Moodle Mentor: February 2026

Moodle Mentor says:

Short answer: no — not for free, and not with the standard Moodle App.

The free Moodle App shows your Moodle site content, so learners will see your course images, activities, and embedded media much as they do in a web browser. A few site details, like your site name, also carry through once they connect. Learners download the free Moodle App directly from the app store, and input your Moodle site URL to log in. 

This free version of the app works well for many, but If you want your organisation’s name and logo in the app stores, along with control over publishing and updates, you’ll need a Branded Moodle App (BMA). This is done by working with Moodle and our Certified Partners. We’ll guide you through the setup, publishing, and ongoing updates. 

Beyond branding, a BMA unlocks additional benefits that aren’t available with the standard app. These include deeper mobile analytics to help you understand learner engagement, as well as access to exclusive mobile features such as biometric login, QR code login, and enhanced privacy controls. Together, these features make it easier for learners to find your app, access their learning securely, and stay engaged on mobile.

Back in my days as a Learning Designer with Moodle’s Services team, I helped a lot of clients set up a BMA for their organisation. It’s easy to do and makes a big difference when learners are trying to find and download your app in the app store, and when organisations need more data to inform decisions.

I say go for it — take the plunge and explore what the Branded Moodle App can do for your organisation. We’re here to listen when you’re ready!

Moodle Mentor says:

The Database activity is a SUPER powerful tool (and, yes, with great power comes great responsibility… and some complexity).

I’ve seen people use Database for everything from assignment submissions and showcasing learner work, to collecting data for group projects and creating shared resource libraries.

For sure, the easiest way to get started with the Database activity is to use a preset.

Presets give you a ready-made structure with fields and layouts already set up, so you don’t have to start from a blank slate. You can import a preset, see how it works, and then make small changes to suit your use case. Starting this way takes the pressure off and helps this powerful activity click much faster.

For more inspiration, check out 5 Awesome Ways to Use the Database Activity, a presentation from MoodleMoot Global 2022 by my amazing colleague Sarah, one of our brilliant Solutions Architects.

We’d love to see what you come up with, so always feel free to write in with your beautiful Database (or other Moodle platform) creations!

Moodle Mentor says:

Hey Edrick — you’ve got some great goals here, and we’d certainly love to help you make all your Moodle dreams come true.

For professional training programs, a strong Moodle setup usually starts with clarity: what does success look like for learners, instructors, and the organisation? From there, it’s much easier to design courses, completion tracking, reporting, and assessments that will support those goals.

A good approach is to start small and intentional. Build one or two well-designed courses, establish clear role permissions, and test reporting and completion workflows before scaling. This helps avoid rework later and creates a repeatable model for future courses.

For organisations like yours focused on professional and workplace learning, Moodle Workplace can be a particularly good fit. It’s designed to support structured programs, reporting, and learning at scale, without losing flexibility.

If you’re new to Moodle solutions, getting expert setup support early can make a big difference — especially around roles, reporting, and course design patterns for professional learning. If you’d like help thinking this through, get in touch with us and we’ll work with you on goals and next steps.

Moodle Mentor says:

This is a very common challenge. SCORM (Sharable Content Object Reference Model) is a standard for packaging online learning content so it can be uploaded into an LMS and tracked consistently. It’s powerful, but it can become difficult to maintain — especially when the people who originally built the packages are no longer around.

You can certainly use SCORM without issue in any Moodle platform, but if you’re looking for other options, Moodle solutions offer several alternatives that provide similar structure and interactivity, while being much easier to update and manage over time:

• H5P Interactive content (my personal favorite SCORM replacement) —  A flexible way to create rich, interactive learning content directly inside Moodle. H5P offers a wide range of activity types, including interactive video, quizzes, presentations, and branching scenarios, which you can easily string together into meaningful learning experiences. Because the content is directly accessible in your Moodle course, it’s simple to update, reuse, and report on — without needing to republish external packages.
• Core Moodle activities —  Activities like Lesson, Book, and Quiz allow you to structure learning content, guide learners through sequences, and assess understanding using tools that are fully integrated with your Moodle course’s tracking and gradebook. These activities are easier for new team members to update and maintain, since they don’t rely on external authoring tools.
• External authoring tools that publish to Moodle platforms — If you want to really speed things up, tools like Nolej can make content creation much easier. Nolej is a Moodle Certified Integration Partner, which means their solution has been vetted by Moodle and designed to work seamlessly with Moodle platforms. It uses generative AI to help you quickly create interactive H5P content — or SCORM, if you need it — and publish it directly into your Moodle site, making content creation faster and ongoing updates easier to manage.

Many organisations find that shifting more content into Moodle-native tools leads to faster updates, clearer reporting, and less dependency on specific individuals or specialised software. Write back and let us know what you tried and how it went!

Moodle Mentor says:

This behaviour is expected, even though it can feel confusing at first.

Many grade-related settings in Site administration define defaults, not enforced rules. They set the initial state of options, but course-level users with the appropriate permissions can still change them when exporting grades.

One helpful way to confirm that your Site admin settings are working as expected is to look at a brand-new course created from scratch. In a new course, those site-level defaults should appear correctly. If they don’t, that’s a sign something may be off at the site settings level. If they do, it usually means the settings were changed within an individual course.

It’s also worth double-checking the setting itself in Site administration > Grades > General settings. For “Include feedback in export,” the checkbox should be unchecked when the default is set to “No”. (For some reason a “No” checkbox always feels a little less unintuitive than a “Yes” check!)

The export format shown at the top of the grade export page reflects the last-used option rather than the site default, and the “Include feedback in export” checkbox can be toggled at the point of export regardless of the site default setting.

This flexibility exists because different courses often have different reporting needs. If consistency is important for your organisation, the best place to focus is role permissions around grade exports, combined with clear guidance for instructors about expected workflows. In many cases, training and documentation are more effective than trying to lock everything down.

And, of course, if you could use some help diving deeper into this, we can connect you with our Moodle experts, who LOVE a good site settings puzzle.

Moodle Mentor says:

Awwwww, Maarten! You truly made our day. Our week. Our month. Absolutely loving these good vibes.

We’re so glad this format is useful, especially for people navigating complex Moodle setups and real organisational decisions. Your questions and feedback shape this column, and we’re grateful you take the time to share them. All are welcome here, so tell all your Moodle friends! And make sure you’re all subscribed to Edit Mode, our monthly product-focused newsletter.

We love seeing your creativity, curiosity, and commitment to making Moodle solutions work for you. Keep sending your Moodle mysteries, “how do I…” moments, and teaching triumphs — they make this column possible.