Wizards tool
| Wizards tool | |
|---|---|
| Type | Admin tool |
| Set | N/A |
| Downloads | https://moodle.org/plugins/tool_wizards |
| Issues | https://github.com/adamjenkins/moodle-tool_wizards/issues |
| Discussion | https://moodle.org/plugins/tool_wizards |
| Maintainer(s) | Adam Jenkins (WiseCat) |
Wizards is an admin tool that helps teachers who are new to Moodle. Instead of long settings pages, it asks a few plain-language questions, one screen at a time, and then creates the course, activity or question for them. Everything it does not ask about keeps the value that Moodle's own form would use, so the result is a normal Moodle course or activity.
Installation
Install the plugin from the Moodle plugins directory, or download the ZIP file and follow Installing plugins. The files go in the folder admin/tool/wizards. The plugin supports Moodle 5.2 and 5.3.
The plugin needs no other plugins. If the site has a text generation provider in the AI subsystem, administrators can also use it to improve wizards (see Managing wizards).
What teachers get
The course wizard
Create a course with the wizard asks one question at a time:
- What do you want the course called? A short name is suggested, and you can change it.
- Where should the course go? This is asked only if you can create courses in more than one category.
- What layout do you want? Each course format comes with a plain description.
- How many sections do you want to start with? This is asked only for layouts that have sections.
- When does the course start? This is asked only for weekly sections.
- Should students see the course now? This is asked only if you are allowed to change it.
A review screen shows every answer, each with a Change button, before anything is created. Click Create course to create it. Show all settings, on every step, opens the standard Add a new course form with your answers already filled in.
The course is created the same way the standard form creates it, and the person who created it is enrolled in the same way. All other settings are the site's usual course defaults.
Teachers find the course wizard:
- in the menu of each course category, and in the site home menu,
- in Site administration > Courses > Create a course with the wizard,
- next to Moodle's own Add a new course and Create course buttons (administrators can turn these links off).
First content suggestions
On a new or nearly empty course, anyone who can add content there sees a card at the top of the course page: Ready to add some content? / What would you like to add first? Each option opens a short wizard in a pop-up window. The card shows the first eight wizards, and More kinds of content shows the rest. Only the kinds of content you are allowed to add in that course are offered.
After a wizard adds something, the card confirms it (for example, "Nice, Week 1 discussion was added.") and suggests something different to add next.
The card never blocks the page. You can:
- close it for now (I'm done for now),
- hide it for one course (Hide for this course),
- turn it off on every course (Don't show me wizard suggestions).
To undo either of the last two, open the help button (?) at the bottom of a course page and choose Bring back the course wizards, or go to Preferences > Wizard suggestions. The card then shows again straight away, even on a course that already has content.
Activity wizards
Every standard activity and resource has a wizard. Each wizard asks a few questions at a time, one topic per screen. The first screen asks for a name and, for most kinds of content, what it is for, shown as picture cards. That answer fills in the later screens with the settings that suit it. For example, a Practice quiz uses the "Interactive with multiple tries" question behaviour.
You can check each screen in turn, or click Enough questions, let's go at any point after the first screen to create the activity with what the remaining screens already hold.
| Wizard | What is it for? |
|---|---|
| A quiz | Practice, Graded test, Pre-test, Homework |
| An assignment | A file such as an essay, Text written in Moodle, Work done outside Moodle, A group project |
| A forum | Class discussion, Ask me questions, Answer before you see others, One discussion, Everyone posts once, Class blog |
| A glossary | Course vocabulary, Students build it together, Class FAQ, Collect useful links |
| A lesson | Tutorial, Choose your own path, Graded lesson |
| A workshop | Feedback on each other's writing, Marking each other's projects, Reviewing classmates and themselves |
| A choice | A class vote, A sign-up list, A quick check, Pick all that apply |
| A feedback survey | Course evaluation, Class opinion poll, Collecting information, Regular check-in |
| A database | Shared collection, Share then see others, Checked by you first, One entry each |
| A wiki | Whole class together, Each group together, Each student alone |
| A book | Course reading, Handbook, Collection of readings |
| A file, Slides, A link, A folder | How students use it (read it in the course, download it, print it, watch a video, and so on) |
| An H5P activity, A SCORM package, A video meeting (BigBlueButton) | Practice or graded use, and how it opens |
| A page, A picture, A content package, An external tool, A subsection | One screen of essentials |
After the activity's own screens come shared screens for visibility, groups and completion. Each is shown only where it matters: the groups screen only when the course has groups and does not force a group mode, and the completion screen only when the course tracks completion.
Choices are described by what students will experience. Moodle's own name for a setting is mentioned where it helps you find it later. A setting that the site has turned off (for example, a question behaviour) is never offered. Completion, the gradebook and events work as usual.
Add with a wizard
In edit mode, every add menu on the course page has an Add with a wizard item: the menu of each section, and the "+" between two activities, which adds the new activity at that place. It lists the same activity wizards as the card.
