.The optional password is useful only in specify circumstances. In general if access to an exercise needs to be restricted then the Visible/Hide activity option would normally be used. In my situation I have a number of groups in a course who will be doing exercises at different times in a supervised situation. The password should allow us to open the exercise to just one group at a time.
I'm not at all sure that putting passwords on activities is really the "best" way of applying restrictions when different groups are involved. But it's a pretty understandable mechanism, operationally it's fairly straightforward, and it has some flexibility (for example, once all the groups have done the exercise you have the easy option of opening up the exercise completely by just dropping the password protection). Having different availability dates and deadlines for the groups might be an alternative but that would be tedious to set up
. So password protection on activities may have a future... [picture of cat amongst pigeons?]If you download this version, please login in as Admin and goto the admin page to get the database tables updated.