Moodle Plugins directory: Learning Tools | Moodle.org

Learning Tools
For a better learning and teaching experience.
Learning Tools is a Moodle plugin that offers a suite of micro-tools to enhance the learning and teaching experience. These tools are conveniently accessed via an intuitive floating action button (FAB) located at the bottom right of every course page.
Each tool is designed to address specific, common needs — such as taking contextual notes, scheduling time to study, or resuming a course from where you left off (Pro feature). The goal is to support learners and educators with small but effective functionalities that complement existing Moodle features.
Use cases
- Onboarding new learners
- Supporting self-paced learning
- Streamlining communication
- Personalizing the learning journey
Learning Tools provides great features that are completely free. For more functionality, we offer a Pro plan.
Learning Tools for learners
These tools are intended to support students, employees, and lifelong learners as they navigate courses and training materials. They provide quick access to functions that help manage tasks, revisit resources, and maintain focus — all from within the course environment.
Note: All learner tools are also accessible to teachers, though primarily designed for student use.
Course interface
A central overview for all notes created with Learning Tools. Accessible via the secondary course navigation, this interface allows learners to view, organize, search, print, and manage their notes by section or activity.
Course information
Displays the course summary and image in the floating menu for quick orientation.
Schedule learning
Allows users to create calendar entries — either in the Moodle calendar or external calendars — to plan when they want to work on specific activities or the course in general.
Focus mode
Temporarily hides blocks, headers, and navigation to minimize distractions and allow focused reading. Focus mode can be styled via CSS in the admin settings.
Notes
Create quick notes on any page, activity, or course. Notes are saved per user and context, and can be reviewed or exported at any time. The note modal can be expanded, allowing you to write side-by-side with the course content. All notes are centrally listed under My profile > Notes, including references to the corresponding course, activity, or Content Designer chapter (if applicable).
Bookmarks
Save bookmarks for courses, activities, or individual pages. All bookmarks are centrally listed under My profile > Bookmarks, with links to the corresponding course, activity, or Content Designer chapter (if applicable).
Resume course PRO
Automatically return to the exact location last visited in a course — whether it's a forum post, lesson page, or resource — helping users pick up where they left off.
Learning Tools for teachers
These tools support course creators, trainers, and educators by simplifying common tasks — such as onboarding learners, guiding progression, or managing communication. Instead of configuring multiple Moodle settings, teachers gain quick access to specific actions directly from the course view.
Teachers can also use learner-focused tools, such as creating notes or enabling focus mode, in their own workflow.
Invitation PRO
Quickly enrol users by entering email addresses. If users already exist, they are enrolled immediately. If not, and automatic account creation is allowed, accounts are created and enrolled automatically. A summary shows the result of each invitation.
Force activity PRO
Redirect learners to a required activity before they can continue with the course. Teachers can define a custom message explaining why the step is necessary.
Email PRO
Send messages to enrolled users in a course. Messages can include attachments and be filtered by role. All sent emails are logged for reference.
Custom course styles PRO
Add course-specific CSS directly in the settings to adjust layout, appearance, or visibility — without needing to modify the global theme.
Appearance
Admins can tailor the floating menu to fit the platform’s design and functional needs. They can define which tools are visible, adjust their order, keep key tools permanently accessible, and apply custom colors to match the brand.
Visibility control
Admins can decide which tools are enabled or hidden and arrange their order in the floating menu.
Visibility can be scoped to specific course categories, course pages only, or platform-wide. Tools can also be disabled for certain activity types — for example, hiding the menu during quizzes.
Sticky tools
Admins can mark key tools as sticky, making them permanently visible as standalone icons. This gives users instant access without opening the main menu. Once at least one tool is sticky, the menu button changes to an expandable icon, allowing access to additional tools while keeping the interface clean and focused.
Custom colors
Admins can define background and icon colors for each tool and for the main floating button. This enables color theming, visual grouping, or emphasizing specific tools based on their function.
Sorry to bug you. I would like to send my screenshots. I'll try GitHub...
Another question... Will it be possible to use this nice tool with the Moodle App?
Kind regards
Kenneth
I saw that a tiny rest is open for German language and wanted to contribute by following the link: You can see the available translations here:
https://moodle.org/plugins/local_learningtools/translations
When I try to contribute to German, I run into a set of errors:
Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Url parameters values can not be arrays!
Debug info:
Error code: codingerror
Coding error detected, it must be fixed by a programmer: Url parameters values can not be arrays!
I am not sure, if it is right to address you with that?
Many greetings, Tanja
Thank you for developing the Learning Tools plugin. I am sure its functionality will be very useful to our proposed students.
I wanted to check whether there is any chance of it being updated to be functional on the Moodle app? We will promote it to learners mainly for its note-taking capability and it would be much appreciated if that particular function (at least) could be available on the app too.
Looking forward to receiving your feedback.
With thanks and kind regards,
Elizmarié
glad you like our Learning Tools! Currently, Learning Tools is not compatible with the mobile app (as you already found out). Adding support for note taking (and bookmarking) in the app would indeed make sense. I'll check with my team if our floating action button interface is something that can be implemented in the app, and how much effort it would be.
All the best
Stefan
We’ve discussed this internally. It’s not as easy as it seems, but it is indeed possible. In order to implement it, we would need some funding for it though. If you’re able/interested, please reach out privately and we can discuss it.
Best
Stefan
Great tool! A quick question. We want to use the note feature but not the others. They are. not useful in our environment. Is there a way to hide the other features via CSS or via a setting of the plugin ? Thank you in advance
Best,
Catherine.
Do you have plans to support moodle 4.5? Due to the update of Fontawesome, it unfortunately no longer displays the icons.
This plugin is quite impressive!
I have a quick question— I couldn't find an option to display when the exam will start. Is it possible to make this information accessible only within the quiz, rather than displaying it everywhere?