- Turn editing on in your course.
- Choose “Database” from the activity dropdown menu in the topic or course section of your choice. A preferences page will appear.
- Name: Enter what you want to see as the link from your course page to your database, e.g. “States database.”
- Introduction: The text entered here will be displayed at the top of the page that appears when users click on your database link. If your database is one to which you expect students to add content, you could type directions for the activity in this box.
- Available from:, Available to: — These are the dates the database is available for interaction, e.g. adding content in the case of a student input activity. Leave unchecked to have this as an ongoing project.
- Viewable from:, Viewable to: — These choices are for use if you wish to set up a database activity that will have a certain time limit for adding content, but a longer window of opportunity to have users be able to search and see what is in the database.
- Required entries: You can set a number (none to 50) for the number of entries users are required to submit in this activity. Each user that has not yet submitted the required number will see a reminder message each time he/she logs in to the course.
- Entries required before viewing: If you have an entry number requirement, you can also establish a number that must be entered before students can view the contents of the database. (For example: If the database activity is to be comprised of short bios of famous mathematicians, you may required each student to submit 3 entries and restrict them from seeing other students’ entries until they have submitted 2 or their three submitted entries.)
- Maximum entries: Again, the choice is no maximum to 50 max. This setting helps you prevent the “overachievers” from filling up the database. (For example, you wish your class to submit factoids about the 50 states of the United States. In a class of 25 students, you may want to limit each student to 2 entries, so as to provide opportunity for engagement for the other 24 students.)
- Comments: You can allow users to make comments about any database entry by turning this to on.
- Require approval?: You can choose “Yes” so that teachers must approve entries submitted by students before they are viewable by all. (This is a way to moderate content that has potential for being offensive or inappropriate.)
- RSS articles: The database can, if you select a number here, include RSS feed articles. (Note that RSS feed must be “allowed” by your Moodle administrator settings before this option will work.)
- Allow posts to be rated?: Grade— You can use the “Separate and Connected Ways of Knowing” scale or choose a number grade for use in scoring the entries.
- Group mode: No groups — Everyone in the course is part of one big community. Separate groups — Each group can only see their own group, others are invisible. Visible groups— Each group works in their own group, but can also see other groups. Keep in mind that your choice here is impacted by the choice for groups that you elected for the course, overall. If you chose “Force group mode” in the course settings, group settings at the activity level will be ignored.
- Visible: This setting, “show” or “hide” is the same as using the eyeball icon next to the activity link on your main course page.
- Click the [Save changes] button at the bottom of the page to save your preferences for the database activity.
