-down menu to determine whether the block will display a description of each article, or just the title of the article. Both the title and description are generated by the external feed.
Max number of entries to show per block: Determines how many articles will be displayed. The most recent will be displayed first.
Choose the feeds to make available: Check the box next to each feed you would displayed in this block. You can have more than one instance of the RSS feed block if you would like to break them up.
Title: Enter a title for the block. If you leave this blank a title will be taken from the RSS feeds, which can be confusing if there are multiple feeds in one block.
Display a link?: Each article headline should link to the full article, but you can also display a link to the original site where available.
Show channel image?: Some feeds supply an image or logo from the original site which you can choose to display when available.

Add / Manage all RSs feeds¶

All the Moodle site’s RSS feeds can be managed on the Manage all my feeds tab in the RSS News Feed edit menu. The site administrator may give other roles permission to use this tab. This tab creates a list of RSS feeds that can be selected for display in every course on the Moodle site.

Copy and paste (or type) the URL address of the RSS feed in the space provided. This the generating site’s actual RSS page address. For example here is a Moodle RSS feed address : http://moodle.org/rss/file.php/1/1/forum/1/rss.xml

Adding a custom title will take the place of the one supplied by the generating site.There is a validation tool included to confirm the feed URL is accurate.

When checked, the Shared Feed checkbox makes the feed available (although not necessarily visible) to all courses on the Moodle site. This would be useful, for example, when a college has an urgent announcements feed that would be of interest to all students, regardless of the Moodle course in which they are enrolled. Leave unchecked if the feed is of interest only to a single course.

Click the Add button to submit the feed.

Site administration settings¶

The RSS feeds block has some settings which may be changed by an administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Remote RSS feeds.

Enteries per feed - The default number of entries to show per feed shown in the block. This can be overridden when you actually set up a block in a course.

Timeout - The time in minutes between a reread of the feed by Moodle. Since some feeds on busy sites can take long to load, it can slow down the load of your course page. Therefore it is wise to set this time rather high, so only every now and then a visitor of your course is the victim of the slow remote server. Time is in minutes here.

Section links¶

The Section links block helps the student or teacher to quickly navigate to a particular topic/week section of the course (depending on whether the course uses either the “Topics” or “Weekly” format. The numbered links displayed within the block are the numbers assigned to the course topic/week sections.(Note that if a section is hidden, its number will display in grey for the teacher and not at all for the student, as with section 4 of the screenshot below.)

Where a topic/week section is highlighted, the link to that section within the “Section Links” block is emboldened. In addition, a link for the highlighted section (“Jump to the current topic/week”) is displayed. Click the “Jump to the current topic/week” link to display the highlighted section at the top of the screen.

If there are a large number of topic/week sections, the block displays every other even number i.e. 2, 4 etc. or every fifth numbered topic/week section.

Site administration settings¶

Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Section links

The section links block has some settings which may be changed by an administrator. There are two ‘number of sections’ value in the setting page, say numsections1 and numsections2.

If the number of sections in the course is less than either of them, the section links will increase by 1.

If the number of sections in the source is more than numsections1, but less than numsections2, the increase by value will respect numsections1’s increase by setting.

If the number of sections in the source is more than both of numsections1 and numsections2, and numsections2 is more than numssections1, the increase by value will respect numsections2’s increase by setting.

Tags¶

Tags allows students and teachers to describe their interests in a way that is easy for people with similar interests to find them.

Tags Settings¶

Enable tags functionality¶

By default, site-wide tags functionality is enabled. If this is not required, tags functionality may be disabled by an administrator by un-checking the usetags box in Settings > Site administration > Advanced features.

Show course tags¶

The Tags block has one setting which may be changed by an administrator in Settings > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Tags.

Show course tags - This enables students to tag courses.

Using Tags¶

Describing interests for tags¶

To tell everyone what your interests are, go to your profile editing page and enter your interests/tags separated by commas. If a tag you entered already exists, you get associated to that tag. If it does not, a new tag will be created.

