Moodle Best Practice (Backing Up Your Course)
By Lynda S. LaRoche, Assistant Director of Instructional & Learning Services and Moodle Support Coordinator
By now you know the importance of periodically creating a backup copy of your computer files, especially if you’ve been through a system crash, power outage, or computer virus that wiped out your hard drive. However, have you thought about regularly backing up your Moodle gradebook and course site?
You may be thinking “The Network Team routinely creates a backup of the Moodle server, so why do I need to do it, too?” First, good practice - creating your own complete digital copy of your Moodle course at a particular instance of time is good practice. Second, comfort - knowing you have your own backup and physically holding it in your hands is comforting because you know you do not have to depend on someone else if a problem occurs. Third, recovery time - accidental deletion of material is rare, but it does happen and Moodle does not come with an easy to click “Undo” button. Pulling lost material off your personal backup is much quicker than relying on someone else to search through several server backup files that contain thousands of Moodle sites.
To create a backup of your Moodle gradebook:
- Click Grades in the Administration block of your course.
- Under the View Grades tab, click the format you want for your backup. Note: ODS format is an OpenDocument Spreadsheet (click here for more information).
- Save the backup to your hard drive, the network, a USB drive, CD, DVD, etc. and keep it in a safe and secure place.
To create a backup of your Moodle site (including the gradebook and user information):
- Click Backup in the Administration block of your course.
- The default setting is to include all materials, including all user data. Keep these settings, and then click Continue.
- The default name for the backup file includes your unique course name along with the date and time of the backup. You can keep this name or rename the file to something more meaningful to you.
- Scroll to the bottom of the page, click Continue à Continue.
- The backup file will be placed in the Files option of the Administration block of your course under the backupdata folder.
A backup of your Moodle site only contains quiz questions if at least one question from their category has been added to a quiz. Also, scales are only backed up if they are used by at least one activity. To ensure all questions in your quiz pool and/or all scales are backed up, you may want to consider creating a mock quiz and/or activity that is not visible to your students. Once you are done with your backup, you can delete these mock items.
Losing course materials is a very rare occurrence. Although you are not required to periodically create a personal backup of your Moodle gradebook and course site, it is a “Best Practice” I strongly encourage you to consider.