Moodle Plugins directory: Kickstart | Moodle.org
Kickstart
Speed up course creation and keep your courses consistent with easy-to-use templates.
Kickstart simplifies course creation with templates that provide structure for teachers from the start. Templates are managed centrally to ensure consistency across your site. To avoid empty courses, Kickstart can display a fallback page for students or guidance for teachers until a template is selected. The Pro version adds a Course Library to browse existing courses and import full courses or individual activities into the current course.
Use cases
- Scaling your site while maintaining consistency across courses
- Implementing a distinct look & feel for multi-tenant sites
- Automating course configuration to minimize quality assurance efforts
- Guidance for teachers and students in new courses
Kickstart provides great features that are completely free. For more functionality, we offer a Pro plan.
Kickstart course creation workflow
Kickstart simplifies the way new courses are created by reducing complexity and enabling instructors to focus on what matters most: teaching. Once inside the workflow, a tertiary navigation bar provides quick access to key pages that support course setup:
- The Course library (PRO) to import content and reuse materials
- The Help page with step-by-step guidance for each stage
- A built-in Student view to preview exactly what learners will see – while the course is still a work in progress
Template library
Browse, preview, and select templates in a user-friendly, responsive interface. Users can toggle between grid or list view.
Help page
The Help page provides clear, step-by-step guidance through every stage of Kickstart’s course creation process.
Automatic template application PRO
Assigning a default template lets instructors skip selection and start working on course content immediately.
Course creator PRO
The Course Creator offers a simplified workflow for setting up new courses. Instructors only need to enter a title and select a category. Technical settings like format, visibility, and dates are preconfigured through default values or templates. After submission, users are guided directly to the next step in the Kickstart workflow.
Course library PRO
The Course Library lets teachers browse existing courses, filter results, and reuse content. Full courses or individual activities can be imported and placed into specific sections. Please note: Reuse of existing content (up to version 1.4) is replaced by the Course Library in version 1.5.
Real-time search
A dynamic search bar provides instant results without page reloads, offering a faster and smoother user experience.
Filter by custom course fields
Admins can add up to three custom course fields as filters, helping users refine search results based on relevant criteria.
Smart sorting options
Courses can be sorted by relevance, name, or recent activity. Admins can adjust relevance settings by weighting factors like name, tags, favorites, or custom fields to improve result accuracy.
Rich course preview
Courses are shown with key details defined by the admin. Users can expand a course to view its structure, preview activities, and take further action directly.
Direct import
Courses in the search results can be imported directly into the current course – no need to open them first. Users can also select individual activities from multiple courses and place them in specific sections, allowing flexible, custom course setups within a single workflow.
Template management
Establish a cohesive and branded learning environment with standardized course templates.
Create standardized templates
Use course templates to standardize structure and design across your site. With Kickstart (basic), up to four templates can be created; Kickstart Pro supports unlimited templates. Templates are created by backing up a Moodle course (.mbz) and uploading it to the template library.
Guided usage with descriptions and tags
Each template can include descriptions and tags to help teachers choose the most suitable option. This supports correct and consistent use across courses.
Preview URL per template
Preview links let instructors view the structure and design of a template before applying it. This helps them choose the best fit for their course.
Create template from existing course PRO
Courses can be turned into reusable templates in just a few clicks. Key details like title, description, tags, and images are included automatically. A backup is created and linked to a preview, so the template is ready to use or share. The system warns if a template already exists for the same course. Templates are private by default but can be shared based on access settings.
Template access restriction PRO
Access to templates can be restricted by role, cohort, category, or individual user. This allows flexible workflows, where non-admins can create templates, and access is managed by higher roles.
Empty course handling
To prevent confusion in empty or incomplete courses, Kickstart shows fallback pages with helpful guidance for teachers and students. Instructors can preview the student view at any time to see what learners will experience before the course is ready.
Site-wide instructions
Admins can define default instructions for incomplete courses, ensuring a consistent experience across the site. Instructions can also be customized per course to provide context-specific guidance.
Fallback for students
To avoid blank pages, Kickstart shows a fallback view with a friendly message when no content is available. Instructors can preview this via the Student view before the course is ready. The fallback is only active while the Kickstart format is in use.
Teacher call-to-action
Teachers can be greeted with a clear call-to-action, encouraging them to complete the setup of the course. Optional links to guides or tutorials can be added to support them during the process.
Auto display of teacher contacts PRO
To facilitate communication and support, the feature automatically displays the contact details of the assigned teacher(s) for the course.
