The Block Drawer is an expandable section, located at the right-hand side of all Moodle course pages. It houses small 'blocks' of content, which provide additional information such as instructor details or completion progress to course pages.
Add a block to the Moodle course
Academics can add, edit, or remove blocks when editing their course. Blocks are added to pages via the blocks drawer and will only display on the current page type by default.
For example, a block added to an assignment page will only appear on all assignment pages in the course.
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide.
Manage existing course blocks
Blocks can be configured and reordered in the block drawer. It is important to configure blocks after they are added to configure what content is shown in the block.
Click 'Get Started' to view the step-by-step guide.
Common Moodle blocks
Commonly used blocks include the course contacts, calendar, and activity completion blocks. These blocks provide unique features to benefit course navigation and the display of content.
To view a comprehensive list of all blocks, visit the Moodle Docs Block page.
Activities
The ‘Activities’ block provides links to all the Moodle Activity types. Allowing staff and students to quickly access the list of individual activity types.
Calendar
The ‘Calendar’ block displays key dates in the blocks drawer and can be used to add personal events to keep track of. Teaching staff can also add their own events for groups or the whole course which will then be displayed on the student's calendar.
Completion progress
Completion progress is an important block when using activity completion.
It provides students with a visual progress bar for their activity completion and provides direct links to content that needs to be completed. For activities to be seen in the 'completion progress' block, teaching staff must enable 'Activity completion' in the settings of certain activities.
The expected completion date can also be set within the 'Activity completion' tab when developing content to add a due date.
Course contacts
The 'Course contacts' block provides contact and profile information of staff in the course. Different roles such as Instructor and Tutor can be shown depending on what is configured in the block settings.
This is commonly used to allow students to find the email addresses of tutors or instructors.
Latest announcements
The ‘Latest announcement’ block is used to add and display topics from the course announcements forum. Use announcements for important course updates or to remind students of due activities.
Sharing cart
The 'Sharing cart' is used to copy and paste course content over to other courses. This is particularly useful if teaching staff want to move content between courses or save a copy of the content to reuse.
.
Settings
Whilst the settings are now located in the course administration bar after the Moodle Enhance update. Teaching staff who find the old layout to be more comfortable may add the ‘settings’ block to their course which closely resembles the older layout.
Text
The 'Text' block is one of the most flexible blocks. Academics can add any text or media content into the block via the text editor.
This is commonly used instead of the course contacts block to manually add a picture, name, and email address of the course instructor. This allows the details to stand out more and provides academics with complete control of how the details look.
How to remove / delete a block?
Block can be removed by clicking the cog icon when in editing mode and selecting Delete option from the dropdown menu.
How to unhide a block?
When the block is hidden it will not display to students or staff in the course. To make the block visible again, editing mode must be turned on, then click the cog icon and select Show option from the dropdown.
