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Blocks in Moodle courses

You can add blocks to each Moodle course room. These allow you to organise the course more clearly and extend the use of the course.

Such blocks appear as standard in the right-hand column of a Moodle course page. For this reason, blocks can also be embedded well in very content-rich courses, as they make important information easily accessible. For example, you can integrate a calendar that automatically displays all relevant deadlines into the course room in this way.

Following we would like to give you a quick overview of the available blocks in Moodle. We will also explain how to set up a new block using an example.

Block type Description Remarks
Activity results This block lists all activities available in the course (e.g., forums, quizzes, etc.) as well as resources.
Recent blog entries Shows the most recent blog posts.
Course completion status The course completion status block shows how far a student has progressed in the course. The block only displays information if the teacher has activated completion tracking in the course settings.
Blog menu The Blog menu block provides links to the following functions:
-Add a new entry
-Show my entries (which corresponds to the Blog tab in the user profile)
-Blog preferences
-Etc.
Blog tags This block displays a list of blog tags. The more frequently a blog entry is associated with a specific tag, the larger the font size in which this tag is displayed in the block. Additional options in block configuration.
User profile The block contains personal information about the user who is logged into Moodle. Which information is displayed in detail can be defined in the block's configuration.
Feedback The Feedback block displays links to anonymous feedback activities that have been set up on the homepage of your Moodle site. This block can be added to any course to draw attention to feedback from the homepage.
Global search Offers a possibility for each course participant to search globally, preferably by keywords.
Random glossary entry The Glossary entry block allows for the randomized display of individual glossary entries. This requires that at least one glossary is present in the course or on the homepage. Additional options in block configuration.
Calendar Teachers can provide a calendar directly on their course page with this block.
Comments In this block, users can leave comments on the respective page.
Course completion reminder This block allows reminders to be visible to participants. The reminders can relate to activities or anything else.
Section links The Course sections block is helpful on a course page to get quick access to individual topic or week sections of the course. Depends on course format.
Course/site summary The Course description block displays the description of the course that the teacher has entered in the course settings.
Courses This block contains a linked list of all courses in which the logged-in user participates.
Learning plans This block allows for the publication of (self-)created learning plans.
Latest badges The block shows newly received badges.
Participants The People block includes a link to participants, leading to the list of all course participants. For privacy reasons, only teachers can see the participant list.
Tags This block offers an effective way to visualize tags in a so-called “tag cloud.” In this presentation, the font size of a tag appears larger the more frequently the tag is used. Additional options in block configuration.
Search forums This block allows a quick search through all forums of the course.
Quiz results The Quiz results block can be used to display the results of a quiz in the course. A quiz must be present in the relevant course or on the homepage.
Text With a text block, you can place text and images within a block on the Moodle homepage or course page. Entering a title is optional and can be left blank. This block is very flexible. Thanks to the available HTML editor, text can be formatted, images and links can be inserted, and video sequences, audio files, flash, and more can be presented.

Adding a new block

Add block

As standard, no blocks are activated after the creation of a new Moodle course room.

To create a new block, you must first set your course to edit mode. To do this, click on the Edit slider at the top right of the course. You can then add a new block within the block bar. You can open the block bar on the right side using the grey arrow.

Note: Please note that the Edit button will only be displayed if you have editing rights in the respective course room (further information on roles and rights on Moodle can also be found in our FAQ articles Roles and rights and Role assignment ).

After you have clicked on the Add block button, the block selection opens. Here you can select the desired block type from a range of different types. You can find an overview of the blocks available in Moodle and their functions in the Block overview section.

Example of use: Creating a new block

We have selected the block type text block as an application example below.

After selecting the corresponding block type, the new block is created by default in the right course column (see image “A newly created text block”).

The small gear symbol in the block takes you to the configuration menu where you can make further settings. The Text block block type, for example, offers you the option of assigning a new block title.

A newly created text block

In a second step, you can now fill the text block with content using the text editor. Further information on working with the text editor can also be found in our FAQ article on the functional features of the text editor

Finally, you can adjust the placement of the new block. To do this, you will find the sub-items Block placement and Block placement on this page in the configuration menu, which offer you a variety of options for displaying the block in the course room.