Moodle™ face to face plugin: how to set up and manage in-person training

If your Moodle™ site has to handle classroom sessions, practical labs or in-service days as well as online courses, the Moodle face to face plugin lets learners book a seat from the course page and gives you one place to manage sign-ups, wait-lists, reminders and attendance. Here is what it does, how to set it up, how to use it for blended learning, and where it falls short.

What the Moodle face to face plugin is and when to use it

The Face-to-Face activity (mod_facetoface) is a free, open-source add-on from the Moodle plugins directory (now Moodle Marketplace). It is not part of Moodle core. It keeps track of in-person training that requires advance booking.

The plugin is maintained by Catalyst IT. It began at Catalyst, was developed for a period by Totara, and has been back with Catalyst since 2014. It still receives releases, but the maintainers have said on the plugin page that fixes depend largely on contributed patches or funding.

It is a good fit when you need to:

• offer the same workshop on several dates or at several locations and let learners pick one;
• cap the number of seats and hold a wait-list;
• involve a learner’s manager in the booking;
• record who actually turned up, for example for compliance training with a mandatory practical component.

What the plugin does

How to set up and use the Face-to-face plugin

1. Install the right branch

Install from the plugins directory through Site administration > Plugins > Install plugins, or unpack the code into mod/facetoface and visit the admin notifications page to run the database install. The maintainers keep separate code branches for Moodle 4.0–4.2 and for Moodle 4.3 and later, so match the download to your version.

2. Set the site-wide defaults

In the plugin’s settings, an administrator sets the sender address for messages, enables manager approvals, and chooses whether learners are asked for their manager’s email address. This is also where you edit the default message templates, turn on iCalendar attachments, choose which course roles (such as trainers) are tracked against each session, and define custom session fields.

3. Add the activity to a course

Switch on edit mode and add a Face-to-face activity. The settings that matter most are:

• Signup type: one session per learner, or several.
• Approval required: whether a manager must approve each booking.
• Third-party email address(es): for example an external instructor who should hear about each sign-up.
• Calendar display settings: site, course or none.
• Messages: the text of each notice, and how many days ahead the reminder is sent.

4. Create sessions

Open the activity and choose “Add a new session”. Enter the capacity, the location details, the start and finish time (use “Add a new date” for multi-day sessions), and any cost. Set “Session date/time known” to No if you want an expression-of-interest list.

5. Let learners sign up

Learners see the upcoming sessions on the course page, open the one that suits them and choose Sign-up. If you have asked for it, they enter or confirm their manager’s email address. They get a confirmation message, can see the other attendees if you allow it, and can cancel if plans change. Every session page has its own URL, so you can also link to it from a slide deck or an email.

6. Manage attendees and take attendance

The Attendees page for each session shows who is booked, who is waiting and who has cancelled. Trainers can add or remove people, including moving someone from the wait-list into a seat that has opened up. Afterwards, use “Take attendance” to record the outcome for each person.

Using it for blended learning in Moodle

The plugin is most useful when the classroom session is one step in a larger online course. A typical pattern for Moodle face to face training looks like this:

1. Online pre-work: a lesson, a reading or a short quiz completed before the day.
2. The Face-to-face activity, with several sessions to choose from.
3. Follow-up online: a forum for questions, an assignment and a final assessment or certificate.

Two core features tie it together. Set the activity’s completion to require attendance (full, or at least partial), and it is ticked off when the trainer takes attendance. Then use restrict access so the follow-up only opens to people who attended, and add the activity to the course completion criteria. You can report on the result using the reporting options available in Moodle.

Limitations and alternatives

Check compatibility first. At the time of writing, the plugin’s declared supported range stops at Moodle 4.5, a long-term support release, and Moodle 5.x is not listed. Compare the plugin page against the Moodle release schedule before you upgrade, and test on a staging site.

The plugin also has no room or equipment management, no built-in virtual classroom integration and no payment handling, and its documentation on MoodleDocs is old. The maintained alternatives:

• Booking: an activity plugin for event, seminar and course registrations with capacity limits, automated wait-lists, notifications and pricing. It lists support for Moodle 5.x and has a free and a paid tier.
• Attendance: if you only need a register, not bookings, this widely used plugin records present, absent, late and excused for each class and also lists support for Moodle 5.x.
• Moodle Workplace: includes its own Appointments activity for organizing and tracking in-person training. Workplace is only available through Moodle Certified Partners and Service Providers.
• Totara Seminar: Totara renamed its version of Face-to-face to Seminar and added rooms, assets, facilitators, virtual rooms, manager reservations and two-step approval. If instructor-led training is a large part of your program, Totara handles it without a plugin.

For other add-ons, see our list of the best Moodle plugins.

Frequently asked questions

Is the Face-to-face plugin part of Moodle core?

No. Face-to-face (mod_facetoface) is a third-party activity plugin maintained by Catalyst IT and distributed free through the Moodle plugins directory. A site administrator has to install it, and it should be checked against your Moodle version at every upgrade, because its supported versions can lag behind the newest release.

Is there a Moodle seminar plugin?

Seminar is the name Totara uses for its version of Face-to-face, and it is built into Totara rather than offered as a Moodle plugin. On Moodle, the closest equivalents are the Face-to-face plugin and the Booking plugin, both of which handle session dates, limited seats, wait-lists and notifications for in-person seminars.

Can attending a face-to-face session complete a Moodle course?

Yes, indirectly. Set the Face-to-face activity’s completion condition to require attendance, then take attendance after the session so the activity is marked complete for those who attended. Add that activity to the course completion criteria and the course completes once every required item is done.

We run Moodle and Totara for organizations that mix online and classroom training. If you want help choosing between Face-to-face, Booking and Totara Seminar, or want your plugins tested and kept current on managed Moodle hosting, book a call with Lambda Learning.