All entries for Wednesday 14 March 2018

Latest News block on Moodle

The Moodle 'Announcements' forum is a good way to send out updates to your students, as not only do all enrolled students receive an email notification but the post is also retained in the forum for future reference.

In this post, we'll explore how you can use the 'Latest News' block in Moodle to add a feed of the 5 most recent announcements to the sidebar of your module page.

This is particularly useful if you want to increase the visibility of your module announcements. We all know that email tends to be rather ephemeral, and it's unlikely that even the most diligent of students will click into the announcements forum every time they visit your module page.

Therefore, adding a feed of announcements as a side block is a good way to ensure that important updates will always be seen by students when they log in - A handy feature if you regularly have important news, events, or deadlines to remind students about!

For a quick reminder of what the Announcements forum actually is, and how it differs from a discussion forum activity, take a quick look at my other recent post on Announcements vs Discussion Forums.

Adding the Latest News block

Firstly, you will need to 'Turn editing on' for the page via the cog in the far top-right of the module page. This will allow you to add content.

Next, at the bottom of the left-hand navigation menu, choose 'Add a block', as highlighted in red below. If you can't see the left-hand navigation menu, you may need to toggle it on by clicking the menu icon in the top-left of Moodle (also highlighted below).

You will then be presented with a list of possible blocks to add to your page. In this list, select 'Latest news (News forum)', as highlighted below.

You will now see the 'Latest News' block appearing in the right-hand column of your module page, with the announcements already populated, as shown below. It's as easy as that!

How the Latest News block works

Every time that you add another item in the announcements forum, this will appear in the side block, with the most recent appearing first. This will display up to 5 of the most recent entries.

Each entry title acts as a hyperlink that takes students straight to the post in question. In addition, you will notice that just above the title, the author and date/time posted is also displayed.

As a teacher on the course, you will also see the 'Add a new topic...' link at the top, which is a quick way to add a new post to the announcements forum.

To give students an easy way to view older posts, there is also an 'Older topics...' link at the bottom, which allows anyone to view the entire list of announcements, as shown below.

Any questions?

I hope you have found it useful to learn how to add the 'Latest News' block to your page, and perhaps this is something you may consider providing if you regularly make use of the announcements forum.

If you have any queries or would like further support on your module page, please feel free to contact me.

James Roscoe : 14 Mar 2018 12:12 |  Tags: Latest News Moodle |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem