Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By : Alex Büchner
Book Image

Moodle 4 Administration - Fourth Edition

By: Alex Büchner

Overview of this book

This updated fourth edition of the classic Moodle Administration guide has been written from the ground up and covers all the new Moodle features in great breadth and depth. The topics have also been augmented with professional diagrams, illustrations, and checklists. The book starts by covering basic tasks such as how to set up and configure Moodle and perform day-to-day administration activities. You’ll then progress to more advanced topics that show you how to customize and extend Moodle, manage authentication and enrolments, and work with roles and capabilities. Next, you'll learn how to configure pedagogical and technical Moodle plugins and ensure your LMS complies with data protection regulations. Then, you will learn how to tighten Moodle’s security, improve its performance, and configure backup and restore procedures. Finally, you'll gain insights on how to compile custom reports, configure learning analytics, enable mobile learning, integrate Moodle via web services, and support different types of multi-tenancy. By the end of this book, you’ll be able to set up an efficient, fully fledged, and secure Moodle system.
Table of Contents (24 chapters)

Understanding contexts

A role (remember, a collection of capabilities with corresponding permissions) can be assigned within different contexts. So, what are contexts?

Important note

Contexts are the areas in Moodle where roles can be assigned to users.

A user has a role in any given context.

A context can be a course, a category, an activity, a user, a block, or Moodle itself. Moodle comes with seven contexts, each with a given scope:

  • System: Moodle itself – that is, the entire system, also known as the core or global context
  • Course category: A category and its sub-categories
  • Course: A single course
  • Activity module: A course activity or resource
  • Block: A sidebar block
  • User: A user account
  • Site (Front page): The home page and files that can be accessed outside courses (often referred to as the front page context)

Important note

Each context has a scope. A scope is a ring-fenced area or boundary in which specific actions can...