Hi there,
I'm having a problem with the Latest News Block in our Moodle. We have the Latest News Block enabled as a sticky block across the whole site.
However, in a few of our courses it does not appear for teachers in those courses. As the Moodle administrator I can see the Latest News Block, but they cannot. This is causing somewhat of an issue for them.
This particular teacher is a teacher in about 6 different courses, some of which the Latest News Block appears in, and some it does not. I can't see what differences (if any) exist between these courses and I can't explain whay he can see it in some but not in others.
I have added other teachers to these problem courses and they also do not see the Latest News Block, so it appears that the course itself is somehow restricting the view, and it is not related to a specific user. Both courses do have a News Forum included.
If you could suggest where I might look to try and resolve this issue, I would really appreciate it. The fact that it is missing in some courses is causing considerable friction.
I should also point out that there is no option in the Blocks Menu to add the Latest News Block. It simply does not show up in the list of available blocks for teachers in these problem courses. Of course, I see it as an Admin.
I also just checked the permissions on the actual News Forum itself... There are no special locally assigned roles, and there are no override permissions in place. I also went through one of the courses where the teacher CAN see the Latest News Block, and compared every setting to the course where the same teacher cannot see the Latest News Block. I cannot see any differences between the two courses in the way they have been set up and optioned.
I am at a complete loss as to why this is happening, but it's driving me crazy. Am I correct in assuming taht the News Forum and the Latest News Block are both tied together as one thing? Are there some other settings I should be checking?
I also just checked the permissions on the actual News Forum itself... There are no special locally assigned roles, and there are no override permissions in place. I also went through one of the courses where the teacher CAN see the Latest News Block, and compared every setting to the course where the same teacher cannot see the Latest News Block. I cannot see any differences between the two courses in the way they have been set up and optioned.
I am at a complete loss as to why this is happening, but it's driving me crazy. Am I correct in assuming taht the News Forum and the Latest News Block are both tied together as one thing? Are there some other settings I should be checking?
And in the forums where the latest news block does not appear - is there some news? (I mean; in settings are the news items set to a number larger than zero?)
Thanks Mary, the News Items to Show is set to 5, so that is, unfortunately, not the answer it seems.
Some things to check (or confirm here).
In the courses where the LN block appears is that the sticky block or the local block? Looks for icons along the block header.
Is there a difference in the status of the news forums across the courses i.e. some have news posted others do not?
I've never set this block as a sticky block but owing to its association with the News Forum I could see this being problematic. I wonder if come of the courses had the LN block enabled before you set it as sticky and they are working OK and the others were created post-stickiness (sorry, I'm losing my grip of the English language here) and they aren't working as the block is not local to the course. The limitation of 1 instance per course might be feeding into this too. So if the risk of extra friction isn't too great, perhaps try removing the stick block and see how that impacts on things...
In the courses where the LN block appears is that the sticky block or the local block? Looks for icons along the block header.
Is there a difference in the status of the news forums across the courses i.e. some have news posted others do not?
I've never set this block as a sticky block but owing to its association with the News Forum I could see this being problematic. I wonder if come of the courses had the LN block enabled before you set it as sticky and they are working OK and the others were created post-stickiness (sorry, I'm losing my grip of the English language here) and they aren't working as the block is not local to the course. The limitation of 1 instance per course might be feeding into this too. So if the risk of extra friction isn't too great, perhaps try removing the stick block and see how that impacts on things...
Tanks to Mary and Ray for your suggestions, and to Tomaz and Martin for looking into it for me. However, the eventual solution was hit upon by Julian Ridden, the Moodleman himself.
It turned out to be a simple fix, but it wasn't so obvious as to why it wasn't working (at least not to me)
Thanks Moodleman! I owe you (another) beer.