Unzip and copy the rate_course directory into the /moodle/blocks/ directory, then visit the Notifications page.

Once installed, you can add a Course ratings block from the Blocks menu.

There are no settings associated with the block. It's really quite simple—add it and it works.

Once added the block appears as follows.

Users can see the current rating and add their own rating by clicking the link labeled Give a rating.

To give a rating, a new page opens and the following simple form is shown to the user:

Users can choose a numeric rating from 1 to 5. The levels are not defined, so the responses received from users will be based purely on their implied notion of quality, perhaps influenced by varied experiences they may have had.

By default, there is no distinction between the roles of users who can give feedback. It is open to students, teachers, course creators, and administrators. When the block is installed, a permission item is created, so it is possible to remove rating permission by role. Role permissions can be changed at a site or course level. If you wanted to disallow teachers from rating their own courses, you can affect the setting at Site Administration | Users | Permissions | Define roles; click on the Teacher role; then click on Edit, then change the permission labeled Give a rating to a course to Prevent.

An identity must be linked to each rating, so users cannot give a rating while they are not logged in or if they are logged in as a guest.

Users cannot change their rating. If they attempt to give a rating a second time, they are presented with the following screen:

As users provide their ratings, the current course rating is presented each time the block is reloaded:

The stars appear fully opaque or partially transparent. Each star can be a full star or a half star. The overall average rating is therefore rounded to the nearest half star, leaving 10 possible displays. Each display of stars is represented by a PNG image. Unfortunately the PNG transparency doesn't work in IE6 as it does in other browsers, but the message is still reasonably clear.

There is no way to reset ratings for a course. Even when block is deleted the ratings are retained in the database, so if the block is re-added it will include previous ratings.

The block is an excellent way to collect a rating for a course. Once collected, a rating can be accessed from elsewhere in the course or around the site.

One suggestion for a rating display is within the course list on site root page. To achieve this you need to be confident enough to modify Moodle core code. If you are game, open the following file in your editor.

/moodle/course/lib.php

Within this file, locate the print_course() function, this function outputs a row of the course list table, relating to a single course. Towards the end of the function there are two echo statements used to output two</div> tags. Add the following lines of code immediately before those two echo statements:

echo '<div style="font-size:small;text-align:center;color:#666666;">';
$block = block_instance('rate_course'),
$block->display_rating($course->id);
echo '</div>';

This new code instantiates the rate_course block object and calls the display_rating() method for a particular course. This will output the appropriate star rating image and number of ratings for the identified course. The output of this change appears as follows:

Now students can see the ratings of each course from the list of courses. If they are free to choose a course, they may be more likely to choose a course if it has a high star rating.