Writing maths directly in Moodle

You can add maths anywhere there is an editor box and it will be rendered using MathJax, which makes it accessible to screen readers.

Maths with the Moodle equation editor

You graphically insert an equation with the Equation Editor (to open this select the Expanded view and then the equation editor symbol, circled in image below). You can either pick symbols/characters from the equation palette or enter in LaTeX.

The Moodle editor interface, with the expanded view button and equation editor circled
atto equation editor pallete

Writing LaTeX maths into Moodle

You can just write LaTeX syntax directly in the text editor between \( ... \) or \[ ... \] for display and inline maths, respectively.

For multiline equations in Moodle, you can use the eqnarray or align environments using the "&" to control alignment as usual. For example:

\begin{eqnarray}
a^2 + b^2 &=& c^2 \\
a &=& \sqrt{c^2 - b^2}
\end{eqnarray}

\begin{align*}
a^2 + b^2 &= c^2 \\
a &= \sqrt{c^2 - b^2}
\end{align*}
Left: Multiline LaTeX commands in the Moodle text editor. Right: rendered multiline maths output

Note, if you want the text editor view to display over multiple lines (as in the example above) when using the eqnarray or align environments, you must use Shift Enter (this corresponds to an html <br> tag) so Moodle interprets it as a single LaTeX block (rather multiple paragraphs). Alternatively you can enter the above commands as usual in Moodle's html mode, but remember that formatting is not preserved.

Uploaded maths content

All content uploaded to Moodle needs to be accessible. Please see our general accessibility and technical accessibility guidance on how to document creation.

Help with 'Maths processing error' in MathJax content

MathJax content can sometimes not display as expected, this may be due to the incorrect MathJax library being loaded. The following guide 'How to fix Moodle content loading older MathJax libraries' may help.