Moodle Networking – some ideas for bulk enrolments on networked courses

Moodle Networking – some ideas for bulk enrolments on networked courses

by David Sturrock -
Number of replies: 3
A number of us involved in networking projects meet up at the recent MoodleMootNZ and tossed around some ideas for further improvement of mnet. While there are still a few quirks, the basic networking functionality is now at the point where it just works. But the manual enrolment interface is too basic to scale up, so we discussed some ideas to improve this based on the following points:
  1. Need to be able to bulk enrol students on networked courses
  2. Need to be able to assign users to more than just the student role within a networked course (e.g. a teacher)
  3. Need to be able to automatically assign users to a group within a networked course
  4. Need to keep Moodle as the data channel - don’t want local student account creation/course enrolment interfaces to have to talk to multiple moodles
  5. Need to allow for increasing amount of data in networked courses to be available in local Moodle (e.g. grades, course activity info in myMoodle listing etc).

Taking these into account this is myrecollection of what the group came up. I post it here for others in the NZgroup to add their comments along with anyone in the wider community.

  1. Add an option for a user with a new role capability to tag a local course as a “networked course” and link it with a networked course located on a peered Moodle. Initially this would be a manual process, but it could develop into an automated process based on peerID and courseID mapping, plus identifying which course is the “destination” course.
  2. Once tagged in this way, any user associated with the local course is automatically associated with the network course, along with their role and group membership as defined in the local course.
  3. After tagging, local admin/process would still need to be able to add new users to the local course and have their role+group membership associated with networked course. Unenrolment would also need to be supported.
  4. Standard user would login on local Moodle, click on linked course name and go directly to networked course on remote Moodle. Course name would be defined by the name of the remote course.
  5. Local user with required role capability (e.g. admin) would be able to view 2 links to a networked course: local version + remote version, but only able to visit remote course if they have an appropriate course-context role.
  6. Obviously there will be issues with transferability of roles between Moodles. There would need to either be some agreement between peered Moodles on what roles can be transferred and perhaps some capability for an admin on the remote Moodle to authorise certain roles to be assigned by another site. Or more simply, just have the core Moodle course-context roles supported – i.e. guest, student, non-editing teacher, editing teacher.
  7. Would be great to be able to get grade info back to local moodle for local students (as a subset of all students on remote course) so local academic admin can access for official recording. But we ran out of time to discuss this and there may be better ways to do this outside the course framework.

OK – is this how the rest of the NZ group remember the meeting and for the wider community, what are the limitations, technical difficulties, security issues or better ideas?

David

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In reply to David Sturrock

Re: Moodle Networking – some ideas for bulk enrolments on networked courses

by Mike Taylor -
David

We have been using Moodle Networking for the last 2 terms here and have hit almost the same limitations and requirements that you have listed.

I would also like to add that I want the ability to stop greetings emails being delivered out from the course site as this causes confusion to the student who needs to login from the Portal site.

Regards

Mike
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In reply to David Sturrock

Re: Moodle Networking – some ideas for bulk enrolments on networked courses

by Derek White -
Yes, the above does represent the list of enhancement requirements and the suggested solution as discussed during MoodleMootNZ.

The suggested solution seems sensible to us, though we are keen to allow the developers (Catalyst) work out a solution that they consider best - given their knowledge of the infrastructure of Moodle and possible performance considerations.

Below I have re-ordered the list in order of priority for development as we see it:

  1. Ability to bulk enrol students in networked courses (e.g. through enrolment plugin or csv file upload).
  2. Ability to assign users to different roles in networked courses. Standard roles should be fine - so guest, student, non-editing teacher and editing teacher. Any additional assignment to roles can be managed at the remote course end.
  3. Account creation and enrolment of students into networked courses managed by the local Moodle instance (identity provider) without requiring additional processes to manage accounts / enrolment on the remote Moodle (content provider).
  4. Ability to turn off the auto greetings email notification for students who are directly enrolled in networked course.
  5. Exposure of remote course related data within the local Moodle instance - in particular: user activity, grades, calendar events and possibly MyMoodle listings.
  6. Automatic group assignment within networked courses
How does this sound to everyone?

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In reply to Derek White

Re: Moodle Networking – some ideas for bulk enrolments on networked courses

by David Sturrock -
Thanks Derek
The list is sensible and I add the following points:
  1. Expand the user profile field settings that are transferred to content provider site to include: email digest type, ajax & javascript setting and forum tracking.
  2. Add ability for moodle admin of either identity provider or content provider to delete a networked user account on the content provider. Use case - student withdraws from course on content provider and want to remove their account completely, not just "deny access" or alter email address etc to stop them receiving course emails.
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