Controlling Visibility in Moodle

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  1. Hidden Content
  2. Know if it’s Visible to Students
  3. Make Your Course Visible to Students
  4. Change the Visibility of Activity or Resource
  5. Quickly Toggle Visibility

Hidden Content

If you’re working on an item that’s a Work-in-Progress you don’t have to have it where students can see it and potentially get confused or worried about the content. You can hide content so you can work on it or explore your options quietly! You can also restrict access to activities (and sections) to prevent students from accessing activities and/or resources until set parameters are met.

NOTE: Hidden activities will affect student grades unless they are set to 0 (zero) points or “No grade” or change your gradebook settings. Otherwise this can upset your view of accurate student grades!

Know if it’s Visible to Students

What teachers see and what students see can vary drastically but Moodle does its best to communicate this feature that you’ll see in a number of places:

Courses

Courses

Section

Sections/Topics

  • Default visible to students
  • Will appear greyed out and/or transparent sometimes with a tag of “Hidden from students” below the Topic/Section title and Summary.
  • Visibility can be determined from:
    • Breadcrumbs within activities/resources
    • Main page of course
    • Edit week page
  • Can be changed:
    • From the Edit menu for a week/topic on the course main page (with editing turned on)

Activities & Resources

Activities and Resources

  • Default visible to students
  • Will appear greyed out (text) and/or transparent (images) sometimes with a tag of Hidden from students below the name of the activity/resource.
  • Visibility can be determined from:
    • Breadcrumbs within activities/resources
    • Main page of course
    • Edit Settings page under Common Module Settings
  • Can be changed:
    • By Toggling the visibility of the activity/resource from Edit Settings
    • From the Edit menu for an activity/resource on the course main page (with editing turned on)
  • Available Options:
    • Show on course page: Visible to all
    • Hide from Students: Students cannot see or access this item or it’s associated files
    • Make Available but not shown on course page: (Sometimes referred to as “Stealth Mode”) Not listed on the course page but students can still access item and associated files if directly linked to them or accessed from the Gradebook.
      This option is limited to Activities and Resources.
Make Available but not Shown on Course page plays well with Auto-linking.

If you’d like to increase the control you have over visual aspects of your course you can use Label resources with Activities or Resources that are Available but not shown on course page. This can also be used to reference Activities or Resources elsewhere in your course while within another to say, reference your Syllabus, or point students to the the materials they need to do or have on hand in the moment.

NOTE: Whenever linking to another part of a course within Moodle check your links after every backup and restore! Sometimes links point to PAST courses that your students won’t have access to— mind those breadcrumbs! Some activity types handle this transition better than others, such as Label, Page, and Book resources.

Grades

Grade Items and Totals

  • Default visible to students – this means you and students MAY see different total grades in a class!
  • Will appear greyed out
  • Visibility can be determined from:
    • Navigation breadcrumbs within activities/resources
    • within Gradebook Setup
  • Can be changed:
    • By Toggling Show and Hide within the Edit menu within Gradebook setup. (When hiding a Gradebook Category you will want the edit menu at the bottom where the total is calculated)
    • By changing the visibility of the activity (see above)

Make Your Course Visible to Students

Courses will open and close automatically at the start and end of each term.

If you’d like to change those default settings see this article on changing the availability/visibility of a Moodle course for a walk-through.

Change the Visibility of Activity or Resource

Enter the activity or resource.

Open the Actions menu (gear icon) and select the Edit Settings item.

Scroll down to Common Module Settings and expand the section.

Set your desired availability:

Show on course page (Visible to all)

Who can see it?

  • Teachers can see it.
  • Students can see it.

Hide from students

Who can see it?

  • Teachers can see it (appears greyed out or transparent).
  • Students cannot see it, even if directly linked to the content.

Available but not shown on course page (Stealth Mode)

Who can see it?

  • Teachers can see it (appears greyed out or transparent).
  • Students cannot see it but can access the content if directly linked to it in another visible item.

Scroll to the bottom of the page.

Click the Save and return to course button to see your changes.

Quickly Toggle Visibility

Navigate to the course you want to change the visibility of a resource or activity in.

Click the Turn Editing on button in the top-right corner of the page

Turn Editing On button is found in the top-right corner of a Moodle page you have permission to modify content for.

Locate the item you want to change the visibility of.

Click the Edit menu for it.

Click the Show or Hide link to toggle the visibility
(If it’s visible you can click Hide, if it’s already hidden you can click Show)

OPTIONAL: Once an item has been marked as Hidden you can re-open the Edit menu and you see options to not only…

  • Show it to students (make it visisble again)
    or
  • Allow it to enter “stealth mode” by choosing Make Available
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