Books in Moodle: more than just words and pictures!

February 16, 2018

If you’re using Moodle for teaching or training, we’d love you to make the most of its collaborative features, engaging students to learn together in the spirit of its social constructionist roots. But that doesn’t mean Moodle has no place for static files, documents, videos: on the contrary, Moodle’s easy drag and drop option and media embedding features make it a great platform for delivering content to your learners.

We’d like to introduce you to an easy and accessible way to present information to your course participants: Moodle’s versatile book resource. And unlike its paper counterpart, a Moodle book is more than just words and pictures!

What is a Book and why use one?

While it is easy to drag and drop your PDF or word-processed files straight into your course page, sometimes it’s better for accessibility and mobile learners to add your content directly into Moodle. The Page resource is very handy because you can simply type your content into it and learners can open it up immediately – no need to download a file or make sure you have the right software to open it.

But what if your information covers more than one page? What if, for example, you have a whole policy document to share, or a series of pages introducing a new module? Of course you could make a very long page – or several individual pages – but really the best option is Moodles book resource. Some advantages are:

  • Several connected pages with a table of contents – a bit like a mini website
  • Displays neatly on the course page, saving space
  • Ability to include text, images, links, sound and video
  • Easy to update if the information changes (no need to delete and re-upload a file!)

We used a book in the recent Learn Moodle 3.4 Basics MOOC to introduce and explain how the course worked:

Books in Moodle

Here the pages are numbered and you can navigate between them with arrows or by clicking the links. In this next book, a departmental document, you can navigate by clicking text links. Note too how easy it is to add an explanatory video into the page!

Moodle Books

How to set up a Moodle book:

  1. As a teacher in your Moodle course, turn on the editing, click the Add and activity and resource link and select Book
  2. Give your book a name and description and scroll down to decide on your preferred options: How do you want it to be formatted? What kind of navigation will you choose?
  3. Simply click the + sign to add more pages (chapters) and the arrow sign to move up or down, and use the text editor to add your content:

Moodle Books

Here’s a short video tutorial on setting up a Moodle book:

Read your book offline

Once you’ve added all your content, your book is ready for your learners to access. But that’s not all! Did you know it is easy to grab a copy of a Moodle book – in its entirety or in part – by clicking the gear icon and selecting ‘Print’. Moodle will then offer you a PDF version of your book which you are free to print on paper. All preferences covered!

Print Moodle Books

We hope you enjoy using this Moodle feature to engage your learners. Share your thoughts with us on our social media channels:

Or to find out more and get further tips from our global community, visit moodle.org.