Moodle Resources for Faculty

Moodle Course Optimization 

Creating a well-structured and efficient Moodle course designed to utilize the new features of Moodle will benefit both instructors and students.  A well designed course will load faster, reducing frustration and technical difficulties, while improving accessibility and usability. 

This guide will help instructors:

• Learn how to improve course loading speed by reducing unnecessary elements and using best practices. 
• Enhance usability by creating a clear, navigable structure. 

A well-organized course improves student engagement and reduces cognitive overload.  Here are some key strategies:

Choose an effective course layout

• Collapsed topics format:  This is the default setting in Moodle.  It helps keep large courses manageable by allowing sections to be collapsed and expanded. 
• Show one section per page: This option will load one section per page. Use the Course Index to navigate between different sections.  This is the recommended option for courses with significant amounts of text, links, and content. 

Reduce the Number of Course Sections

• Too many sections can make the course difficult to navigate and slow to load. 
• Sections should only be used to display the name or title.  Do not add descriptive text, images, or videos to the Description field. 

*NOTE: Course sections that are hidden from student view will not slow down a course page for the student participant, but can have a significant impact on the page load for participants with the Instructor, Course Editor, and Academic Administrator course roles.

Use the Course Index for Navigation

• Instead of creating long scrolling pages, organize the course into sections and use the Course Index to navigate through the course.  

Use Labels and Text & Media areas Sparingly

• Instead of adding excessive text to the main course page, place content within Pages, Books, or Folders to improve page loading speed. 

Use Link activities Sparingly

• URL activities are designed to offer conditional formatting, i.e. If a course participant has done/opened/completed an earlier item, the link is made visible. Creating dozens of URL activities in the main course page can effectively slow down page loading. It is more efficient to list links in a Page activity elsewhere in the course.

Managing Course Content to Improve Page Speed 

Reducing large files and unnecessary elements significantly improves Course Performance

Optimize Uploading Files 

• Avoid uploading large files like Powerpoints.  Instead, convert Powerpoints to PDFs. 
• Use the Page Activity or Moodle Book Activity instead of uploading multiple PDFs to the main course page.
• Store files on Google Drive or Brandeis Box, then link to them from Moodle using the URL tool.
• Use the Folder tool in Moodle to organize and share multiple files in one place.  It's useful when you want to present a set of related resources such as lecture slides and reading materials, without overwhelming the course page with individual file links.  The folder will display the files in a neat list, and students can access and download all the files.  

Use External Hosting for Media

• Each embedded video player, Google document, or iframe adds load time. 
• Upload videos files to Echo360 and embed the link in a Page activity. 
• Instead of embedding multiple videos on the main course page, create a playlist and link to it. 

Image Management

• Large images slow down page load times. 
  • Images should be made smaller outside of Moodle. Changing the display size of an image within Moodle, after uploading, will lead to significant delays during page load, as the image resizing calculations will need to occur every time the web browser is loaded, resized, or the page is edited. 
• Limit the number of images that load on the main course page. 
• Remember to include alt-text descriptions for all images. 

*NOTE: a consequence of the migration from LATTE is that some course backups inadvertently contain image links for files hosted on LATTE (https://moodle2.brandeis.edu). LATTE has been deprecated. Images linking back to the site will slow down the load of the current Moodle page, as the local browser attempts to retrieve the image from the old site and navigates multiple hops to eventually fail. Links back to LATTE images should be removed from current Moodle course pages.