Moodle Learning Management System (LMS) is flexible and customisable. That means you can personalise your Moodle to better suit your learners' needs. In this blog post, we are sharing the top five tips for customising your Moodle.
How to customise Moodle
A common way of using Moodle is showcasing course content through a presentation and a quiz. This is a good base. However, you can also use H5P to customise your course content and increase interactivity for your learners. More on this shortly.
Additionally, as standard, Moodle has two built-in themes(external link) so you can change the look and feel of your site. The themes are a good starting place for a design, such as changing the font.
Essentially, you can customise Moodle for your learners by:
- Changing how course content is displayed and configured.
- Offering different options for how learners can interact with content.
- Matching your brand identity to Moodle themes.
To utilise the flexibility of Moodle, we've provided five tips to get you started for customising Moodle.
Top 5 tips for customising Moodle
1. Leverage good Moodle plugins
Moodle has a vast range of plugins(external link) that can add extra functionality to your Moodle which can improve the experience for both educators and learners. Plugins can support you as an educator, helping with:
- Administration.
- Assessments.
- Collaboration.
- Communication.
- Content.
- Interface.
Moodle plugins can transform the learning experience, leading to increased focus and engagement. You can automate manual tasks such as reminders to complete course content. For example, the ‘Reengagement’ Moodle plugin means you can ensure courses are completed, and improve overall content engagement. Additionally, Reengagement sets up automatic reminder emails to be sent to students after a specific period of time. Because of this, you can better support your student success journey without adding extra to-do’s to your list.
Check out the Reengagement plugin.(external link)
We’ve also pulled together a list of 10 Moodle plugins you can use as an educator to improve your learners’ experience.
2. Match your brand identity to your Moodle
You may have branding guidelines to ensure your course materials match your brand identity. This could include such things as brand colours, logos, or a brand font. To change the font in Moodle follow these steps.(external link)
Or, if you’ve got an in-house technical team, they can develop their own theme(external link) within Moodle. If you don’t have a brand identity yet, you can work with external developers and designers to create and build one for you. And they’ll even implement it within Moodle for you.
3. Create a natural flow for your course structure
To keep your courses easy to follow, it’s a good idea to lay out the content in a logical way. Using a page hierarchy provides your learners with a natural flow of information. To create an accessible hierarchy, ensure that titles and labels have meaningful and descriptive names. For example, this can learners who use assistive technology(external link), such as screen readers.
4. Edit and update your interactive H5P content
H5P is a free interactive content creation platform. It allows you to embed simple interactive exercises into Moodle, such as:
- Quizzes.
- Games.
- Videos.
- Presentations.
By customising your content with H5P and other built in tools, you can increase student engagement as it suits different ways of learning. Additionally, interactive content is a great way for students to revise previous content.
H5P is user-friendly, requiring no technical skills. It allows you to create, share, and reuse interactive content. Plus, you can customise it by overlaying different types of interactions on a video. For example, images, links, or quizzes.
5. Hide solutions in Moodle results
You can structure your courses to hide solutions in Moodle results. For example, you can hide specific course content until the learner has completed previous content.
How to hide solutions in Moodle results
'Subcourse' is a Moodle plugin, allowing you to design the course into separate units. Such as another course and pull its grade/completion state into the current course. Learn more about Subcourse(external link) and how you can use it to hide solutions in Moodle.
Expert Moodle customisation support
As a Moodle Premium Certified Services Partner, Catalyst can help you customise your Moodle LMS. We can tailor your environment to increase student engagement, and work for your business goals. This includes the development of new features, theming and design, and training services. Contact our eLearning experts, to create captivating experiences and inspire your learners.
If you’d like to learn more about Moodle, check out our blog that covers the basics.