Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
Number of replies: 27
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I have just added a new registration enrolment plugin here in the Modules and Plugins database.

This plugin was developed via grant funding from Nihon Univesity. The coding was done by MoodleRooms.

After you have installed and enabled the plugin and then specified it as the enrollment method from within a course, the plugin allows for the following:

1. You can set an enrollment period (site-wide) during which students are allowed to enroll in courses that use the registration enrollment plugin. The plugin is set to look for a specific value in a profile field. You set the profile field and value.

2. You can set a limit on how many studnets are allowed to enroll in a course (site-wide setting but this can be overridden from within each individual course).

3. You can create priority enrollment periods that allow students who meet the priority criteria to enroll in a course ahead of the enrollment period. This allows for "pre-registration" or "early registration" systems. Priorty enrollment periods can be set at the site-wide level but can also be overridden from within each course. You can set multiple priority periods for each course using various profile fields and values.

4. You can set how many courses a student is allowed to enroll in per enrollment period. This only counts enrollments in courses that use the registration enrollment plugin. This could be used if you have a program in which students are only allowed to take a certain number of courses per semester.

The 'logic' you create when setting up your registration enrollment system is quite flexible via creative use of #1 and #3. For example, you could set up enrollment periods that run back to back (for example, two days each) and then multiple priority enrollment periods that fall within one or the other of the enrollment periods.

Please post comments, questions, and suggestions here and I will try to get to them as soon as possible. I am however, not much of a programmer so requests for feature additions etc. will take some time to get to. Those of you who are more capable of adding features etc., feel free to make adjustments and send them to me. I'll test them and update the package available in Modules and Plugins. smile

Also, there are some features in the plugin that are not yet fully functional but that have been left in the interface because there are plans to add them sometime in the near future when, and if, funding becomes available. These are the "multifield filter" and "logical elements" filter. I'll try and provide some more documentation here in this forum soon.

I will also add a more detailed explanation of this package in the MoodleDos area soon.

Jason

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Doug Loomer -

Thank for the plugin and info Jason.  I am very interested in it.  We have been using the max class size plugin to limit class sizes, but would really like to be able to give priority registration privileges, and your module looks like just the thing.  Do you know whether we will be required to remove the max class size module in order for your module to work?

 

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In reply to Doug Loomer

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Douglas,

Is the "max class size plugin" that you are referring to available somewhere here in the forums? I remember some time back using a small hack that allowed for max class size settings. I haven't tested it in conjuction with the enrollment plugin but I think the enrollment plugin would probably override it. The best thing to do would be to set the max class size plugin setting to 0, or whatever the unlimited setting is, and then let the registration enrollment plugin manage the class size. That should ensure that they don't conflict.

If you can provide a link to the max class size plugin, I'll download it and do some testing to make sure that my guess here is correct.

Jason

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Mitja Podreka -
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Probably he is referring to Limit Students on a Course (max_enrolment)

Looks like this functionality will be included in the Moodle 2.0 core

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In reply to Mitja Podreka

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Mitja,

Thanks, yes that is the hack that I remember using in the past. It looks like, from the link you provided, that this has been included in the "enrol/self" plugin which, in 2.0, will mean that it should not conflict with the plugin that I have added here. There are a couple of problems with that though:

1. I have not had a chance to confirm that the Registration enrollment plugin works under 2.0 yet.

2. Under 1.9, if a user is using the hack that you have provided a link to, I'm not absolutely sure how the Registration enrollment plugin will interact with the hack. I suspect that leaving the field, provided by the hack, set to 0 will allow the Registration enrollment plugin to control the maximum enrollment but haven't had a chance to confirm that yet.

At any rate, thanks again for providing the link here. I'll try to get to testing both functionality under 2.0 as well as how the max enroll hack works when used together with the Registration enrollment plugin and post back here soon.

Sincerely

Jason

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Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Cameron Penna -

Is this compatible with Moodle 2.0?

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In reply to Cameron Penna

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Cameron,

This plugin was developed under 1.9 and has not yet been tested in 2.0. The developer (Moodlerooms) has committed to upgrading it for 2.0 as long as the upgrade does not entail an enourmous amount of their time. I will be talking with them as 2.0 settles down about making it 2.0 compatible. As soon as that is done, a note and download link will be added to the Modules and Plugins entry.

Thanks

Jason

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Maureen Coletta -

I'm checking back to see if this is now working with Moodle version 2.1

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In reply to Maureen Coletta

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Maureen,

Sorry, this reply is about a year and a half late sad but no, unfortunately, the Registration enrollment plugin has not been updated for 2.#. Additionally, the Registration enrollment plugin has not been maintained at all for the last couple of years. I am at a different institution than when the plugin was developed and there was no need for it (or time to continue with it). However, I have recently returned to the plugin and plan to work on getting it updated to work with the most recent version of Moodle (2.6) over the next year or so. At that point, I will be making it available on the Moodle plugin repository.

