Reset course

Overview

This allows you to empty a course of user data, while retaining the activities and other settings. Please be warned when choosing items you will delete your chosen user data from this course forever!

You can select which user data to remove at a granular level under the categories of General, Roles, Gradebook, Groups and Activity data.

Note: Only users with the reset course capability (by default managers and teachers) can reset a course.

How to Reset - step by step

1. Log in and go to the course area you want to reset
2. Resetting a given activity is irreversible, so ensure that you have taken a Backup of your area including the user data - this is a snapshot and can be reinstated if necessary
3. From Course navigation > More > Course reuse, select Reset.
4. From the listed data categories, select suitable options to delete or reset the data.
5. From the 'sticky' footer, click the Reset course button.

Note: For small courses, the reset completes immediately and you are returned to the course. For large courses (new in 5.2), the reset is queued and processed in the background, you will see a confirmation message and can navigate away without waiting. Check the course once the task has completed.

Reset course button

New feature
in Moodle 5.2!

Asynchronous reset

In Moodle 5.2, resetting a large course no longer blocks the browser while processing. Instead, the reset is queued as a background task, preventing timeouts on courses with large amounts of data.

Asynchronous course reset

Enable asynchronous reset

To enable asynchronous reset, refer to the following steps:

1. Navigate to Site administration > General > Advanced features
2. Click the check box for Enable asynchronous course resets.
3. Click Save changes.

Enable asynchronous course reset

Monitor asynchronous reset

You can monitor the task status in Site administration > Server > Scheduled tasks (administrators) or check the course once the task is completed.

General Reset Options

(Before you reset) You will need to make sure that you back up the information that you have within your course before you reset. When you back up the course make sure that you back it up with the user information. That way you will have a back up data on the ones that have taken your course before you reset it for another group or department.

Course start date

You can set a new Course Start Date for the freshly reset course, delete all Calendar events, comments, course AND activity completion data and user notes attached to the course. Note that course logs are not deleted (See MDL-43274)

NOTE: If you set a new course start date, then all course dates will be shifted by the same amount.

Role Reset Options

These Role Reset options allow you to unenrol all users with a particular role within a course (e.g. students) as well as remove all role overrides and role assignment specific to the course. This does not affect user role assignments outside the context of the course.

Gradebook Reset Options

The Gradebook reset options allow you to delete all gradebook items and categories and/or delete all recorded grades within the course. There are two options for gradebook reset:

Delete all grades - Removes all manually added grade items within the course together with grades and data on overridden, excluded, hidden and locked grades. Please note activity grade items are not removed in this option.

Delete all items and categories - Remove all categories and related manually added grade items together with grades and data on overridden, excluded, hidden and locked grades. Please note activity grade items are not removed in this option.

Note that these grades are still recorded against a user's account.

Group Reset Options

The Group reset options provides you with the ability to delete all groups created in the course and/or remove all users from any groups within the course.

You can also delete all groupings created in the course and/or remove all users from any groupings within the course.

Activity Reset Options

Depending on the activities used within a course, you will be provided with the option to remove the user data associated with these learning objects. This includes responses to Choices, Quiz attempts, Feedback Responses, Forum posts (from selected Forum types), Glossary entries etc.

For Quiz you can:

remove all attempts

remove user overrides and group overrides

For Workshop you can:

delete all submissions

delete all assessments

switch to the setup phase

For Wiki you can:

delete pages

remove tags and comments

You can also specify a new course start date.