Create your own course
To create a new course you will need to be set up as a Course Creator by the Moodle admin.
Starting out
Log in to Moodle and go to the section you would like the new course to appear in.
In the Course categories section choose the 'Add a new course' button
Settings
Give your course a title.
Give your course a short name. This will be the name that appears on the button to bring students back to your course main page. It will also appear in the navigation breadcrumbs at the top of the page.
The summary appears on the list of courses.
Format
Course Format defines the type of course you have.
Social Format creates a course based on a message forum on the main page.
Topics format creates a number of sections that can contain resources and activities that make up the course.
Weekly format is similar to topics but creates a separate section for each week beginning with the course start date.
You can swap back and forward between the different types of formats to see how they work. In an existing course you have access to the same settings you have here when you create a course.
For this course we are choosing Topics format as we want a number of sections to put content in.
Dates & Times
You can select the start date for a course.
By default, the course start is the day after you create the course.
You can also select the period of time you would like students to be able to enrol themselves on this course.
By default there are 10 weeks or topics for any new course, but for this course we know already that there will only be 4 sections.
Access Control
You can set up groups in your course and there is a separate topic dealing with how to do this.
Because it will take a week or two to get all the resources and activities set up, it is worth hiding it from students until it is ready.
The Enrolment key is given to control access to courses. It is a one time password given to students. If you use Groups in a course, you will also need to set a different Enrolment key for each of the groups. There is more information in the Groups information about this.
If your students are being automatically enrolled onto courses using the correct course number they will not need to be given the Enrolment key, although it is still set to keep the 'lost' out of your course.
Allowing guest access will let people come in and view your course. You could allow guest access using the Enrolment key, but generally we would expect to restrict guest access.
Other Settings
There are a number of other options you can choose.
You can hide sections from students, this option defines how they appear.
You can choose to show or hide grades from students.
There is also the option of showing reports of all Activity in the course.
You can define the words you use in the course for teachers and students
When you have set the options, clicking 'Save changes' will create your new course.
Remember that you can access all these setting again from your course administration panel.
Your course & Default Blocks
This is your new blank course
These are the 4 empty topics.
You get a 'Latest news' block. These are items from the News Forum of your course
You also get 'Upcoming Events', with a link to the Calendar
The 'Recent Activity' is a list of changes and additions to the course
Clicking on 'Paricipants' will show a list of participants.
Remember, this link could be called 'Students' if you did not change it in your course settings.
There is also a tool to search messages in forums within your course.
The administration block contains a number of tools for making the most of your course.
Administration tools are covered in a separate topic.
This is the button to turn editing on in your course. You need to be in 'edit mode' to change elements in your course.
There is a separate topic covering editng your course.
By default, courses are created with a list of the course categories.
Students will see a list of the other courses they are enrolled on
This concludes the overview of setting up a course.
It is easy and safe to do.