Regards

Jason

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Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Michael Zehr -

That's good to hear.  You list a number of features that we would like to use.  I'd prefer it if the enrollment plugin architecture had a finer granularity, so you could implement a feature once and have it apply to multiple enrollment methods.  For example we'd like to use the site-wide enrollment period, but we're using a different plugin that manages an application process.  It'd be great if enrollment plugins were such that your enrollment period would work with other plugins.  I realize that's outside the scope of what you're doing... but I will definitely take a look at your plugin when it's ready.

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Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Albert Leatherman -

Hi Jason, any chance this plugin is now available?

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Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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This is a response to a query from another thread (here) in this forum (pasted below)

*****

First, I like where this plugin is going. Being able to enroll people based on profile data is the 'make or break' of whether our organization can use Moodle.

SUGGESTIONS

It would be great if you could add two or three additional User areas to the Logical Elements section and we could apply AND or NOT logic.

For example, our User Profile page has three custom fields: Business Role, Company Name, and Product.

We need to be able to say: 'Enroll everyone who has Business Role: 'Customer' AND Company Name: 'ABC Co' in their profile. This is where two user fields would help.

It would also be useful to create multiple instances and assign them to specific Course Categories so that we could say: 'Enroll everyone who has Business Role: 'Customer' AND Product: 'Super Widget' to the 'Super Widget' Course Category (so they're enabled to take any courses associated with that category.

ISSUE

After we installed this plugin and selected Business Role: 'Customer' in the User field under Logical Elements... existing users who had Business Role: 'Internal Employee' in their profile, were still able to enroll in a course.

Only if that user was deleted and re-added again, did the plugin work successfully in blocking them.

Is there an updating issue? After we get a few thousand people in this system, if we change the User field under Logical Elements, would we have to delete all of them and re-enter them again?

****end of paste***

Robin,

Thanks, I'm glad you see the value and potential this plugin has. smile

In response to your suggestion about being able to allow users with specific values in different fields, this is a feature that I would really like to see added as well. Unfortunately it was not part of the project development plan and was thus not added to this first version. There are a couple of ways that this could be accomplished, I think. One would be to allow more than one "Userfield value" for each course. Another, more powerful, way would be to add multiple fields and enable the logical elements setting in the sitewide portion of the plugin. I am currently compiling a list of "most wanted features" that I someday hope to take back to Moodlerooms or another developer and get added to this plugin. I'm out of devlopment money from my grant funding though so I cannot tell you when that day may come.

As for using this plugin in conjunction with categories, I think that may be a bit more difficult in terms of how the enrollment plugins are designed. I'll add this to the list though and see what is possible.

As for your problem, I have not experienced this issue with having to completely delete and recreate a user to get the plugin to work. What version of Moodle are you using? Also, just to confirm, you did have the enrollment plugin enabled from within the course in question, correct?

Sincerely

Jason

 

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Fred Weiss -

I have installed the plugin and it seems to be working. However, no error messages are displaying for students who cannot enrol as criteria doesn't match or class size maximum has been reached.  All the error messages appear to be there in the files, I copied the files to moodle / lang/en_utf8 and even tried adding to moodle /lang/en_utf8/error.php but still no error messages.  I am running Moodle 1.9.10; MS-SQL 2008, Win 2008, IIS 7.5

 

Thanks

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In reply to Fred Weiss

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Fred,

I had this problem while we were testing the plugin during the development process and it turned out, in my case, to be because I did not have a cron tab accessing the cron script. That was on a local development server (MAMP) and I hadn't bothered with the cron. I'm guessing that is not your issue but figured it would be a good idea to mention it.

I don't think this has been tested on any db aside from MySQL but I don't see why the db should cause a problem.

Are the students in question prevented from enrolling in the course? Also, are all of your time periods correct (enrollment period, start time of the course, etc.)? The plugin apparently reads times from the db instead of from a server clock which was my issue when I didn't have the cron running.

I'm searching for possiblities as I write this message...sorry if it's a little disjointed.

Jason

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Hanna Grünfeldt -

Hello!

I tried to install the registration enrollment plug-in and as I saw a blank site on my admin--> notification site, I activated the debugging and got the following message:

Warning: enrolment_plugin_register::require_once(W:\www/blocks/registration/filters/filter.class.php) [function.enrolment-plugin-register-require-once]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in W:\www\enrol\register\enrol.php on line 57

Fatal error: enrolment_plugin_register::require_once() [function.require]: Failed opening required 'W:\www/blocks/registration/filters/filter.class.php' (include_path='W:\www/lib/pear;.;/usr/local/PHP/includes;/usr/local/PHP/pear;/home/admin/www/plugins/pear/PEAR') in W:\www\enrol\register\enrol.php on line 57

I copied the following files: file register in enrol directory in Moodle root directory & course_register in blocks directory in Moole root folder (I have done an imnstallation before with face-to-face and it worked):

Does anyone know what I have done wrong?

