Top Active Courses Block for Moodle

Overview

The Top Active Courses block is a Moodle plugin that displays a visually appealing list of the most active courses on your Moodle site. It is designed to help users discover popular courses they are not yet enrolled in, but where self-enrolment is possible. The block uses a modern card-based layout with course images, titles, and direct links to the course pages.

Features

• Shows the most active courses from the last 7 days, based on user interactions (log entries).
• Excludes courses in which the current user is already enrolled.
• Only displays courses where self-enrolment is enabled and available.
• Modern, responsive card layout with course images, titles, and links.
• Customizable appearance via the included styles.css.
• No personal data is stored by the block.

How It Works

The block queries the Moodle logstore to find courses with the highest number of unique user interactions in the last 7 days.
For each course, it checks if the current user is not enrolled and if self-enrolment is enabled.
The block then displays up to X (Default: 10) of these courses as cards, each showing the course image, title, and a link to the course page.

Installation

There are two ways to install the Top Active Courses block:

1. Via Moodle plugins Directory (recommended):
   • Download and install the plugin directly from the Moodle admin interface under
     Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins.
   • Upload the ZIP file or install from the Moodle plugins repository.
   • Follow the on-screen instructions to complete installation.
2. Manual Installation:
   • Copy the topactivecourses folder into your Moodle site's blocks directory.
   • Visit Site administration > Notifications to complete the installation.
   • Add the block to your dashboard or course pages as desired.

Configuration

The block provides two admin settings available under
Site administration > Plugins > Blocks > Top Active Courses:

• Top X courses: Number of courses to display (default: 10).
• Time range (days): Number of days to look back for user activity (default: 7).

These settings allow site admins to customize how many and how recent the displayed courses are.

Capabilities

• block/topactivecourses:addinstance — Allows a user to add the block to a course page (default: editingteacher, manager).
• block/topactivecourses:myaddinstance — Allows a user to add the block to their dashboard (default: all users).

Course Images

• The block attempts to display the course summary image.
• If no image is set for a course, a default placeholder image from Picsum is shown.

How popularity is calculated

The block calculates course popularity by counting unique user interactions (log entries) in the Moodle logstore within the configured time range. Only courses with self-enrolment enabled and in which the user is not already enrolled are considered.

Privacy

This block does not store any personal data. See classes/privacy/provider.php for details.

Author

Sadik Mert

License

This plugin is licensed under the GNU General Public License v3.0. See the LICENSE file for details.