The Moodle Guide for Faculty

A Moodle course is made up of blocks and an outline.

Blocks

Useful Blocks

Blocks can contain useful information for your class. 

• The Course Information block at the top of your course lists information about the teachers and TAs, the class description, and other details. (Read the instructions here to update your office hours.)
• The Filtered Course List block shows all the courses that you participate in
• The Library block provides quick reference information for your students to connect with library resources on campus. 
• The Study Tools block contains links that students may find useful while working on assignments and readings.
• Thinking of adding blocks?  Check out some examples of additional blocks and what they can do in the Moodle Course Gallery.

Editing Which Blocks Appear

• Add Blocks Some faculty like to add additional blocks, like the Calendar block, or the Latest News block. To do so, turn editing on for your page, and scroll down to find the "Add a block" option at the end of the list of blocks.
• Reorder Blocks You can also reorder the blocks that appear on your page.  Turn editing on for your page, and use the crosshairs icon to drag-and-drop blocks up or down the column.
• Hide or Delete Blocks Hiding a block prevents your students from seeing it. Deleting a block removes it from your course entirely.  Both options can be found, with editing turned on for your page, by clicking on the block's gear menu.

Dock and minimizing blocks

You can no longer dock or minimize any of the blocks that appear in your course.

The Outline

The outline is broken up into sections that let you organize the content that you add to your course.

Adding Content

To start editing content, you use the "Turn Editing On" button in the upper right corner of the course.

These are the two broad categories of content you can add to your course.

• Activities are interactive.  The most commonly used options are Assignments and Forums, but you also have access to other activities like Attendance, Workshops, Quizzes, and Wikis.  Click on the "+ Add an Activity or Resource" link in the bottom corner of the section where you'd like to place an activity.
• Resources are static.  They can be documents, text, or other information.  To add a file (like a PDF, Word document, or PowerPoint) to your course, you can drag and drop it into the course outline, releasing your mouse while hovering over the section you would like it to appear in.  You can also use the "+ Add an Activity or Resource" button and scroll down to pick one of the Resource options there.

You can see a full list of activities and resources available to add (and short descriptions of how they work) by clicking on the "+ Add an Activity or Resource" link in the bottom corner of each outline section.

Course Format

The default format gives you a section for each class meeting date (called Class-By-Date), but you can choose alternate formats if you like in the course settings. Other formats include:

• Weekly Format (one section per week),
• Topics Format (organization by topic heading).

See our instructions on changing your course format for more information.