Add Content to a Moodle Course Home Page

Overview

This page has been archived, visit our new Manage Moodle Homepage page for updated information.

This page tells you how to add content directly to a section of a course home page that is formatted as Collapsed Topics, Weekly format, Topic format or Grid format.

Make your course's home page easy for your students to interpret. Keep it as simple as possible, and place actual course material out of sight within a resource or activity.

When to use

Use this page when you're beginning to create your Moodle course. Setting up your course home page well is essential to making your course accessible and comprehensible to your students.

Benefits

A clean, clear course home page helps students orient themselves at the beginning of semester, and keeps them on track as they progress through the resources and tasks you set them.

Avoid crowding your course home page with more items than your students can process easily, and keep the navigation of your course as straightforward as possible.

Guide

Getting started

Setting up your course home page well is essential to making the course accessible and comprehensible to your students. If you're new to creating courses in an LMS, to see how you might construct an effective and attractive course home page, look at these two Moodle demonstration courses:

The benefits of a well designed course, easy for Students to navigate and interact with, should be immediately obvious!

Step by step instructions

Add content to a course home page section

To rename and add text to a weekly or topic section on the course home page:

  1. Click Turn editing on at the top right of the page. Turn editing on
  2. Click the Edit summary icon Edit summary icon at the top left or right of the relevant section. (If the course page format is Collapsed Topics, you will have to toggle the section open for the icon to be visible.)

    Edit summary icon
     
  3. On the Summary page:
    • change the Section name if necessary (you will have to deselect the custom check box to do this)
    • add Summary information about the course, week or topic and
    • click Save changes.

      Image showing step 3
       

Moving course home page elements

You can drag and drop the following course home page elements to change their positions on the course home page:

  • topics (including collapsed topics) and weekly sections—to change the order of topics, Select the Move section icon  visible on the left of each Week/Topic and drag the section to its new position on the page.


     
  • files—you can 'drag and drop' these in from the Explore/Finder window or desktop,

    Image showing how a file is drag and dropped into a Moodle section

    and then drag and drop them within and between topics using the Move icon (crossed arrows) on the left of the file name.

    Screenshot showing items being moved around in a Moodle section
     
  • activities and resources—click and drag them within and between topics using the Move icon on the right of the activity/resource name.

    Screenshot showing how Moodle activities/resources can be moved around

Add new blocks to the course home page

  1. Click Turn editing on at the top right of the page Screenshot of Turn editing on button.
  2. Click the Add a block block at the bottom of the blocks column.
  3. Select the new block from the drop-down list. The new block displays in the block panel.
  4. Click the Move arrows in the block header.  Drag and drop to the place where you want the block to be positioned.

Screenshot of Step 3

Additional information

External resources

To create a button table in the uppermost section of the course home page, to give students scroll-free access to your course week by week or topic by topic, watch the two videos on this page.

Further assistance

If you experience technical or other issues, consult the Where to get help page.