Courses by Role

Got some funky roles defined? This block lists the courses a user is enrolled in, grouped by the Role they are in.

Public Files

This block duplicates the functionality of the built-in ‘Private Files’ block with the exception that all files are public (to authenticated users). Administrators can use this to share files or folders with everybody on the site. This is very handy for links to policy-type documents that have no specific context within courses.

Linking to URLS

Supports macos and Windows URL shortcuts. Drag a URL to your desktop from your browser to create a shortcut to that page / site. On macos it gets a ‘.webloc’ extension; on Windows it gets a ‘.url’ extension. Then drag that shortcut to the Manage Files tab – it will attach like any regular file. When the user clicks the link, it will open the URL in a new tab.

download

You can download this plugin on the Moodle plugins directory.

Rapid User Creation block

This block creates and optionally enrols/groups users. It’s designed to be a simple way to enter the bare essentials of a user record without having to spend time in the [sometimes slow] internal user creation screens.

It has some time-savers for user creation.

  • Users with the same email address as existing users will be skipped.
  • Usernames are set to the email address.
  • Passwords are generated and sent to the user if an option is set. Otherwise the password is set to ‘secret’ and the user record is set so the user has to change their password on the next login.

You can also optionally enrol a user into a course. Only courses with the ‘manual’ enrolment plugin are shown.

If you specify any value in the Organisation field, it will set the users Institution to that value and also create a group within the course (if a course is specified) with the organisation name – or re-use an existing one – and make the user a member of that group.

download

You can download this plugin on my Github page.

Course Tiles

A default Moodle installation makes some bold assumptions about the way the site will be used – such as the default Dashboard. This page is useful after a user has been enrolled in a course. Without being enrolled, the standard blocks on the screen show no relevant information to users.

This block seeks to amend that shortcoming. It renders all available courses, optionally including a category-based menu to simplify navigating or exploring courses as a catalogue.

It differs from the default moodle dashboard in that it will list courses that you may or may not be enrolled in. It’s intended to allow users to quickly gain insight as to which courses are available and give them options for enrolling. For admins, it provides a few quick shortcuts to common areas within each course such as the edit screen and user enrolment pages.

It also can show a status against courses – such as a price, and enrolment or completion status. It picks this up either through the Paypal price for the course (if that enrolment type is enabled for the course), or a price custom attribute for the course, or a default value.

download

you can download this block from my GitHub page.