Multiple Student Roles

Multiple Student Roles

by Michael Aherne -
Number of replies: 6
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We are planning an implementation of Moodle where student enrolments on courses will be created by an integration with our registry database. We would like to simultaneously:

  • prevent lecturers from unenrolling students who were added by the integration
  • allow lecturers to enrol and unenrol other students as required (where the student already has a user account)

The only way I have managed to think of to implement this is to create a second student role (e.g. "unregistered student") which staff can enrol and unenrol from courses, but which has exactly the same capabilities as a student, and to disable the teacher role's capability to unenrol the built-in student role.

Has anyone tried this idea before? Or is there an easier way to achieve the same thing that I've missed?

Thanks

Michael
University of Strathclyde
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In reply to Michael Aherne

Re: Multiple Student Roles

by ben reynolds -
Hi Michael,
Maybe I'm missing something. It seems you are creating two student roles but trying to manage each differently with one role. Don't think that will work.

Can you say more about the "other students" who can be enrolled/unenrolled as desired?
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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: Multiple Student Roles

by Michael Aherne -
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Hi Ben

Thanks for your reply. I probably haven't explained myself very well - I'm still trying to get this straight in my head! An example of what I'm thinking of is this:

We have a course "Financial Accounting 1" on Moodle which corresponds to a course in our student records system, and we want to make sure that all students enrolled in student records also have access to the Moodle course. However, the lecturer may decide that the materials in "Financial Accounting 1" would be useful for some students in "Financial Accounting 2" who are struggling to keep up, so he would like to give them access for a certain amount of time. These are an example of the "other students" I mentioned in the original post, and we want the lecturer to be able to add or remove them at will without being able to remove the registered students, either accidentally or on purpose.

It may be that we can get around this by relaxing some of our policies, but I'm trying to work out whether there is a way to do this if we have to.

Cheers

Michael
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In reply to Michael Aherne

Re: Multiple Student Roles

by ben reynolds -
Hi Michael,
I'm in your country, not mine, so don't have notes to look at on this. My problem w/ 2 student roles is that you'll then have to determine when they are Type 1 and when they are Type 2, which is not an easy technical solution.

We have experimented with what happens when you unenroll & reenroll a student. One way, when the student is re-enrolled they are a new person. Another way, they return to the classroom and all their stuff (quizzes, etc) still exists and is theirs. I believe that the second method was reuploading them into the course in a csv with their username and id number identical to the previous enrollment.

If you can get that right, then you don't have to worry about lecturers unenrolling your students. You simply upload a daily .csv from your SIS (student records). Anybody who was unenrolled and shouldn't have been is reinstated.

BTW, we've never had a teacher unenroll a student, intentionally or otherwise, and we've been running courses in Moodle for 2 years now. Large number of courses. Teachers with essentially no CMS training. Still, not this trouble.

So, then you can just scare the heck out of your lecturers about unenrolling people and teach them how to do the Assign role action in course administration. This allows them to add an "FA 2" student as long as they want.

An alternative method would be to have a human add the "FA 2" students to the daily .csv. Use the .csv to enroll from student records and to enroll/unenroll the FA 2 students.

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In reply to ben reynolds

Re: Multiple Student Roles

by Michael Aherne -
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Thanks, Ben. I think you've convinced me that we're looking for a solution to a problem that probably doesn't exist! If we make sure our integration process reinstates any students who have been removed in error, as you suggest, then the worst case scenario is that a student could lose access for up to a day. I can't see this being an issue if it's unlikely that staff will unenrol anyone anyway.

Thanks again for taking the time out to help me!

Michael
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In reply to Michael Aherne

Re: Multiple Student Roles

by ben reynolds -
Hi Michael,
Glad to help. If it turns out I'm wrong, feel free to say "I told you so!"

One other item to note is the default course setting of 120 days of inactivity and student is unenrolled. This may not be useful to you.
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In reply to Michael Aherne

Re: Multiple Student Roles

by Rhonda Miga -
Hi Michael, what we have done is load those lessons we feel would be helpful to those other students. Once you have them loaded you can open or close the lesson as needed. So, if you use this course area repeatedly, as we do, you have the option of showing the needed information or not.

It took us a good year to get our course areas set up in a way that we really liked the flow. Adding a "resource" area and opening lessons as needed, we have found to be most helpful.

We do save all our lessons in PDF files and load them as linked media or add it into a lesson page as a link.

This way you don't have to mess with permissions at all. Nor do you have to worry about who you moved where.

Good Luck. Have an awesome weekend.
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