Managing cohorts

Managing cohorts

by Adam Cripps -
Number of replies: 7
Is there any support in a current version of moodle to allow us to manage students by cohort?

We've designed a course, which we want to put the first cohort through, but were wondering about best design of the course to allow a second cohort coming through it. We're trying to avoid creating a whole new course for each cohort and copying the content across.

advTHANKSance.
adam
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Adam Cripps

Re: Managing cohorts

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Support for "groups" is coming later this year which should be able to support both sequential and simultaneous groupings. In the meantime, yes, you might have to use multiple courses.
In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Managing cohorts

by Adam Cripps -
Thanks Martin.

Is there a *clever* way of copying, within the database, the items within a course to another course?

Gosh, that was really hard to word.
In reply to Adam Cripps

Cloning a course (was Managing cohorts)

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Not yet - but backup/restore is a big priority, and would also provide this "cloning" functionality. See Bug #84 - Course archiving, backup, restore and reset for details.

A function to directly clone a course won't be as hard as the backups, though ... it's a matter of whizzing though the records making copies and changing the course id appropriately. If someone wants to write this as a new admin function "Copy Course" then please do!
In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Cloning a course (was Managing cohorts)

by Martyn Overy -

Martin,

I normally use ftp for uploading and upgrading. I can save most files, and the database, but I cannot 'backup'  parts of  'Moodledata'  ....since I keep getting a 550  'access denied' response. Is there a way of getting around this, using ftp?

In reply to Martyn Overy

Re: Cloning a course (was Managing cohorts)

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
Probably the wrong forum for this, but try the attached script to fix file permissions. Save the script in your main Moodle directory, then run it from a browser.
In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Cloning a course (was Managing cohorts)

by Adam Cripps -
I know a little php and mySQL (not other db's at present) and could knock something up.

I've got a pressing deadline to meet at the moment, but might get some time to look at it in the latter half of next week.

Apart from the Developer's documentation, where do I need to look? Is there a db design doc in there?
Thanks
adam
In reply to Adam Cripps

Re: Cloning a course (was Managing cohorts)

by Martin Dougiamas -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers
DB design doc? Yep, it's just here, in this folder with my always up-to-date UML specification, perfect API documentation and PhD thesis ... (wakes from dream) damn! wink smile

No, sorry, (too much evolution, too little time), but I find phpmyadmin gives a pretty good overview of the database. You'll find that all fields containing course ids are consistently named "course", so it shouldn't be too hard to spot the things that need grabbing. I'll be happy to help if you get stuck on particulars.