Blog post tags¶

After writing a blog post, users are allowed to add user defined tags about the post. These are usually keywords relevant to the post separated by commas. If a tag you entered already exists, you get associated to that tag. If it does not, a new tag will be created. If one tag is associated with interests and a blog post, the tag page will show both.

Tag pages¶

Each tag in Moodle has a page associated with it. The tag page brings together users, information and resources related to that tag. A tag has a description, links to related tags, a list of users associated with that tag and Moodle blocks with resources related to it.

If a user has the capability to edit tags, a link “Edit this tag” will appear in the tag page. The tag may be edited to add a description and related tags.

Message outputs¶

Authentication¶

Authentication is the process of allowing a user to login to a Moodle site based on their username and password.

Authentication plugins¶

Moodle provides a number of ways of managing authentication, called authentication plugins.

Manual accounts¶

Location: Administration > Site Administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication.

Manual authentication is enabled by default in Moodle and requires the administrator to manually create all the user accounts.

Locking user fields¶

The settings page in Administration > Site Administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manual accounts allows for certain fields to be “locked”. Users are not allowed to change the locked fields.

No Login¶

An administrator may “turn off” or suspend a user’s account by selecting “No Login” in the “Choose an authentication method setting” in the users profile in edit mode.

Different users have to have unique email addresses in their profile, even when email is not enabled. When the “No Login” setting is used, the account email may not be re-used to create another account. This essentially is a way to bar a particular user account from using Moodle for the duration that the account is assigned to this authentication type.

Note: An alternative way of suspending a user’s account (available in Moodle 2.2.1 onwards) is to tick the ‘Suspended account’ checkbox on the edit profile page.

Email Based Self Registration¶

The email-based self-registration authentication method enables users to create their own accounts via the ‘Create new account’ button on the login page. They then receive an email at the address they specified in their account profile to confirm their account.

Enabling email-based self-registration¶

An administrator can enable email-based self-registration in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication.

In addition to enabling the plugin, email-based self-registration must be selected from the self registration drop-down menu in the common settings.

Warning: Enabling self registration results in the possibility of spammers creating accounts in order to use forum posts, blog entries etc. for spam. This risk can be minimized by limiting self registration to particular email domains with the allowed email domains setting in Administration > Site administration > Plugins> Authentication > Manage authentication. Alternatively, self registration may be enabled for a short period of time to allow users to create accounts, and then later disabled.

Note: The Email-based self-registration authentication plugin must be enabled to allow users who previously self-registered to login. Selecting Email-based self-registration as the self registration method allows potential users to self register.

Enable reCAPTCHA element¶

A CAPTCHA is a program that can tell whether its user is a human or a computer. CAPTCHAs are used by many websites to prevent abuse from bots, or automated programs usually written to generate spam. No computer program can read distorted text as well as humans can, so bots cannot navigate sites protected by CAPTCHAs.

Email confirmation message¶

An automated email confirmation message is sent to the user using the support contact email address.

You can change this text in Administration > Site administration > Language > Language customization by choosing the appropriate language pack. selecting ‘moodle.php’ from ‘core’ and searching for the string identifier name ‘emailconfirmation’ and editing it with a local customization.

Support contact¶

An administrator can specify a support name, email and/or support page in *Administration > Site administration > Server > Support contact8 for including in the confirmation email.

Moodle Network Authentication¶

The Moodle network feature allows a Moodle administrator to establish a link with another Moodle or a Mahara site and to share some resources with the users of that Moodle. Users go from the first Moodle to the linked site via the Network servers block.

Peer to peer Network¶

This is the basic layout of the system. It can be very useful to run one Moodle per faculty or departments, each with its own user management, and yet permit users to roam across the Moodle installs... subject to permissions of course.

