Published on: 02/11/2023 · Last updated on: 02/09/2024
Moodle preparation ready for a new cohort
Before the arrival of new students into your Moodle space, it is recommended to reset your Moodle space’s setting and activities. Resetting allows you to empty the space of previous user data, while retaining the activities and their settings. This allows you to reuse the activity, minimising the number of new activities you need to create.
Activities, other than the Feedback activity, cannot be reset specifically or individually (e.g. if you have 2 forums the reset will reset both forums). Therefore, it is recommended to reset the activities before your new cohort engages with the Moodle space.
Please be warned resetting will delete your chosen user data from this space permanently! Always double check the data is in the Moodle archive, or that you have created a back-up before resetting an activity.
Benefits of resetting Moodle activities
Before a new cohort of students begin engaging with your Moodle space it is best to reset your activities. The benefits of resetting activities:
- It removes previous students’ user data, such as grades, quiz attempts and posts in forums. Even though some data may not be visible, it may still be present in the background. Resetting the activity ensures this data is removed.
- It allows you to reuse activities. This can save you time as you won’t have to re-create an activity from scratch and ensures previously chosen activity settings remain the same.
Please note, the only activity that should not be reused is Assignments. Reusing assignments can interfere with Bath’s anonymous submission policy and can cause inaccurate display on the assignment tab. Assignment activities should be deleted and a new one created from scratch.
How to reset your Moodle space
Before resetting your Moodle space ensure the data you are removing is saved in the Moodle archive or you have created a back-up. Resetting data will delete it permanently from Moodle and the action cannot be reversed and the data cannot be retrieved.
- On your Moodle space select More and from the drop down menu choose Course reuse.
- Expand the Import option and from the list choose Reset.
- Expand the list of options and activities and carefully select the data you want to delete and remove.
- Once you have selected the data you want to delete, click on Reset course.
- A list of the selected activities and tasks Moodle will perform will be presented. Double check the list and to confirm you want to continue with the deletion click on Continue.
- Your selected activities have now been reset. Your incoming cohort of students will be able to reuse the activities without the previous cohorts data being present.
Reset options
This determines the start of the first week for a course in weekly format. It is also the start date for logs of course activities. Resetting and changing this date will change all dates in the course. Dates will be moved in relation to the new start date. For example if your previous start date was 01 September 2022 and you had a quiz that was enabled to open 01 September 2022, resetting the start date to 01 September 2023 will also reset the start date of your quiz to 2023.
Resetting roles allows you to unenrol all manually and self-enrolled participants with that role (e.g. students) in your Moodle space.
There are two options when resetting the gradebook:
- Delete all items and categories
Selecting “Delete all items and categories” will remove all categories and grade items in your gradebook. - Delete all grades
Selecting delete all grade will remove all manually added grades, except hidden and locked grades. Grades automatically given (e.g. automarked grades in a Quiz) will remain.
You can choose to reset groups by deleting all groups, removing all group members from groups, deleting groupings, and/or removing all groups from groupings.
Depending on the activities used within your Moodle space, you will be provided with different options to remove the user data associated with these learning objects.
