Moodle Resources for Faculty

ITS recommends instructors do their own backups of their courses during the semester and store the backup files outside of Moodle.  A backup file saved outside of Moodle can serve as your personal record of your course's online resources, and may be used to transfer your course to another school using a compatible version of Moodle. ITS does not keep courses in Moodle indefinitely, and suggest instructors wishing to have long term access to courses create and store their own course backups.

The Course Retention Policy can be found at https://www.brandeis.edu/its/policies/course-retention.html

It is recommended that you perform a backup of your course for the following:

• After you have done a lot of work prepping your course for the semester

• At the end of the semester, to save all student work and activities

• If you'd like to share the setup of your course shell with another Brandeis instructor who doesn't have access to your course shell.

• Whenever you want extra peace-of-mind

Course Editor and Grader roles are unable to access these functions.

*NOTE: If you are an instructor interested in retrieving past LATTE course content, please review the next section in this guide, LATTE backups Migration Via Box.

 IMPORTANT: The Import and Backup/Restore steps can only be completed in Moodle by the enrolled Instructor and Academic Administrator Roles. The Course Editor role can personalize the course shell after the import or restore process is complete.

While nightly automated backups are configured to support continuity of service for end-users, manually running backups, restoring backups, and sharing backups to other faculty/staff are not available service actions from ITS. 

When you backup and restore a course in Moodle, the course layout and materials are restored.  This includes things like files, quizzes, assignments, and question bank items. However, user data (including both student and instructor information) is not restored. This includes assignment submissions, grades, forum posts, and any feedback provided to students. 

Are you trying to reuse a course you have taught in Moodle during Fall 2024 or Spring 2025?  Follow these directions to backup and restore your course in Moodle.

Backup

1. Open the course that you need to backup in Moodle (This may be a course from a previous semester).

2. Select the More setting drop down menu and select Course Reuse.

3. Select Backup.

4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and select Jump to final step. 

5. The next screen will show the backup process.  Select Continue after the process has completed. 

Restore 

1. Open the course in Moodle that you wish to restore the previous course into (this may be in an upcoming Academic term category in Moodle).

2. Select the More setting drop down menu and select Course Reuse. 

3. On the next page select Restore. 

4. Scroll down to the User Private backup area and find the course file.  Select Restore. 

5. On the Confirm page, select Continue at the bottom of the page. 

6. On the Destination page select either Merge or Delete Contents and Restore This Class.

7. On the Settings page scroll down to the bottom and select Next. 

8. On the Schema page scroll down and select Next. 

9. On the Review page scroll down and select Perform restore. 

10. The Process page will show the restore process in progress. 

11. Select Continue when the restore process has completed.  

The following video shows the steps to Backup a course in Moodle and Restore it into a new blank course shell.

1. Open your new course. From the course header, select the More option and select Course Reuse from the dropdown menu.

2. On the dropdown menu on the left side of the screen, select Restore.
3. To restore a course backup file select Choose a File. From the File picker select Box.
4. Use your Brandeis credentials to log into Box.  Grant access to Brandeis Box. 

5. Select the course backup, and confirm by clicking Select this file.
6. Select Restore.

7. On the next page, Confirm, scroll to the bottom of the page, and select Continue.
8. On the next page, Destination, you can choose one of several options for restoring the backup data into your course. The most common option is Restore into this course → Merge the backup course into this course. Click Continue in your desired section.
9. On the next page, Settings, scroll to the bottom and select continue.
10. Optional: The Schema page allows you the opportunity to uncheck and remove any specific items from being imported (if desired).  Click Next.
11. The next page, Review, gives you one last opportunity to review the content that is being restored into the course.  If you need to make changes select the Previous button at the bottom. Select the button Perform Restore to begin the restore process. 
12. When the restore is complete, a green banner will appear, confirming that everything was restored properly.  Click Continue to return to the course page into which you restored the data backup. 

Directions to Import a Course in Moodle

1. Open the course you want to import content into.
2. In the course navigation menu, select More, then choose Course reuse from the dropdown menu.
3. On the next screen, select Import.
4. Choose the course you want to import content from and select Next.
5. On the Schema page, select the specific content you wish to include in the import, then select Next.
6. On the Confirmation and Review page, scroll to the bottom and select Perform import.

Select the video below to see how to Import a Course in Moodle. 

Once course content has been migrated into your new course shell, you should verify the dates of any activities and update them if necessary. This can be done most efficiently via the Dates Report:

1. From the main page of your course, select the "More" tab in the tabbed navigation, then select "Reports."
2. On the Reports page, select "Dates."
3. The Dates report will display the due dates, open/close dates, and cutoff dates (as applicable) for all the activities in your course. Expand each section and make any necessary changes according to your new course's schedule.
4. Click the Save changes button to put your date changes into effect.

Press play to see how to access and use the Dates Report in Moodle. 

Why am I missing a specific past course from LATTE in the BOX folder?   

There are a number of reasons why a particular course may not have been able to be moved in an automated manner into BOX, during the initial LATTE migration.

1. The course backup was too big
   The average LATTE course backup is about 45MBs in size (course content, not student data) - but during the migration process courses were discovered that exceeded several Gigabytes in size. Extremely large courses (higher than several GBs) would tax the system for so long it would time out, and the process would then move on to the next course backup in line. 

2. Use of Reserved Characters in a course title
   File system utilities and naming conventions on various systems prohibit particular characters from appearing in filenames or make them problematic. These are often referred to as “Reserved Characters,” and can be prohibited from being used as part of the name of a website url or a desktop file name. There are different types for different uses, but a common number of them are:

   !    #    $    &    '    (    )    *    +    ,    /    :    ;    =    ?    @    [    ]

   Since Moodle backup files confer the course title as part of the name of the backup file, those backup files resist attempts to automatically move, duplicate, or log them. Unfortunately with over 20,000 backup files to process, pre-emptive human troubleshooting of such errors is unavailable.

3. The individual expecting the backup file did not have a Primary Instructor, Secondary Instructor, or Instructor course role in the particular LATTE course.
   If an individual was added to a course as a Grading TA, Academic Administrator, Guest, etc, they will not receive a backup file of the course as part of the automated migration, regardless of their actual participation in the class. This individual should reach out to the other participants in the course with Instructor-level access permissions to access a course backup file.

I need the materials from a course that I was not the instructor for. How can I get access to those? 

Due to University Policy, providing the course backup or materials to another instructor's course is not a service action that can be resolved via a support ticket request. Please reach out to the original instructor and ask them to provide a full or partial backup of their course, then follow the steps outlined in this guide. To learn more about University Policy regarding requesting access to digital content, please refer to the following page: https://www.brandeis.edu/its/policies/digital-content.html.