Apply a Faculty Template to a Moodle Course

This page contains all the instructions necessary for faculty TELT Administrators and Moodle instructors to import a faculty course template into a Moodle course.

Faculty-specific Moodle course templates allow the faculty to implement a baseline standard for online courses, including links to important policy documents and procedures, and specifying default settings and layout.

TELT Administrators generally apply the faculty template to a teaching instance of a course before releasing it to instructors, who then import their course materials and adapt the site as needed. However, instructors will also want to import the template into construction courses and unbranded teaching instances to conform with faculty standards.

Faculty TELT Administrators will give Moodle instructors access to the relevant course template before semester starts.

TELT Administrators should request a self-enrolment key for any template they create. They should distribute this to the relevant academics, so that those academics can enrol themselves as instructors and import the template into their own courses.

Import, don't Restore

We recommend that you use Moodle's Import feature to apply your faculty template (see the step by step instructions below) rather than the Restore feature. In general, the Import method involves fewer steps and options than Restore, and is less confusing to complete.

The Restore method, as well as being more complicated, carries the risk of users inadvertently renaming a course with the name of the course template. This can cause confusion, but a more serious consequence relates to synchronisation. If you apply a course template to an official teaching course and overwrite the name, student enrolment information will not be transferred from the Student Information System, because SIS will not recognise the destination course under its new name.

It may be tempting (in order to transfer course settings from the template course to a new course) to use the Restore method and select "Overwrite the course configuration" in the Schema page. Because of the risks just mentioned, we do not recommend you do this. Instead, use the Import method and recreate the settings in the Edit settings page of the destination course.

For details about the difference between Import and Restore, and instructions on backing up, restoring and importing course content, see the Course rollover page.

Step by step instructions

Before you import a faculty template into your course, prepare the destination Moodle course. You'll have to do this differently depending on what kind of course it is:

a blank sandpit (a course shell that is not populated by enrolled users)
a sandpit containing some content
a blank teaching instance (created by SIMS and populated by enrolled users)
a teaching instance that already contains some content.

Once the destination course is ready, you then import the template.

Prepare a blank Moodle construction course

Instructors will generally have created a sandpit because they want to get started building your course, but it's too early for NSS to provide them with a teaching instance.

Log in to Moodle and open the sandpit.
Is the faculty template in a different course format from the sandpit course?
- If no, continue to the next step.
- If yes, in the Settings block, select Edit settings, then on the Edit settings page, click open the Course format section and change the format to match that of the faculty template. Click Save changes.
Go to the instructions below to import the faculty template.

Prepare a Moodle construction course containing some content

To prepare to apply the faculty template:

Log in to Moodle and open the sandpit.
Is the faculty template in a different course format from the construction course?
- If no, continue to the next step.
- If yes, in the Settings block, select Edit settings, then on the Edit settings page, change the format to match that of the faculty template.
Does your sandpit course contain the same number or fewer weeks or topics than the faculty template has?
- If no, continue to the next step.
- If yes, on the Edit settings page, at Number of weeks/topics, select from the dropdown list a number representing at least 2 more topics than are in the faculty template, to ensure that the template imports correctly. Click Save changes.
- If the course contains more topics than the template, don't worry—you won't lose the extra topics' content and you can make the necessary adjustments after importing the template.
Go to the instructions below to import the faculty template.

Prepare a blank Moodle teaching instance

Log in to Moodle and select the Moodle Home tab at the upper left (not My Home).
On the Moodle Home page, enter the new course's course code in the Search Courses field and click Go.
When the correct course displays in the search results, click the course name.
Is the faculty template in a different course format from the default course format?
- If no, continue to the next step.
- If yes, in the Settings block, select Edit settings, then on the Edit settings page, change the format to match that of the faculty template. Click Save changes.
Go to the instructions below to import the faculty template.

Prepare a Moodle teaching instance containing some content

Log in to Moodle and open the teaching instance.
Is the faculty template in a different course format from the teaching course?
- If no, continue to the next step.
- If yes, in the Settings block, select Edit settings, then on the Edit settings page, change the format to match that of the faculty template.
Does your teaching instance contain the same number or fewer than the faculty template has?
- If no, continue to the next step.
- If yes, on the Edit settings page, at Number of weeks/topics, select from the dropdown list a number representing at least 2 more topics than are in the faculty template, to ensure that the template imports correctly. Click Save changes.
- If the course contains more topics than the template, don't worry—you won't lose the extra topics' content and you can make the necessary adjustments after importing the template.
Go to the instructions below to import the faculty template.

Import the faculty template

On the course home page, in the Settings block, click Import.
On the Find a course to import data from page, locate and select the faculty template and click Continue.
On the Initial settings page, select Include legacy files and click Next.
On the Schema settings page, deselect the Latest News and Announcements check box, so that you don't end up with latest news in your course. Click Next.
On the Confirmation and review page, click Perform import.
When the import is complete, the message displays: "Import complete". Click Continue to return to the course.
If you need to change the number of weeks or topics, in the Settings block, select Edit settings, then on the Edit settings page, at Course format and at Number of sections, select the correct number of topics. You can change any other course settings as necessary in this page.