No longer see Course Administration block

No longer see Course Administration block

by Marilyn Komarnisky -
Number of replies: 3

We upgraded to 2.8.5 a few weeks ago.  Since then, if we create a new course neither teachers nor managers can see the Course Administration block.  In order to get to course administration we now have to follow this path:  My home > Site administration > Courses > Manage courses and categories > click on the category the course is in > click on the specific course name to finally arrive to the point where we can click on Enrolled users.  To say this is tedious is a gross understatement.

Is there a likely explanation why the Course Administration block is no longer visible in newly created courses.?  It still appears for courses created before the upgrade.  Even our site administrator cannot see the Course Administration block And Course Administration is not a choice available in the Add Block menu.  We have checked to see if some plugins became disabled but all looks fine there.

We are really stumped.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Marilyn Komarnisky

Re: No longer see Course Administration block

by nivedita setru -

Hi Marilyn,

It does look like your course administration block is hidden.

Can you check if its hidden -

- Go to https:<moodle_url>/admin/blocks.php

- From the blocks list, check if 'Administration' hide/show eye is checked or unchecked.

- Enable and you should be able to see administration block again site-wide





Average of ratings: -
In reply to nivedita setru

Re: No longer see Course Administration block

by Marilyn Komarnisky -

Thank you for your reply…I was beginning to lose hope that anyone would!

So I did what you recommended but I found that the eye icon was open, not shut, and thought I had hit a dead end.  

However, on further investigation I saw that the Protect Instances had the lock icon.  So I searched the Instances to see a listing of courses that contained the Administration block and sure enough the troublesome course was not listed.  So I unlocked Protect Instances, went back to the troublesome course and could then add the Administration block.

Thank you so very, very much!!

Now for my next question.  Is there a good reason to have Protect Instances locked?  My understanding is that only teachers and managers can see the course administration block.  I think whoever did our upgrade and migration to a new server may have introduced the lock and I no longer have the opportunity to communicate with him as to his reasons or if it was accidental.  If there is a good reason to keep this locked then I will do so and just temporarily unlock it whenever a new course is created so we can add the Administration block to it.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Marilyn Komarnisky

Re: No longer see Course Administration block

by nivedita setru -

No worries, Marilyn. 

Is there a good reason to have Protect Instances locked?

>> Yes, enabling protected mode on blocks will prevent users from deleting blocks. Hence, certain blocks like 'administration' and 'navigation' have protect mode enabled, as it could be quite difficult to retrieve these blocks if they are deleted.

However, I doubt if administration block was accidentally deleted on your Moodle site. And that's probably the reason, why you were unable to add administration block on any of the courses.

Could you try instructions below and see if setting 'administartion block to 'display site-wide' fixes the issue

  1. Go to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Manage blocks (or via the URL http://yourmoodlesite.org/admin/blocks.php) and unprotect the administration block by clicking the padlock icon
  2. Turn editing on in any course
  3. Go to the front page and use the 'Add a block' dropdown menu to add a administration block there, setting it to display throughout the entire site
  4. Go back to Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Manage blocks and re-protect the navigation block.


Average of ratings: -