Moodle Resources for Faculty

Course settings determine how your course will appear and how much students will be able to do within your Moodle Course. 
One of the first things you should do in building your Moodle course is configure these settings.

1. From the Moodle home page, select the course you want to work in.
2. Under the course header, select Settings.
3. The Edit Course Settings page will appear.
4. Make the respective changes(described in the options below) then select the Save and Display button at the bottom of the page. 

• Course full name:  The full name of the course is displayed in My Courses and in the list of courses available on the home page. 

• Course short name: The short name of the course is displayed in Navigation and is used in the subject line of course email messages. 

• Course Category: This setting determines the category in which the course will appear in the list of courses.

• Course Visibility: This setting determines if the course appears in the list of courses and whether students can access it. 

• Enable Download Course Content: This setting determines whether students and instructors can download course content. 

• Course Start Date: This is provided automatically by the Registrar and shows on your course outline only in the weekly course format (it reflects the first day of the semester, not the first day a class is meeting). You can change the course start date to fall on whatever date you would like, including the first day of your class. The date you choose for the start of the course will be displayed as the start of week 1. In this way you can choose whether to start the weekly sections on a Monday, Tuesday, etc.

• Course End Date: You may optionally enable and configure an end date as well.

Format: Allows you to select different ways to lay out your course.

• Custom Sections: The course is divided into customizable sections.
• Weekly Sections: The course is divided into sections corresponding to each week, beginning from the course start date. 

Hidden Sections:

• Hidden sections can be displayed to students as “Not Available” on the course page, or kept completely hidden. 

Course layout: This setting determines whether all sections will be shown together on one page, or if sections are shown one at a time with the option to navigate to another section.

• Selecting Show One Section Per Page is a great option if you have a long course page and are experiencing slow page loading. 

 

• Force language: You can change your course's default language from English to another language. This setting will not translate content written in another language.

• Number of Announcements: Number of news and announcements that will show in the Latest news block. News items appear when an instructor or assistant posts to the "News & Announcements" forum. The Latest news block must be added by the instructor for news and announcements to show.

• Show gradebook to students: This setting determines whether students will see their own grades you enter in the Moodle course or whether their grades will be hidden from them A student can never see another student's grades.

• Show activity reports: Instructor and assistants may view the online activities of a student within a class by clicking on the "Reports" link under the Administration block. The default setting of "Yes" also allows students to view their own online activities within the course; setting it to "No" will not allow students to view their own activity report.

• Show Activity Dates” This setting determines whether the open and closed dates appear on the home page. 

• Groups (Group mode and Force group mode): Groups are an advanced feature in Moodle, and faculty members interested in learning about creating and using student groups in Moodle should see the documentation for Groups and Groupings on this site. 

• Course Summary: Enter in a short description of your course.  We recommend limiting summaries to two to four sentences.  Course summaries are only available to students already enrolled in the course.  

• Course Image: Add an image that is associated with your course.  The course image is displayed in My Courses and in the list of available courses on the Home Page.

• Enable Completion Tracking: If enabled, you can set conditions for activity completion or course completion. 

• Show Activity Completion Tracking:  Select this to display activity completion conditions on the course page.

In order for students to have access to your Moodle course, you will need to open the course to them. 

Step-by-Step Guide

1. Open the Moodle Course you are teaching. 
2. Select Settings from the course Header.

   



3. Find the Course Visibility Setting and set it to Show to show the course to students. 

   

When looking under My Courses you will se a list of all the courses you are an instructor for along with a picture or design that is associated with the course. If you are looking to edit this picture, start by entering the course you would like to change the picture for.

1. Click on the Settings tab within your course.

   

2. Scroll down to the description area, and you will see a category called course image. Either click on the area to add a picture, or drag and drop one from your computer. When you are done, click save and display.