Moodle Administrators – How to disable new activities without disabling plugin

Moodle is the world’s most popular Open Source Learning Management System. It can be used to the learning requirements of all sectors from education institutions, corporate etc. It can be customized to adapt to all requirements for specific needs.

Recently, one of the Moodle administrator wanted to continue using the existing instance of an Activity plugin. However he want to remove any future additions of activity in the Moodle courses. Tim Hunt – the lead for Moodle’s Quiz module, came back with a simple & effective solution.

According toe the solution Tim shared, the future addition of any activity in the course can be disabled simple by removing the mod/add new instance capability from all roles. That will make sure that the teachers are not able to add new activity in their courses while keep the previous instances in place.

Let’s check the solution in details in below steps:

1. Navigate to Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define Roles
2. Click the Cog wheel icon next to the teacher role.
3. On bottom of the page, you will see a search box, filter the plugin capability. Like in the below example, I am disabling the Mod/Simple lessons capability from teacher role.
4. Click Save Changes.

You need to repeat the same for all Roles to override the default permissions. What are the other helpful tips you have received on Moodle Forums. Please share with us in the comments section below.