Screenshots
I like the kick start format and bought the pro version for our Moodle platform. It is a pitty that nothing was translated to German, although you are a german speaking guy and you sell the pro version as german company. As the local_kickstart_pro-Plugin cannot be translated using AMOS, I will give you the translation for this below. The translation of 6 Strings would not have been very hard for you. I translated the free part of your plugin using AMOS too, because without this we could not expect our users to work well with that function.
I have to say, that it is a shame for a Crippleware-Plugin with Pro-Option, that no translations are shipped - at least the most important languages (I would consider German to be one of those) should be included. I was rather upset to have to translate it myself.
By the way, my first attempt to contact your company was in the Helpforum of your Plugin's Website (https://kickstart.bdecent.de/mod/forum/view.php). It seems the Forum there is a newsforum - users have no permissions to post anything. This is not very helpful for a Helpforum.
Regards
Robert
PS: here the 6 strings. Would not have been hard to ship them with the Pro-Plugin!
$string['kickstart_pro:import_other_courses'] = 'Aus einem anderen Kurs importieren';
$string['moreresults'] = 'Es gibt noch mehr Suchergebnisse. Bitte grenzen Sie die Suche ein!';
$string['pluginname'] = 'Kickstart Pro';
$string['showing'] = 'Zeige {$a->count} Kurs(e))';
$string['staffonthiscourse'] = 'Mitarbeiter/innen dieser Kursvorlage';
$string['welcometo'] = 'Willkommen bei';
thank you for your feedback. Glad you like our plugin.
Here are may comments/answers:
= Translations =
We do focus on the international market; we happen to be based in Germany, but only a fraction of our customers are Germans, therefor we think/thought that focussing on improving the plugin itself and implementing new features is the better choice. Sure, we could have added German translations, you're right. It just never came to our mind to be perfectly honest with you, because we never advertised that it is available in any language.
Our policy is to add all required strings (also for pro) to the free version, in order to make use of AMOS. I've already tasked my developer to add the few you've found there – there are a lot more which already can be translated, we just missed those. (well except for the pluginname, that is mandatory, i.e. we won't be able to translate it, which should not be a problem though)
Thank you for contributing the strings back to us – and of course thank you also for contributing the translations to AMOS. We'll introduce a program soon to thank language contributors (I have a coupon in my mind), and I'm more than happy to provide one for you as well. I'll send it to you once we've figured out the details)
= Help Forum =
I forgot to change the role on the frontpage, that's now fixed. Thanks for reporting that, too.
= Pro Plugins =
It is not (yet) common that plugins are not totally free, and given the open source nature and the community efforts, I do understand that it's something not everybody likes. We believe that our "freemium" approach is an appropriate model. Contribute a free version to the community for free (and maintain it), and have more advanced features only available for paying customers. We do try to find the right balance that the free version is valuable – and the feedback so far has always been very positive. The core of kickstart is to provide a super simple way to implement templates in moodle. And that's free for up to 4 templates (we've increased it in 1.1, it used to be 3).
Best
Stefan
Can you explain in more detail how you’d like it to work? I assume you want relative/dynamic dates for activities, right? Haven’t thought about doing that within kickstart, but happy to explore it if you see a need for that!
In the meantime, maybe have a look at the upcoming release of learning tools, specifically the “time management”. Essentially, what it does is implement dynamic start and due dates for activities, which then show up on the timeline block and in our designer format.
You can test it on our demo site labs.bdecent.de - create a course, add a few activities, then click on the magic wand and pick the time management tool. There, click in manage dates in the top right. You might want to switch to the designer course format to see the integration we built for it.
Any questions, let me know, ideally on chat.bdecent.de.
Hope this helps
Stefan
Best regards - Brasil
Positive points:
I can create guidelines for course creators and save them.
Points to think about:
1- The role that should access Kickstart should be the "course creator" for better organization.
2- The course opened as Kickstart should keep this name and when changing/choosing the new course format, it could automatically open another course/location with the jpa template saved with the guidelines.
3- Using the "calendar" and a communication plugin like "talk to your teacher" for production support would be great.
4- Applying a validation flow would also be useful.
5- It can be adapted for Educational Design work.
I will continue testing, thank you.
- On the course homepage, when a course format (present on the site: topics or tiles, for example) is selected, the format is applied correctly, but the default course settings are not (e.g., 3 sections by default : /admin/settings.php?section=coursesettings). Is there a reason for this?
- To resolve this (among other things), we created course templates (with customized mbz), but these don't apply; we get a 'Restore failed with status: 600' error.
- If the course format was renamed (language packs) after installing plugin, the custom name is not used in the plugin ( in the list of templates or course homepage).