Moodle admin bonus hint #12 Setting course defaults

Well this is going to be extremely useful in helping out teachers and course creators.  They will think you are amazing.

Setting the course defaults allows you to do exactly that, set the default fields for when courses are created and more.

As an administrator, go to Site Administration > Courses > Course default settings

The settings in the course defaults are as follows.

• Visible: This setting determines whether the course appears in the list of courses. Apart from teachers and administrators, users are not allowed to enter the course.
• Course Format: Sets the course format
• Maximum number of sections: This is the maximum value that will appear in the sections dropdown menu. Defaults to 52.
• Number of sections: This is the number of sections added by default when the course is created. Defaults to 4.
• Hidden sections: This setting determines how the hidden sections in the course are displayed to students. Default: Hidden sections are shown in collapsed form.
• Course layout: This setting determines whether the whole course is displayed on one page or split over several pages. Default: Show all sections on one page.
• Course end date enabled by default: Yes or no.
• Course duration: The course duration is used to calculate the default course end date. The course end date is used for determining whether a course should be included in a user’s list of courses. It may also be used by custom reports. Users can still enter the course after the end date.

Appearance settings

• Force Language: Set to do not force by default.
• Number of announcements: 5 as the default settings
• Show gradebook to students: Defaults to yes
• Show activity reports: Defaults to no

Files and uploads

• Maximum file upload size: Set as the site upload limit.

Completion tracking

• Completion tracking: Default to yes. If enabled, activity completion conditions may be set in the activity settings and/or course completion conditions may be set. It is recommended to have this enabled so that meaningful data is displayed in the course overview on the Dashboard.

Groups

• Group mode: Default to No groups
• Force: Default set as no. This forces the course group mode to every activity in the course.

This is all the default course settings. Work out what settings you need as defaults and set them here so that users that create courses have everything ready and don’t have to keep changing the same settings every time they create a new course.

Additionally there is default settings for most of the activities and content modules.

As an administrator, go to Site Administration > Plugins > Activity Modules. This contains all the settings for the activity modules with their defaults for things like activities, forums, quizzes etc..

Again, by setting these defaults for the site, you are making sure teachers and course creators are using the correct settings and it saves them so much time by not having to change the same settings over and over.

Defaults create consistency and save time.