Blocks are utilities that live in the right column of our Moodle course pages. By default, each course comes with blocks for My courses list, Activities, Quickmail, Latest announcements, Calendar, Upcoming events, Recent activity, and Accessibility+ Review. In addition to these blocks that come pre-loaded in your course, you can add a variety of blocks.

Standard Blocks...

Your course will include these blocks by default:

My courses list — Courses that you are enrolled in are listed by term (or category) in this block. Courses that are unavailable will be listed along with those that are available to students.

Activities — Providing links to activities and resources by type, the Activities block is a very useful tool for navigating your course. Click on Assignments, for instance, to check that all of the due dates are correct. You will see all course content regardless of visibility, while students will only see what is available to them.

Quickmail — Quickmail allows you to send email messages to all students, some students or to particular groups. 

Latest announcements — Any time you post a message in the Announcements forum, it will be linked in this block. By default, the five most recent announcements will be displayed.

Calendar — Assignment due dates are automatically posted to the course Calendar. You can also add special events or other key dates to the calendar.

Upcoming events — Links for activities with pending due dates will be displayed in the Upcoming events block.

Recent activity — Submissions and posts are linked in this block: activities are displayed depending on one’s role, so teachers see everything and students only see changes you make and posts made by their classmates.

Accessibility+ Review — How accessible is your course? With the Accessibility+ Review block, you can run an analysis of your course and correct problems that are found. Get started with this tool.

Add a Block...

Blocks can be added to any page, not just the course main page. Here's how to add a block:

1. Turn editing on and open the blocks area on the right side of your course.
2. Click on the Add a block button.

Select the desired block from the resulting list by clicking on its name. (You can only select one block at a time.) The block you add will be added to the bottom of the block column.

Here are some of our favorites:

Attendance — The Attendance link offers a shortcut for you to take roll and see attendance reports. Students see an overview of their attendance activity to date and can click on a link to get a full report.

Comments — Adding the Comments block makes it possible for course participants to add an informal note about what they're experiencing in the course. TIP: Add to an assignment link for students to ask questions or make suggestions to each other.

Grade Me — The Grade Me block provides quick access to student submissions for grading. Clicking on the links provided takes you to the activity. Note: This block is visible to students, telling them they have nothing to grade. You can update the permissions to hide it (see instructions linked above).

Private files — The Private files block provides a quick link to each user's personal file repository. You can link these files to your courses: update a file in this repository and the new version will be disseminated wherever you've linked it.

Random Glossary Entry — If you have a glossary in your course, a random glossary entry block will reach in and display an entry every time a user accesses the course main page or on a schedule that you set. Entries can appear randomly or in sequence.

Text — Enter any information you want in a text block: post your office hours and email address, create a link to a special web resource, insert a snappy graphic — you name it!

Read more in this guide to blocks.

... Everywhere

If you're already using blocks, there may have been times when you were in the gradebook and found that you could open up Quickmail to send a student a message. Or maybe you were looking at one quiz and used the Activities block as a shortcut to a different quiz. In both cases, you didn't have to return to your course main page in order to access the block. If you have wished for access to another block from any page, relief is at hand!

Instructors can configure a block so that it appears in every page of a course. Blocks that are made to be "sticky" this way are available to all users.

To have a block displayed on every page:

1. Turn editing on in your course.

2. Add the desired block.

3. Click on the Configure ... block link in the upper right margin of the block.

4. In the Where this block appears option area, select Any page from the Display on page types pull-down menu.

5. To adjust where the block appears, set the weight number — choose between -11 (top of the column) to 10 (bottom of the column) or drag and drop it where you want it to appear after you save changes.

6. Save changes.