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Teaching Resources

Ready to Roll! New Semester Tasks

Some important housekeeping tasks will ensure that your course is ready for the new semester.

Make your copy of our customizable New Semester Course Checklist each time you are teaching a course again in Moodle.

With the upcoming move to Canvas in mind, pairing this article with the one titled, “Prepping Your Course For Our Move to Canvas” and the NC State Moodle to Canvas Equivalencies document can help you get ready for this semester as well as the future.

In this article

Create / update your official syllabus

Starting in Fall 2026, you must have your official online syllabus (which has fewer items than the one you may have been using in the past) uploaded to the public syllabus portal. See the MyPack Portal User Guide section on Online Course Syllabi.

Create/update your “Course Information and Guidelines” document.

Use the Course Information and Guidelines Template created by DELTA as a supplement to your official syllabus. The following items are most likely to change from semester to semester

  • Instructor and TA info, office hours etc.
  • Course Information (structure, meeting time, tool used)
  • Course schedule and dates (be sure to consider the academic calendar)
  • Course-specific policies or language, including your AI usage policy. See Developing Course AI Guidelines for more.
  • Course materials listed in excess of those in the official syllabus (e.g. materials not requiring purchase, optional materials)
  • List of course technologies that you are using
  • Class recording statement selection

WolfWare

WolfWare is where you manage your course information and the technologies you are using in it, including Moodle.

Moodle

  • Check Moodle course accessibility with Brickfield Enable. Our step-by-step Brickfield User Guide will help you when you are ready to start viewing and fixing errors and will make this process as easy as possible. 
  • Check & update dates that appear in course section / unit / module titles
  • Update resource/activity availability / opening / closing dates in bulk using the Dates report
  • Check for broken links throughout
  • Re-link external tools as needed and check date settings.  Tools may include Panopto, PlayPosit, Perusall, Yellowdig, Wooclap, Gradescope, WebWork, Google File Embed Activities, and Google Assignments.
  • Consider Canvas:

Moodle Announcements

  • (Optional) Write an introductory announcement to send in the first week, perhaps scheduling it to send once classes begin.
  • (Optional) Pre-populate later announcements with text from previous terms.*

*You can set up forums to send automatically at a given time. Some instructors copy and paste announcements from the previous term and set them to send, but recommend adjusting them as needed before they send to account for anything new that has arisen in the course of the semester.

Course documents and introductory information

  • Ensure up-to-date, working links to course resources in Moodle (syllabus, course info doc, etc)*
  • Update course and instructor information (TA name, and office hours, etc.) where they are displayed in Moodle, like in the “Meet the instructor block”
  • (Optional) Create (or update) and correctly link any start of term student survey you are using
  • (Optional) Record a screencast Moodle tour (if using)
  • (Optional) Add an introductory post to an “Introduce Yourself” forum (if using)

*If you use a go-link for course resources like the syllabus, etc., then you only have to update where the go-link points each semester (rather than find all the links in your Moodle space and change them!)

Instructional Materials

Tip: You may want to do this module-by-module. If you release modules one at a time, you can just keep ahead of yourself.

  • Course Ready users: add a Course Ready-VitalSource link to your Moodle course
  • Label supplemental / optional material as such in Moodle
  • Ensure desired access restrictions (if using) in Moodle. Individually update dates used to restrict access to items (Settings > Restrictions) if desired
  • Manually add items that have restricted access to the Moodle calendar. Must be done manually; otherwise they do not show up there.
  • Ensure desired completion conditions (if using) in Moodle for instructional materials, or set default conditions if desired.
  • Move any unused materials in Moodle to a hidden Instructor Sandbox area, or remove them entirely
  • Move any video resources >500 mb in size in Panopto (or another dedicated video repository)
  • Ensure that all instructional materials meet federal accessibility standards (deadline: April 2027). Use the Busy Instructor’s Guide to Course Accessibility for guidance.
  • Consider Canvas:
    • Moodle resources have a “description field” that can be displayed on the main Moodle page. In Canvas, you will not be able to include a description. This content will need to live on a separate page.
    • Do you deliver content in Text and media areas? These cannot house content in Canvas; only Pages house content in Canvas.
    • We do not recommend creating new NC State books. These will import as separate pages in Canvas.
    • For a more thorough treatment of moving to Canvas see our [Checklist] Prepping Your Moodle Course for Canvas and the NC State Moodle to Canvas Equivalencies document

Learning activities and assessments

  • Update any dates that appear in the titles of items in Moodle
  • Ensure alignment between graded items, gradebook calculations and gradebook components and your syllabus.
  • Repopulate Q&A forum prompts*
  • Ensure student access to Moodle forum rubrics, perhaps providing them in the Course Information and Guidance document (they won’t see them in the activity). 
  • Submit your proctoring request to the Testing Center (if using)
  • Check for / fix broken links 
  • Ensure that all instructional materials meet federal accessibility standards (deadline: April 2027). Use the Busy Instructor’s Guide to Course Accessibility for guidance.
  • Consider Canvas:
    • Begin cleaning out your question bank now, unless you are planning to recreate all your questions in Canvas. Remove any un-used, out-dated or inaccessible questions. Find a list of question types that will and will not be available in Canvas on tab 2 of the NC State Moodle to Canvas Equivalencies document.
    • Moodle Quiz has a description field; Canvas Quiz does not have a place for a description. Any descriptive information about a quiz will have to be delivered in a Page in Canvas.
    • Moodle Assignments have space for both a description and instructions. Canvas Assignments have space for just one of these. If you import a Moodle Assignment, the description in Moodle imports but the instructions do not.
    • We do not recommend creating new H5P’s in your course.
    • For a more thorough treatment of moving to Canvas see our [Checklist] Prepping Your Moodle Course for Canvas and the NC State Moodle to Canvas Equivalencies document

Final Moodle Checks

For your convenience, a handy checklist with all items discussed in this article is available at go.ncsu.edu/new-semester-checklist with indicators to help you track your progress.

Workshop Information

If there are no available workshops, please feel free to request an instructional consultation about this topic.

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