Managing the Course Planner

The Course Planner helps students explore pathways through their course. For it to work, each course needs to be configured with the appropriate Name, Prototype(s), Required courses, and Recommended courses.

This is separate from the "General prerequisites" field that is displayed under "Course information" on each course page, which may include more detail.

Explanation of Prototypes

A "Prototype" is a collection of courses that all fulfil the same requirement.

The most common use is to group together courses that are repeated each year. For example, the prototype "A1: Differential Equations 1" is satisfied whether the student has completed "A1: Differential Equations 1 (2026-27)", "A1: Differential Equations 1 (2025-26)", or any other year.

In more complex cases, courses from one year may be split into two in another year, or vice-versa. For example "Old Course (2025-26)" may be split into "New Course A (2026-27)" and "New Course B (2026-27)". In this case, the prototype "New Course A" would be satisfied by either "New Course A (2026-27)" or "Old Course (2025-26)", while the prototype "New Course B" would be satisfied by either "New Course B (2026-27)" or "Old Course (2025-26)".

Note: Moodle doesn't actually enforce these requirements - they are only used to help students plan ahead.

Creating a New Prototype

To create a new prototype:

Go to Site administration > Courses > Course planner > Prototypes
At the bottom of the page, click "Add new prototype"
Enter the prototype name
(Optional) Select the course(s) that satisfy the prototype
(Optional) Select the course(s) that require this prototype (i.e. any of the courses selected above) to be completed
(Optional) Select the course(s) that recommend this prototype (i.e. any of the courses selected above) be completed
Click "Save changes"

Configuring Course Details

Make sure the course prototype has been created first (see above)
Go to the course page (either from the course list, or by clicking the "Course details" icon on the planner)
Go to More > Planner settings

To exclude the course from the planner:

Tick "Exclude from planner"
Click "Save changes"

Otherwise:

Enter the course name without the year, e.g. "A1: Differential Equations 1"
Select the prototype(s) this course satisfies (this may have been done already when creating the prototypes)
Select the prototype(s) that this course requires to be completed (if any)
Select the prototype(s) that this course recommends be completed (if any)
Click "Save changes"

Tip: If any of the courses in the Course planner display the year, this is a sign that they have not been configured correctly.

Configuring Tabs (Degree Courses / Programmes)

Go to Site administration > Courses > Course planner > Tabs & columns
Click the existing tab name, or "Add new tab"
Enter the tab name
Select whether the tab should be visible to students or hidden
Select the root category for each column - typically the "Part A", "Part B" and "Part C" (or "Michaelmas", "Hilary" and "Trinity") categories for the course
Click "Save changes"

Note: These will need to be updated at the start of each year, once the new courses are published - otherwise the planner will display out-of-date information.