The MBZ file format is used by Moodle, an open-source learning management system. An MBZ file is essentially a ZIP-compressed archive that contains a backup of a Moodle course. This includes the course structure, settings, activities, resources, and other essential data.

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Creating Moodle backup file in Moodle

Step 1

Go to your course in Moodle and navigate to More >  Course Reuse and select Backup

Step 2

On the backup settings page, select the items that you would like to backup. For this article, we are focusing on the MBZ file format so you can exclude IMSCC from the list of items to backup.

Click Next to review the Schema settings.

Note: You can click on Jump to final step to skip Step 3 and Step 4.

Step 3

On the Schema settings page, select the items you would like omit/ include and click Next again.

Step 4

Confirm the backup settings and rename your file here .

 Click on Perform Backup.

Step 5

Once the backup is complete, go to the Course backup / Restore page to download the mbz file.

 

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Import course into OpenLearning

Step 1

• If you are a portal administrator, please go to Institution Settings > Courses > Add New Course

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• If you are course creator, go to the Create A New Course page.

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Step 2

Enter the Course name, Course URL. and click on the link Import course from a file .

Select the MBZ file from your device to be uploaded.

Step 3

The upload will work in the background and the Add course button will be greyed out at this stage. 
NOTE: Do not leave the page as that will interrupt the upload.

Step 4

Once the upload is complete, click on Add Course / Create a Course.

• Institution settings > Courses > Add New Course

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•  Create a new course page

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Step 5

Once this is completed, you will see the link to access your course. 

 

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How it works

When creating a course using a MBZ file, OpenLearning will:

1. First create an empty course, and then
2. Run a task to scan through the uploaded file to find any compatible web content and navigation info that can be imported into the new course.

Depending on the size of the import, this task may take a little while to run, so your course may not reflect these changes immediately. The course content will automatically update once the import has completed. If the newly created course does not have the imported data, return to the course after a few minutes.

 

This is likely to not be a perfect import, as OpenLearning differs in its functionality to Moodle- but it may save you time by automating much of the initial setup for any supported content and navigational information that it finds in the backup file.

Currently the mbz importer will do the following:

• course modules and module sets

• course outcomes

• course pages from the following moodle activities

  • “page”

  • “forum”

  • “label”

  • “url” (adds resourcelink widget)

  • “book”

  • “feedback” (adds a survey widget)

  • “quiz” (only adds a page, quiz widgets not yet supported)

  • “resource”

  • “folder”

  • “assign” (adds sharetext and sharefile widgets)

  • “turnitintooltwo” (adds a sharefile widget, but does not enable turnit-in)

  • “module_summary”

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