Your profile determines what information other users can see about you in a Moodle course. It's also where you choose how you want to receive emails from Moodle, edit default forum preferences and edit text.

When you're first enrolled in a Moodle course, the system creates a personal profile for you. You can:

  • Add an image of yourself, or an avatar, or any other image, which will display next to your contributions - for example, to your posts on discussion forums
  • Add information about yourself and your interests
  • Specify whether Moodle should display your email address to others and, if so, to whom
  • Select the method Moodle should use to let you know what’s happening in your courses (configure your notification settings).
  • Configure your privacy settings

Edit your profile

Instructions for changing the default settings and information in your profile

It is unwise to add personal details such as your street or postal address, phone number or instant messaging account details to any part of your Moodle profile. If you would like to share your social network handles put them in the Description box of your profile. Formal communications will still go to your UNSW email account (zMail).

On the My home page or the course home page, click on your name to open the dropdown menu, then profile (1), followed by edit profile (2) on the following page.

On the Site pages page, your basic details will display, along with default selections of a number of different settings:

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Email display (1): Select whether to hide your email address, display it to everyone or display it to only fellow course students or hide the email address from non-privileged users (privileged users are teachers, managers, ect.). Note: You cannot change the zMail address within Moodle; however, using the UNSW Identity Manager you can redirect all email sent to that address to an email address that you check regularly. See these instructions for assistance.

    • Leave "When editing text" as Use HTML editor.
    • default setting: "Hide my email address from non-privileged users"

Country and Timezone settings (2): If you are living and studying in another country than Australia, select it from the Select a country drop-down list. If you are studying a Distance Course and are living in a different timezone from Sydney, Australia, select that timezone from the Timezone drop-down.

If studying in Australia, do not make changes to Country or Timezone, or your assignment deadlines will be different from those set by your instructors.

Description (3): To continue editing your profile, enter a description of yourself. Ensure that this is appropriate for display to instructors and to other students in your Moodle courses.

User Picture (4):To change your user picture, select User picture and use the file picker to upload a file. Note: the picture must be in either JPG or PNG, which Moodle resizes to 100x100 size.

Interests (5): List your interests (academic, leisure or both), separating each tag from the next with a comma.

Optional (6): Complete any relevant fields, remembering that these details will display on your profile page for instructors and other students to view.

Update profile (7): Click on Update Profile to save your changes. The updated View profile page displays. Check that the image, and all the information, displays as you want it to.

Forum subscription

Learn how to manage forum subscriptions, tracking and automatically mark posts as read options.

Announcements Forum

By default, each Moodle course contains a forum called Announcements (note, instructors can rename the forum).  This is where your instructor can post the latest course news and announcements. As a student, you cannot unsubscribe from this forum.

Other forums - subscribe and unsubscribe

Instructors can also create additional forums for the course. An example could be to create a forum to discuss a particular topic within the course.
If your instructor has set up the forum with optional subscription, you can choose whether you get email notifications from the forum. By default, you will not be subscribed to these forums.

To subscribe/unsubscribe:

  1. Navigate to your course home page.
  2. Click the forum (1) that you would like to subscribe to.
  3. Select Subscribe/Unsubscribe to this forum (2).

Limit notifications from forums

You cannot unsubscribe from forums (such as the News Forum) to which you have been forcibly subscribed by a course instructor. However, you can limit the notifications you receive from those forums. Instead of receiving emails, a pop-up alert will notify you when you log in to Moodle. You can choose to limit forum notifications from all moodle courses, or only specific courses (that you are not forcibly subscribed to).

Limiting Notifications in General:

  1. Click your profile drop down menu and select preferences.
  2. Forum Preferences (2) allows you to change forum notifications, read and auto mark post as read options.

The Automatically mark posts as read field allows you to determine whether posts in the standard forum activity are automatically read once you visit the page (generally easier), or whether you must click to mark a specific post as being read (giving you more control).

  1. Messaging (3) allows you to change when email and pop-up notifications are sent to you. Scroll down to the Forums subsection to change forum notification settings.

Limiting Notifications for Specific Forums:

  1. In your course, locate the Activities block (1) on the left hand side of your course, and click the Forums or Advanced Forums link. If you do not see the Activities block, your instructor has not added it to your course and you will not be able to limit forum notifications for specific course forums.
  2. A list of forums in your course will be displayed. Use the dropdown menu Email digest (2) type to choose individual forum notification settings.

Privacy Settings

Edit your privacy settings

By default, the pieces of information listed on the Privacy Settings page are only visible to you, your teachers and support staff. (Any staff or student user who can view your profile can also see your profile image.) To make a piece of information visible to students and staff enrolled in your Moodle course, select its check box and click Submit.

To edit your privacy settings:

  1. On your Moodle home page, select the profile drop-down menu followed by Privacy Settings.
  2. On the Privacy Settings page, select the check box for each piece of information you want to be visible to students in the courses you teach. (Note: If no text displays beside the check boxes, try logging in to Moodle using a different browser.)
  3. Click Submit to save your changes.
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