Moodle site - basic structure

Moodle's basic interface structure is organized around courses. For a teacher or student, the placement of a course in the structure is similar to a computers file system or a paper filing cabinet. A context in Moodle is a location in the structure. Moodle assists the user to navigate and manage pages within its structure.

An overview and hierarchy of the basic structure in simple terms:

• The Moodle site - the largest context, the entire file cabinet.
• Category - A place to organize courses, a file drawer.
• Front Page - A special course, with its own file drawer.
• Course - A place to enrol users, a large hanging file folder in a file drawer.
• Course sections/topics - A way to visually organize Activities and Resources, a special type of folder in a course.
• Activities - Interactive tools the teacher can place in a course, each is a different colored folders placed in a topic.
• Resources - Passive tools that may link to other places, a different colored folders placed in a topic.
• Blocks - Areas in a course that are not visually in a topic, each has its own colored folder in a course.
• Pages - visually what is seen at any moment, individual sheets of paper filed away.

For example, a course can contain 1 or more sections, each section can contain many activities and resources. One section might contain 3 different resource links to pdf files, 2 links to other webpages, 2 Lessons, 2 Assignments and 1 Quiz. The teacher determines what a student is going to see and when.

What the user can do or see, depends upon their role in any specific context. Thus a teacher will see pages in a different way than a student. For example, a student can not see the "Editing and updating Quiz" page in the Features Moodle Course, in topic 8, for a quiz activity called "A listening quiz". However, both a student and teacher can view and interact with different question pages in that quiz activity.

See also

• Structural overview slide show by Mark Drechsler