Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Ian Wild -
Number of replies: 9
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi,

I'm just looking at a situation where we have a Moodle that is networked to a Mahara (so that students have a single sign-on). But the Moodle is also networked to another college Moodle which we don't want the students to visit - only the teachers.

Does anyone have any idea how I can make the Teacher's Moodle only available to teachers? The clients don't want students to be able to roam to the college Moodle.

Is this configuration actually possible? I don't care how it's done - as long as it's not in code big grin.

Thanks in advance,

Ian.
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In reply to Ian Wild

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Nigel McNie -
I'm not a moodle person, but two observations:

  1. I don't think you can do it by the roles system - you can choose whether people can roam to a remote system by role, but not by remote Moodle too.
  2. There is an "SSO access control" tab in Moodle from 1.9 onwards for each remote site (check the "Peers" screen under networking). Maybe this will let you do what you want? I haven't looked at it myself though..
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In reply to Nigel McNie

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Ian Wild -
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Hi Nigel,

Thanks for your post. The SSO access control page allows you to grant or deny access to your Moodle from a remote Moodle on a per user basis.

Regarding roles: I'm not sure you can do it by the roles system, either mixed. Please see subsequent posts below for more info. I've still got a little bit of experimenting to do tomorrow as a result of Howard's post. I'll report back with the findings.

Cheers,

Ian.
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In reply to Ian Wild

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Peter Bulmer -
Ian,
The network servers block doesn't change the target of the link depending on what role/capabilities you have, either the link is there, or not. So if worry that what your settings were at the time you copied the link might affect what happens when you click the link, don't.

Your comment about permissions makes me worry you're mis-interpreting how roles & permissions work in this case.
You can give the student, teacher or course-creator roles permission to jump, but since mnet checks for permission to jump in the system context, unless someone has one of those roles assigned at the system level it will have no affect. Assigning any of these three roles to a user at the system level has interesting consequences. I don't recommend it.

Copying the link into a Teacher's only course doesn't provide security, only obsecurity. This might be ok with you, but you shouldn't be under the illusion that this will stop students from being able to mnet to your collge moodle. Anyone who is able to copy the link from somewhere, or has the nous to form it themselves will be able to mnet to your college Moodle.

Where Nigel suggests using the SSO access control list, I suspect that he means you could do this on your college Moodle.
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In reply to Peter Bulmer

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Nigel McNie -
Heh, I didn't know what it was for, but after that description yes doing it on the college moodle might be a way to do it smile
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In reply to Nigel McNie

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Ian Wild -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Nigel and Peter,

Again, just to be awkward big grin, you're both right - stopping students navigating to the college Moodle on the college Moodle would work, except I don't know who the students are. The client connecting to me does... but I don't, if you see what I mean. Nor is he likely to tell me sad, because they are his students. Any restrictions in roaming away from the client site will have to be done on the client site.

Peter: Ahhh, understand what your saying about permissions - thanks for that. I didn't realise that the "Roam to remote Moodle" permission has to be Allowed site-wide. I did try setting it in different contexts and you're right: the results were interesting smile. That encourages me to try again this morning. Understood also about special teacher course. We were going to set an enrolment key for this to prevent students from getting in. Our clients will be happy with this.

I'll try and do some further testing this morning (see posts below), and report back.

Thanks both for your help,

Ian.
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In reply to Ian Wild

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Peter Bulmer -
"We were going to set an enrolment key for this to prevent students from getting in. "

Lucky for you 'YoungPeterBulmer' isn't one of your students.  I _know_ he'd see
"<wwwroot>/auth/mnet/jump.php?hostid=3" on the mainpage, and as soon as he got a sniff that teachers were going to a teacher-only area, he'd be trying:
<wwwroot>/auth/mnet/jump.php?hostid=1,
<wwwroot>/auth/mnet/jump.php?hostid=2,
<wwwroot>/auth/mnet/jump.php?hostid=4,
<wwwroot>/auth/mnet/jump.php?hostid=5, ...
I'm guessing it wouldn't take him long to find the one of interest.


"Our clients will be happy with this."
That's the main thing I guess.
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In reply to Ian Wild

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Is this from the front page of your site?

You probably also have the problem that the front page won't know who are teachers and who are not without assigning front page roles.

What I would do is to have a Teacher's course... the only thing in it is a link to the remote site.

Just to point out that you can copy the link from the Networking block and paste it into an HTML block if that helps the formatting a bit.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Ian Wild -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi Howard,

Thanks for your post. It is indeed the front page of the site that I'm having the problem in. I did try having a Teacher's only course and did copy the link from the Network Servers block into an HTML block smile...but it didn't work sad. I got a permissions error when I was logged in as a teacher on the course. Worked when I was admin, though - which kind of suggests my capabilities weren't set correctly thoughtful.

Actually, I might try it again tomorrow... I've just realised that I tried copying and pasting the link *before* I changed the "Roam to remote Moodle" setting to Allow for Authenticated users (before then I just had it set to Allow for course creators, teachers, and students). I'm not sure if this will make a difference?

Thanks again,

Ian.

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In reply to Ian Wild

Re: Hiding Networked Moodles From Students

by Ian Wild -
Picture of Plugin developers
Hi again,

Right... got it working now. Did exactly as suggested and described: separate course for teachers with HTML block containing link to college. Replaced the Network Servers block on front page with an HTML block for ePortfolio for teachers and students.

However, next snag was that in the HTML block on the front page I couldn't change the moodle/block:view permission for guests (so you can't see it if you're not logged in). This is actually a bug in 1.9.2 (see http://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-15941) fixed last week, so that problem was solved by replacing
  • lib/accesslib.php
and
  • blocks/moodleblock.class.php
Now everything is working just as we need it big grin .

Thanks all for your help,

Ian.
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