In-activity wizards
Some wizards add content to an activity that already exists, one item at a time, with Add another after each save. Teachers find them as Add with a wizard on the activity's own pages, and as buttons on the course page straight after an activity wizard has added the activity.
| Wizard | Where | What it adds |
|---|---|---|
| Add quiz questions | The quiz's Questions page | Multiple choice (one or several answers), true/false, short answer, numerical, matching, essay and description questions |
| Add questions to the bank | A question bank | The same question types, in a category you choose |
| Set up categories | A question bank | Question categories by chapter, unit, week, lesson or topic, with common subcategories |
| Add lesson pages | The lesson's Edit page | Content pages, question pages and end of branch pages, with where right and wrong answers lead |
| Add chapters | The book | Chapters and subchapters |
| Add entries | The glossary | A term, its definition, other words for it, and linking |
| Add fields | The database's Fields page | Text, number, date, menu, radio button, checkbox, URL, picture and file fields |
| Add feedback questions | The feedback's Questions page | Multiple choice, short text, longer text, number and information items |
| Add options | The choice | One more option, with its limit |
| Build the assessment form | The workshop | One criterion at a time, for the workshop's grading strategy |
| Give out reviews | The workshop | Random allocation of reviews, in plain language |
| Add example work | The workshop (when it uses examples) | An example submission |
| Move to the next stage | The workshop | Explains the current phase and what happens next |
With Teacher scaffold
If the Teacher scaffold plugin (tool_teacherscaffold) is installed, a teacher who unlocks new activities sees a message on their next course page, for example "Nice work! You've unlocked new activities: Quiz, Choice, Feedback." The message has a button that opens the matching wizard. Wizards does not need Teacher scaffold.
Settings
In Site administration > Courses > Wizards > Settings:
- Enable the wizards: turns the course wizard and the first-content suggestions on or off for the whole site.
- Suggest first content up to this many activities: teachers see the first-content card on courses with this many activities or fewer (default 1). The Announcements forum that every new course gets is not counted.
- Suggest first content only in edit mode (default off): shows the card only while the teacher has edit mode on, so it does not show when the course page is shown to a class. It still appears straight after the course wizard, after a wizard adds something, and after Bring back the course wizards.
- Show wizard links next to "Add a new course": adds a Create a course with the wizard link beside Moodle's own Add a new course buttons. The course wizard is always available from the course category menu and from Site administration.
Managing wizards
Every wizard is a definition: a JSON document that says what the wizard creates, which screens and questions it has, how the answers become settings, and what each purpose fills in. The plugin comes with 38 of them: the course wizard, 24 activity wizards and 13 in-activity wizards.
Administrators manage them in Site administration > Courses > Wizards > Manage wizards. On this page you can:
- Turn wizards on or off and order them. The list is grouped into course, activity and in-activity wizards. Each wizard, each group and each activity has a switch that saves straight away.
- Edit a wizard's wording in every installed language, the order of its screens, and its pictures (the ones that come with the plugin, or your own PNG, JPEG, WebP, SVG or GIF files).
- Try it: go through any wizard in a real course and see exactly which settings it would set, without creating anything.
- Duplicate, Export and Import wizards, one at a time or several at once, as a ZIP file with their pictures. Imports are checked first. A wizard that already exists can be imported as a copy, replace the existing one, or be skipped. Every imported wizard arrives as a draft.
- Build a new wizard (see below).
- Improve with AI: if the site has a text generation provider in the AI subsystem, describe a change in your own words, for example "Make the explanations a little shorter", and review the proposed differences before you apply them.
- Download the AI runbook: a guide to the wizard format and design rules, for working on exported wizards with an AI assistant outside Moodle. It is also included in every export.
The wizards that come with the plugin are updated with the plugin until you edit them. When a newer version of a wizard you edited comes with an update, it is flagged, with a comparison and the buttons Reset to default and Keep my version.
Building a new wizard
Build a new wizard opens the wizard builder:
- Start: choose what the wizard creates (a course, or any installed activity) and give it a title.
- Settings: tick the settings to ask about. They are listed as the activity's standard settings form groups them. Everything you do not tick keeps its usual default.
- Questions: word the questions and group them into screens.
- Purposes: optionally, add purpose cards, each with the settings it fills in.
New wizards start as drafts, so teachers do not see them until you turn them on.
For developers
Other plugins can add building blocks that wizard definitions use: actions, which run after a wizard has created its course or activity, and transforms, which turn several answers into settings. They are registered through the hook \tool_wizards\hook\collect_extensions. Wizard files can be checked before import with the command line script admin/tool/wizards/cli/validate.php.
Capabilities
The plugin adds one capability:
- tool/wizards:managewizards (Manage wizards): manage the wizards on the site. By default, only site administrators have it.
Using a wizard needs the permissions that the same action needs without the wizard:
- the course wizard: moodle/course:create in the category;
- an activity wizard: moodle/course:manageactivities and the activity's own addinstance capability, for example mod/quiz:addinstance;
- an in-activity wizard: moodle/course:manageactivities and what adding that content needs, for example moodle/question:add for questions.
So students and non-editing teachers never see the wizards.
Privacy
The plugin stores, for each user:
- whether they turned wizard suggestions off (a user preference),
- the courses where they hid the suggestions,
- messages waiting to be shown to them (for example, about newly unlocked activities),
- for people who manage wizards, the course they last chose for Try it (a user preference).
It implements the Privacy API, so this data is included in data exports and deletion requests. See Data privacy.
