Frequently asked questions
Your Moodle space may currently be hidden. To check its visibility and make it visible to students:
- Navigate to the Moodle space and check if there is a banner across the top of the space saying that “This course is currently hidden”.
- Click Settings
- Change Visibility from Hide to Show
- Save and display
Each course team uses Moodle in a slightly different way, so it is very difficult to provide central guidance for students on how Moodle will be used in their specific discipline. We have put together a short Student Guide to Moodle 4.1 that you can share with your students, but you are expected to provide additional support and guidance for your specific context.
If you should be the unit convenor on a Moodle space, then you should contact the administration team in your department. They will be able to add you as the ‘Module tutor’ in SAMIS which will then give you a ‘Teacher+’ role in Moodle when SAMIS next synchronises with Moodle (a process that happens every morning during the working week).
You must be connected via the VPN (named ‘All Traffic’) to access the Archives when off campus. Also, please remember the Archives are a snapshot in time and therefore you will only be able to access what you could at the time of the snapshot. See the Moodle admistration cycle for a timeline of events.
Once students have completed their course, they will no longer have access to university systems, including Moodle. They receive a reminder email from DD&T with the dates of when access will cease. Students should plan to export any content they wish to retain. If they fail to do this, they will need to contact the relevant department teaching team who can decide whether to obtain the materials for them from the Moodle Archives. The TEL team are not responsible for accessing material for students in this scenario.
All events displayed in Moodle (e.g. assignment submission dates) use the UK timezone by default. This can be confusing if you are studying or working in a different timezone, and errors can occur when converting these times to your local timezone. Instead, with a small change to your profile settings, it is possible for Moodle to automatically convert and display these to your local timezone:
- Click on your name in the top right hand corner of the screen and select Profile from the drop down menu.
- In the User Details section click on Edit profile.
- Scroll down to the Timezone option. If it needs to be changed click on it and select your nearest location from the list. For UK time it should be set to Server timezone (Europe/London).
- Save your changes by scrolling to the bottom of the screen and pressing Update profile.
Double check: Have you selected the correct timezone? You may wish to double check, since an incorrect timezone may lead to incorrect deadlines being set. Your profile change will only alter the dates / times provided by the system, and only you will be able to see them in this format. If you are working in a different timezone, you can double-check you have applied the correct UK timings by reverting to the ‘Server timezone (Europe/London)’ setting.
As the TEL team do not own the spaces in Moodle, I’m afraid we do not have the authority to change the enrolments within them (see https://telbath.com/staff-enrolment/).
That said, anybody with existing Teacher access to the Moodle page will be able to change the enrolments by following these instructions:
- At the top of your Moodle space, click on ‘Participants‘
- When the screen displaying the current participants appears, click on the Enrol users button
- Search for the person you want to add (you can search by first name, last name or email address), select the role you want to give them (Teacher, Non-editing Teacher etc.) and then click the ‘Enrol‘ button
In all likelihood, you can’t find this user simply because they don’t yet have a Moodle account.
Moodle accounts are generated automatically when someone logs in for the first time (or when they are automatically enrolled based on their SAMIS record).
Nevertheless, you can create the account manually via the SAMIS Integration block:
- If it is not within your Moodle space already, you will need to add the SAMIS Integration block. Turn Edit mode on, and add the block in the block panle on the right of the Moodle page.
- Once the SAMIS block has been added click on the Add User link.
- Enter the person’s Bath username (which can found be on Person Finder), and then click Add User.
Once this has been done, you should be able to enrol the person as normal.
If you find the person has an account, check the Participants list in the Moodle space, as they may already be enrolled.
If a person has not used Moodle in some years their account is de-activated (but still present). Contact the TEL team with the person’s name and email address and a Moodle administrator can re-activate the account.
Yes, externals can access Moodle. First you will need to put in a Request for Temporary Account (WAA account) from DD&T. Read about temporary accounts.
When staff and students work in Moodle the technology logs their interactions. This information is then made available in various report functions:
- for staff so that they can understand student behaviour and analyse how students are working with the online content
- for students so that they can keep track of their progress
Find out more about Using Reporting Tools to Explore Online Activity
Read the Accessible maths with Moodle Guidance for using the text editor of LaTeX markup.
Yes. The Moodle calendar is automatically populated with items that have a due date attached. However, you may want to add your own items so that students have reminders built in, or for activities where the Calendar does not provide the appropriate functionality (for example with recurring Zoom meetings or when you setup an MS Teams meeting through Moodle).
- Navigate to your Moodle space.
- Click Full Calendar (from the Calendar block found in the right-hand block panel).
- Click New Event button on the top right of the calendar.
- Complete the relevant details for your event and click Save.
Note that if you click the ‘Show more’ button you have the option to include ‘repeating’ events. Select ‘Repeat this event’ and enter the number of weekly repeats you would like, before saving. You can view all events across all Moodle spaces by visiting Home > Dashboard > Calendar.
You can add the Moodle calendar to your list of calendars in your Outlook calendar through the use of a Moodle generated URL. Note this will pull through events across all the Moodle spaces you are enrolled in, it can’t be limited to just one space.
Generate a link to the Moodle Calendar
- Login to your Moodle space and select the calendar.
- Click the Import or export calendars link from the calendar block.
- Click Export calendar button.
- Select from the available options and click Get calendar URL.
- Copy the URL that appears underneath the button.
Import the calendar into Outlook
- Open Outlook on the web (https://outlook.office365.com) and sign in.
- Click Add calendar.
- Select Subscribe from web.
- Paste in the URL you copied and click Import.
- Fill the details (name/colour/charm) and click Import.
The newly named calendar becomes an option in your list of calendars which you can toggle on/off.
Please note that Microsoft report that it can take 24 hours for Outlook to update subscribed calendars. It is also possible to use the generated calendar link to add a calendar to a Gmail calendar.
Unfortunately, at this time we are focusing on existing solutions that we can support. Plug-ins require a code review from our external hosts so they don’t impact the stability of Moodle for everyone. Please contact tel@bath.ac.uk to discuss alternative options.