Here’s a short overview of some of Moodle’s editing icons and how you can use them to to give your students the best learning experience!
Now that you are into your Moodle course, you may want to make changes and add content! In order to do so you first have to turn editing on. Turning the editing feature on allows you to make revisions to your course such as adding activities and resources, uploading files, deleting items, and moving or hiding sections or activities.
Click the Turn editing on button located on the right side of your course home page.
- Clicking the pencil icon lets you quickly edit the name of a course section or activity.
- Clicking the crosshairs icon lets you quickly move it by drag and drop.
Cool Tip (1)
You can easily move activities in a very busy course? Just click and hold the crosshairs icon – it will then display all the items and you simply click into where you want to move your activity.
On the right you will see a little person icon, this person icon lets you know and change the group status of an activity. The default is No groups (1). You can click the icon to change it to Separate groups (2) and Visible groups (3).
Each section or topic, activity and resource you add to your course will have its own Action menu, the main editing features for those added activities and resources are hidden in the action menu to make Moodle mobile friendly. To view the menu click the Edit link. If you click Edit next to a course section (weekly or topic) you can edit, highlight, hide or delete the topic. If you click Edit next to an activity or resource you can also duplicate, indent and assign roles to the item:
Cool Tip (2)
You don’t actually have to turn on the editing to edit activities?
Try it by following these easy steps:
- Go to your course with the editing off.
- Click into an existing activity – for example a forum or assignment.
- You’ll see a cogwheel icon to the right.
- Click it and it will display for you many useful editing options. Another time saver!
This menu is more detailed with lots of options that we invite you to explore. This menu allows you to do a lot more than the one at the course page including: backups, permissions, results and more.
We want to highlight that this is also where you add user and group overrides to allow for different dates and times and even extra time for quizzes or assignments!
Frequently Asked Questions
An activity is a group of features in Moodle that students can contribute to directly such as a quiz, assignment or forum. A resource is an item that instructors can use to support learning such as a book, file, page or folder. You can add an activity or resource to any section in your Moodle course.
In order to add an activity or resource, go into the course you would like to add an activity or resource to and turn editing on.
Then, go into the section you would like to add to and in the bottom right corner of that section click where you see a blue cross that says Add an activity or resource.
Below is an example of how to add a Forum!
- Go into your course (ensure editing is turned on on) and find the section where you would like to add this forum.
- Select Add an activity or resource.
- Find and select Forum, or type Forum in the search and then select it.
- Name your Forum , select or add any settings you would like and click Save and return to course or Save and display at the bottom of the page.
Want a quicker way to add a file to your Moodle course, other than uploading it through the add an activity or resource link? Did you know you can just drag and drop files (pictures and documents) to your course?
To do this, arrange your desktop so that you can view both your Moodle course and the files on your computer that you want to add, at the same time.
Make sure editing is turned on, and then click and drag the files from your computer to drop them into the sections where you would like them placed in Moodle.
The file name in Moodle will remain the same as what you had it saved as on your desktop but, you can edit the file name by clicking the pencil next to the file or edit the files settings by selecting edit to the right of the file, then from the drop down choosing Edit settings.
It is very simple to delete sections or items, to start, turn editing on within your course page. Next, find the item or section you want to delete. Finally click on Edit to the right of this item in blue, and from the drop down select Delete and this item will now be removed from your course.
Please note
The item you deleted will be available for you to restore for seven days. If you change your mind or delete something by accident go to the courses main Actions menu located above the turn editing on button and select Recycle bin.
You can hide sections or items very easily in Moodle.
Go to your course page, turn editing on, and look for the section or item you wish to hide from students. Next, click on Edit to the right of this item in blue, and from the drop down select Hide.
If done properly the item should now be greyed out and say hidden from students in blue below it.
By default every Moodle course comes with an Announcements forum and every student has a forced subscription. An announcement generates a post and an email to students, however students cannot reply back to these messages so it’s only a one way communication. If you would like your students to be able to reply back to you, please reach out to the LTI team and we can help you set this up.
Please be aware that once you make an announcement, by default the message will be sent 45 minutes after you post it.
To send the announcement immediately, click the Advanced link below the announcements message.
You will notice this is also how you can add attachments and pin the post.
Check off the box next to where it says Send forum post notifications with no editing-time delay and click the Post to forum button.
