MoodleQuick Guide

Course backup, restore and reset for teachers

You may wish to make abackup of your course:

  • to make sure you have a copy of your course that you can go back to if something later goes wrong
  • if you want to take a look at a previous version of your course
  • to use later as the basis for a new Moodle course.

You’llneed to save a backup of your course at the end of the teaching period:

  • so that you have a copy of the student data for your records.

Automatic backups

Courses that have been changed or accessedduring the week are automatically backed-up by Learning Technologies teamevery Sunday night.

Courses which are not yet available to students, or that have had no activityduring the week are not included in this weekly backup.

Teachers, however, maychoose to backup an individual course at any time.

End of teaching period backups

At the end of eachteachingperiodit’sthe teacher’sresponsibility to download and keep a copy of:

  1. the Moodle course backup - including student data
  2. the course Gradebook
  3. allCourse Assessment Guide Checks
  4. and Authority to Publish choices activities (if used).

All of these canbesaved on a USB stick or other storage device and kept withebs recordsforthat setofstudents, or kept with other section records.

Learning Technologies team also downloads all course backups at the end of each semester and storesthem locally.

Editing teacherscando backupsandcourseresets. Teachers should keep their User Private Backups tidy, by downloading and removing all excess backup files.

How to manually back up a Moodle course including user data

  1. Go to yourunit.
  2. GototheAdministration block. (If you can’t see it, it may be visible as a tab on the side of the screen).
  1. OpenCourse Administrationvia the cog icon drop down menu, select Backup

  1. In Backup settingsthe first screen will be Initial settings.Leaveeverythingchecked as default thenscroll down and click Next.
  2. On thenext two screens,Schema settings and Confirmation and review,do not make any changes. Scroll to the bottom of each of these pages and click Next.
  3. On the Perform backup page scroll to the bottom of the page and click Perform backup. You will be able to view the progress of your backup.
  1. When the backup is complete click Continue.
  2. The backup file can be found by going to Course administration and clicking Restore.
  3. Click on Download to save the backup to your computer.
  1. Once you have downloaded your backup, make sure that you remove old backup files that you don’t need anymore.

How to remove old backup files

  1. Go to Course Administration, click Restore then select Manage backup files.
  1. Click on the file you no longer need
  2. In the pop-up box click Deletethenin the next box clickOK.

  1. Click Save changes.

Find out more

Moodle Course Backup:

How to export a copy of your Moodle Gradebook

  1. Navigatetoyourunit.
  2. Gototheleft navigation menu
  3. Select Grades.
  1. Click on the Export tab in the Grader report.

  1. Click on the Excel spread sheettab. Choose the items you want included. Decide if you want to include feedback and how you would like the grades displayed.


  1. Click Download to save the file to your computer.

How to export copies of Course Assessment Guide Checksand Authority to Publish choice activities

  1. Navigatetoyourunit.
  2. Click on the required choice activity.


  1. Click on the View Responseslink in the top right corner.
  1. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click on select all then click Download in Excel format.


  1. Repeat this process until you have downloaded all Course Assessment Guide Checksand Authority to publish choice activities in your course.

Resetting a Moodle course

NOTE: Do not reset your Moodle course until all students in all groups are finished and you have created a backup. Resetting a Moodle course deletes all student data for all groups and students using the Moodle course.

  1. Go to the course you want to reset.

Resetting a given activity or course is irreversible, so ensure that you have taken a backup of your course - including the user data. This is a snapshot in time of your course and can be restored if necessary.

  1. Go to the Administrationmenu via the cog icon at top right of screen.
  2. Click Reset.
  1. Select what you want to delete. Normally you would delete at least all‘Student’ roles and all grades.
  2. The General section has options for removing user data such as;
  3. Events – if you use the calendar block to advertise events and activities
  4. Notes – sent to learners via the completion tracking overview or via activity reports or participation logs.
  5. Comments – user comments may include comments from students when submitting an assignment or feedback comments left by teachers for assignments
  6. Completion data – if completion tracking is turned on for your course, this will clear all checkbox entries for activities and labels
  7. Blog associations
  8. Competency ratings – competencies not currently enabled for WSI Online
  1. Roles – select Student role and possibly Non-editing teacher if the teacher has changed for the new term/semester. DO NOT SELECT Teacher as this will remove YOU from the course.
  2. Gradebook – select Delete all grades to remove the manually added grades you have given to students for assignment activities. Your assignment activities will remain.
  3. Groups - if using groups for your cohorts then you want to
  4. Remove all group members, this will allow you to keep the groups you have created to use for your new students.
  5. If you want to create new group names then you can select Delete all groups also.
  6. Choices – Remove all responses, removes the student responses to choice activities such as Course Assessment guide.
  1. Forum – Delete all posts to remove all user created posts (student and teacher).
  1. Assignments – Delete all submissions – this will remove all user generated assignment submissions.
  2. Click the Reset coursebutton at the bottom of the page.
  3. Return to your course to check it and make any desired changes.

Find out more

Moodle Course Reset:

TAFE NSWQuick Guide - Course backup and reset Moodle

Modified: 21/11/2018Page 1 of 11

Restoring a course backup

Courses (sites) that have been changed or accessed are backedup each week on Sunday night.

Sites that are not yet available to students, or have had no activity are not included in the weekly backup.

If you need to restore a backup or part of a backup:

  1. Go to your unit.
  2. GototheAdministrationmenu via the cog icon at top right of screen.
  3. Select Restore.
  1. Click on Choose a file…


  1. From the File picker select Server AutoBackup Files and change the display to a detailed list using the icons in the top right corner of the file picker.


OR

  1. Select Upload a file and click Browse and find a backup file you created and downloaded.

WARNING:If using your own backup file the file will only contain data that was backed up on the date the file was created by you.

  1. Find the backup you want to restore. (Scroll across to see the Date modified column if necessary).
  2. Select the file and click on Select this file.The file will be displayed in the Import box.
  1. Click on Restore. You can only restore the file to an existing course owned by you. You must be sure that you wish to do this.

Contact if you need assistance.

  1. Follow the steps to restore the backup. You may wish to restore just one topic or one activity. You can do this by de-selecting all of the other topics and activities. The restored activity will appear in the same location as in the original site.

Find out more

Moodle Course Restore:

TAFE NSWQuick Guide - Course backup and reset Moodle

Modified: 21/11/2018Page 1 of 11