Setup¶

The instructions will cover 2 Moodle installations: MoodleA and MoodleB. Both are installed correctly and have never had a Moodle Network configuration.

Note: If you experience problems, ensure debugging is turned on in Settings > Site administration > Server > Debugging. Extra diagnostic messages may be displayed.

You need to first enable Networking in Administration > Site administration > Advanced Features. This will add the “Networking” menu to the Site Administration menu.

Get them to talk to each other

Ensure Administration > Site administration > Server > Environment indicates you have curl installed

If MoodleA and MoodleB are hosted in the same domain, ensure they have a different cookie prefix. Note that changing the cookie prefix will log you out! You can change the cookie prefix via Admin > Server > Session Handling.

On both, go to Administration > Site administration > Network > Settings and turn Networking ON.

On MoodleA go to Administration > Site administration > Network > Manage peers - put the URL of MoodleB under “Add New Host” and click Add. The URL should include the directory where your Moodle code is located and may include the protocol as well, for example https://www.mymoodle.org/moodle.

Do the equivalent on MoodleB.

Get user roaming going

(Although discussion exists about removing this setting, it is still required as of 2.0.1) [1] ). On both servers:

Go to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication. Enable MNet Authentication by clicking the ‘enable’ icon.

On MoodleA go to Administration > Site administration > Networking > (Manage) Peers, click on ‘MoodleB’, and click on the ‘Services’ tab. Enable SSO-IDP (SSO Identity Provider) publish and subscribe, and SSO-SP (SSO Service Provider) publish and subscribe.

Do the equivalent on MoodleB. (By both publishing and subscribing you allow users to move freely between the two servers. By only publishing or subscribing between servers you create a one way traversal)

On both, go to Administration> Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define Roles, only roles that have “Roam to a remote Moodle moodle/site:mnetlogintoremote” will be allowed to roam. Grant the privilege as appropriate.

eg. enabling for Authenticated user allows any authenticated user to roam between servers.

On both servers, go to the homepage, and add the ‘Network Servers’ block.

To test, it is recommended to use a different browser (even on a different machine) that is logged in to neither. Login to MoodleA with a non-administrator account that has the permissions to roam. You should see the Network Servers block, and clicking on it you should go to MoodleB with a newly autocreated account.

Get remote enrolments going – this is optional. It allows an administrator of MoodleB to enrol users that are “native” to MoodleB in remote courses in MoodleA, and viceversa.

On both, go to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Manage enrol plugins and enable Moodle Network enrolment plugin (click Save). Click on ‘Edit’ and enable ‘allow_allcourses’ or select some courses or categories to be remotely enrolled.

On the server you want to receive enrolments:

Go to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Manage enrol plugins. Enable MNet remote enrolments by clicking the ‘enable’ icon.

On MoodleA go to Administration > Site administration > Network > Peers, click on ‘MoodleB’, and click on the ‘Services’ tab. Enable Enrolment publish and/or subscribe.

Do the equivalent on MoodleB.

On every course you want to allow enrolments into:

Enter course and go to Administration > Course administration > Users > Enrolment methods.

From Add method drop-down select MNet remote enrolments

On the new screen select the Remote host you want to allow enrolments from, the Role for the enrolled users, and click save. (Note: you can only add a single MNet remote enrolments method per course.)

Using it¶

In MoodleA go to Administration > Site administration > Networking > Remote enrolments client. You will see MoodleB listed. Click on Edit enrolments button beside MoodleB and you will see a list of courses that MoodleB offers for remote enrolment. Click ‘Edit enrolments, select the users you want to enroll, and then click Add to enroll them in the course.

Connecting to a Mnet hub¶

A Mnet hub is a Moodle server that is configured to accept connections from other Moodle servers, and to provide a set of services to users of these other servers. This guideline will direct you to connect to a Mnet hub, assess the services it has to offer, and enable those services for your users.

