How to add a Moodle Board activity

This refers to Moodle 4.3 from July 2024 onwards

Moodle Board is a collaborative activity that lets students post notes to share ideas and information.

The teacher creates columns (with optional titles), and students can add contributions to the columns. Students can rate posts if enabled. Posts are anonymous for students, so they don't see who has posted what. Staff can export information about contributions with student names in a file.

Set up the Moodle Board activity

Go to your Moodle page and turn editing on (top right).

Go to the section where you would like to add a Moodle Board and click ‘add an activity or resource’.

Choose Board to add a new board.

Give the board a name and add a description.

Expand all the settings.

If you wish, add a background colour (hex code) or a background image. (To add a background colour, enter the relevant hex code in the text box, e.g., #000080 for navy blue. To add an image, drag an and drop it in the box).Bear in mind accessibility when choosing images or colours. The Nottingham Accessibility Practices provide guidance on choosing colours with adequate contrast between text and background and good practice when using images.

Rating posts

Choose whether you want posts to be rated. (You can allow students, teachers or everyone to rate posts).

Hiding column headers from students and sorting

You can hide column headers from students and choose how you want the post-it notes to be sorted, if you wish, by creation date or by rating.

Limiting students’ posts by date and determining which elements students can move around

You can limit students’ postings by date and allow all users to edit and move their own posts between columns or up and down within the same column.

It is recommended that the next two options are not enabled (Enable blank target, which opens any links in a new window – not recommended for accessibility) and Embed the board into the course page (which is not a very good experience for students)

Single user mode

You can create a board for each student by choosing Single user mode.

The Single user mode options are:

Single user mode (private)

Create a board per student (only the specific student and the teacher can see and add contributions)

Single user mode (public)

Create a board per student (all students and the teacher can see contributions, but only the specific student can add contributions)

Save the board.

Note that once the board has posts, user mode cannot be changed.

If you want to, you can add more columns using the plus sign.

You can remove columns by clicking on the X and confirming that you want to delete the heading.

Click on the heading to edit the title. Headings can only be 100 characters long.

Teachers can see the student posts and can see if the posts have been rated.

Export csv provides a list of posts and ratings.

Export submissions gives more information including the names of the students and the times the posts were made.

NOTE: Board does not automatically update to show other people’s activities. You will need to refresh your screen to view new posts and ratings.