Get your course ready for the start of term: Moodle Checklist

Step 1: Access your new course

New courses are created each academic year, usually in June. When new courses are available to edit, you’ll see announcements and banners in Moodle itself, and in the Staff News email letting you know. Your department may also alert you when new pages are ready.

• Locate your pages for the next academic year in the ‘Future’ section of ‘My courses’ and of the ‘Course overview’ widget on your Moodle dashboard. New courses have the academic year in their title (e.g. ABC101 - Studies in Important Topics 2024/25)

Screenshots of where to find your new courses (click to expand)

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New courses appear in the ‘Future’ section of ‘My Courses’ which can be accessed from the mortarboard in the sidebar. (https://moodle.lse.ac.uk/my/courses.php)

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New courses appear in the ‘Future’ section of ‘Course overview’ on your dashboard (https://www.moodle.lse.ac.uk/my)

 

• Enter your course, and click the ‘Edit mode’ toggle in the top right of the page to begin making changes.

Step 2: Make sure everything is up to date

• Make sure you have set your course to grid format or collapsed topics format (check with your department).

• Check all your web links work.

• Ensure all course information, resources and activities on display are up-to-date and accurate.

• Make sure that any links to reading lists are correct and that you have updated your reading lists via the library system.

• Make sure that any links to lecture recordings are up to date.  Any existing links will go to the previous academic year so you will need to add new links for this academic year once the lecture recordings are available. 

• Update the submission dates for any assignment activities. These will have been copied over from the previous year automatically, and will therefore need to be changed.

 Step 3: Tidy, delete, and declutter

• Delete any resources, activities and sections that are outdated or no longer needed. This can be done by turning edit mode on and then clicking “edit” and “delete”. (Remember that old versions of the course will still be available in the Moodle Archive, so it is safe to remove old material.)

• Remove any teachers who should no longer have access to the page, and add any new ones. This can be done from the participants link in the quick menu at the top of the course page. Click the ‘bin’ icon to the right to unenrol old teachers. Click the enrol user button to quickly find and add new teachers.

• Note: Some users cannot be manually deleted as they were enrolled through LFY. For help removing such users, contact Eden Digital (eden.digital@lse.ac.uk)

• See our Moodle Baseline for details on how to best arrange and declutter a Moodle course page.

 Step 4: Check students have access

• Automatic Enrolment. Check your course is set up for automatic enrolment. (Most timetabled courses have students enrolled automatically.) This can be done by going into settings. If the “Course ID number” field is empty, please contact Eden Digital.

• Self Enrolment. Enable or disable self-enrolment. Self-enrolment is on by default for new courses allowing any user to enrol as an ‘auditing student’. To change this, click participants in your course’s top menu and then choose Enrolment methods from the drop down box. Click the eye icon next to ‘Self enrolment’. If the eye is crossed out, self-enrolment is disabled. (For information on password-protected self-enrolment see: Enrolment methods | Self enrolment )

• Other enrolment options. Check any other enrolment methods you may wish to use are properly set up. For example, ‘cohort enrolments’, which allow you to enroll every student in a programme cohort, or ‘course metalinks’, which enrol all users on Course A into Course B. For guidance on these methods please see our page on Enrolment methods or contact Eden Digital (eden.digital@lse.ac.uk).

Step 5: Confirm your course’s start and end dates have been set

• Go to settings and check the start date and end date for your course have been set. The start date determines when the course will show up as ‘in progress’ in ‘My Courses’ and on the dashboard for you and your students. The end date determines when the course will move to the ‘past’ section AND begins a six-week timer after which the course will be archived. (See LSE Moodle Archive ). For 2024/25, the default start and end dates are 16 September 2024 and 29 August 2025 respectively.

Step 6: Make sure the course is visible

• Students cannot see hidden courses. Once your course is ready to be seen by your new students, you can make it visible going into settings and changing Course Visibility to show.