Setup¶

Get talking to the Hub

Ensure that the Admin > Server > Environment page indicates you have curl and openssl installed

Go to Admin > Network > Settings and turn Networking on

Go to Admin > Network > Peers and enter the URL of Mnet Hub under “Add New Host”. Click Add

The host details for the Mnet Hub should appear with the Site Name field already populated. Click Save changes

The details will be written to your database and two new tabs will appear in this window: ‘Services’ and ‘Logs’. Click Services

A list of services will appear, each with a checkbox for ‘publish’ and ‘subscribe’. Check the checkboxes for any services you want to publish or subscribe to

Using it¶

If the Mnet Hub has already enabled a service for you, there will be a tick alongside the appropriate checkbox, for example: if the Hub is publishing Moodle Networked Enrolment, then a tick will appear alongside the subscribe checkbox for this service. Note that in order to enable some functionality, prominently single-sign-on, you may have to publish a service, e.g. the Identity Provider service. The Mnet Hub will access this service on your Moodle, asking it to authenticate your users.

Enable Roaming

Subscribe to SSO (Service Provider) by checking the box

Publish SSO (Identity Provider) by checking the box

Click Save changes

Go to Admin > Users > Permissions > Define Roles, and grant the capability Roam to a remote Moodle moodle/site:mnetlogintoremote to an appropriate role

Go to Administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication and enable the Moodle Network authentication plugin

Go to your homepage, turn on editing, and add the ‘Network Servers’ block

Using a different web-browser, log on as a non-admin user who inhabits the role you granted the roaming capability to

Note that the Mnet Hub is listed in the Network Servers block on the homepage. Click on the link to that server

Some of your user details will be transferred to the Mnet Hub server, and a browsing session will be started for you as if you had logged on there directly

Enable Networked Enrolment

Return to the web browser you’ve been using as the site administrator

Go to Admin > Network > Peers and click on the entry for the Mnet Hub.

Click on the Services tab

Subscribe to Moodle Networked Enrolment

Go to Site administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Manage enrol plugins and enable the Moodle Network enrolment plugin. Click Save changes

Click on edit to view the details for networked enrolments.

Go to Admin > Networking > Enrolments to see a list of Moodle servers that offer this service to you

Click on a server name to view a list of courses that the server offers to your users

Click on a course name, to view a list users that you can enrol in this course

Enrol users

Running a Mnet hub¶

A Mnet hub is a regular Moodle site that runs in a special mode. As a Moodle Administrator, when you add another Moodle site to your list of network peers, your Moodle will contact that site to find out what it is called, and to request its public key for encrypted communication. Normally, the remote server will simply provide this information without making any record of the transaction.

A Mnet hub is different. As soon as you add an entry for a Mnet hub to your system, the Mnet hub will create an entry for your server in its list of hosts, and may immediately begin to offer services to the users of your site.

This section will guide you to set up a Mnet hub, and select services to offer to all comers.

Setup¶

Enable Networking

Ensure that the Administration > Site administration > Server > Environment page indicates you have curl and openssl installed

Go to Administration > Site administration > Network > Settings and turn Networking on

Go to Administration > Site administration > Network > Peers and tick the checkbox for Register all hosts. Click on Save Changes

On the same page, the first entry in your list of hosts should be All hosts. Click this link

Click on Services and enable any services you want to offer to all comers

No Authentication¶

An administrator can enable ‘No authentication’ in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Authentication > Manage authentication.

With the “No Authentication” method enabled, a user can create an account without any kind of authentication from other systems, and with no email-based confirmation that the email address that they have provided is valid, or even exists!

This is a good way to create a very insecure Moodle site, and is not recommended.

This is an option that would normally be used only for testing purposes or if your Moodle site is not available on the Internet.

The configuration page for this option only offers the ability to lock fields, enable or disable guest access, and provide an alternative login page, in the same way as other authentication plugins.

Other Authentication Types¶

CAS server (SSo)¶