 

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In reply to Hanna Grünfeldt

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Hanna Grünfeldt -

Hello1

 

I could install it...the installation description under "Documentation" for the plugin is wrong, in my opinion. Right is the one on the frontpage maintained by Jason Hollowell.

When I click now on courses--> enrollments and then (after I have ticked the box next to "registration enrollment" for activating it) when I click on "edit" I got the following message: what does that mean? didn't I enabled it?

 

THANks for your help!

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In reply to Hanna Grünfeldt

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Hanna,

It looks like you have done everything correctly and are ready to configure the plugin. Click on the "Main Registration Block Settings" link to navigate to the configuration window.

Also, if the instructions in the documentation area are wrong, it is my fault. sad I will check them and see what the problem is. Additionally, I need to finish them with a detailed explanation of all of the settings that are possible via the plugin and some strategies for using them.

Please let me know if you have any other questions or problems.

Jason smile

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Arshad Syed -

i added files  in my moodle,in  blocks directory and enroll directory, But it is plugin outdated. please resolve the problem and reply back .

Attachment enrol_register.png
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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by R B -

This plugin seems to override our enrollment key.  Is this supposed to be the case?  We would like to still require an enrollment key for some of our courses, as there are prerequisites that we would like to be student-driven, instead of requiring an instructor to update a student profile for enrollment in the next course.

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In reply to R B

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Rebecca,

Although I haven't actually tested it yet, I think you are right in stating that the plugin overrides the enrollment key. The plugin is meant to grant enrollment capability to students who meet the conditions set by the plugin and we did not consider the enrollment key as it was being developed. I don't think it should be that hard to have the plugin check the enrollment key though. I will try to look into it and see if it is something that can be modified easily. I'm under the gun at the moment with end of the academic year work (here in Japan we are approaching the end of the year) so it will likely be a week or so before I can get to this.

Jason

P.S. If you just want enrollment in some courses to be controlled by the enrollment key, you can still do so by selecting the 'normal' enrollment plugin for those courses. (internal enrollment) That will remove the ability to limit who is able to enroll in the course but if the enrollment key alone is sufficient for your purposes then the easiest way to accomplish your task is to use this plugin in combination with others.

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Mirco Kullack -

After i copied the Folders in the right directiory, i'll just get a white page after clicking on "Notifications". Any suggestions?

Im using Moodle 1.9.x

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In reply to Mirco Kullack

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Mirco,

Sorry for the delay in my response. I've been swamped at work. Did you manage to get your white screen issue solved? As long as the files and directories have been correctly placed in your Moodle directory, I don't see why/how this package could cause a complete failure in your Moodle instance. Can you check again to see that everything was correctly installed?

Jason

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Luan Meades -

Hello,

This is a great plugin but I have 2 questions if you could help I would be most appreciative.

1.  Can we use the multi-field plugin alongside the other options like limiting students to 3 class at one time?

2.  Can we use a different combinations of field for different courses?

Let me explain!  We have a school where students are required to apply to take classes. Once accepted they can enrol in any basic or level 2 courses. If they wish to continue on to any level 3 course they must join the membership scheme.  So basically or our lower level courses need one field defined say Student in Good standing. Whilst a level 3 course needs 2 fields defined say Student in good standing and member.  A student could be taking a level 1 course at the same times as a level 3 course so we cannot use the same field.  We would like to run the enrolment keys alongside the enrolment method if possible too.

We tried enrolment keys by themselves and the students started to hand them out so we had students jump the fence so to speak and not sign our terms and conditions etc. 

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

Blessings

Luan

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In reply to Luan Meades

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by John Samuel -

is it possible to set the time of enrollment periode in a course to start ticking when the user actually enrolls in that course? instead of a precised periode?

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In reply to John Samuel

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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John,

Technically it is possible but unfortunately the plugin was not designed with this functionality in mind so as it is now, I'm afraid this feature is not included. If you have the ability to modify the code or can have someone modify it for you, I don't think it would be too difficult to add this functionality to your site.

Jason

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In reply to Luan Meades

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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Luan

Sorry for my very late reply. I'm not sure that I completely understand what it is that you want to do but you should be able to use the course capacity setting to limit the number of students that will enroll in a course under any scenario as long as you are using this enrollment method.

As for using different combinations of fields for different courses, yes you can specify different fields for each course. It may get a bit difficult to maintain but the plugin is designed to have this type of flexibility.

Sincerely

Jason

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In reply to Jason Hollowell

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by John Samuel -

Hi jason, please show me how to prevent this module from sending an email (ical) upon enrollment ? asap pleasssse

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In reply to John Samuel

Re: Registration Enrollment (A new enrolment plugin)

by Jason Hollowell -
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John,

Sorry but I wasn't even aware that the ical event e-mail was working? Is it sending e-mail in your case? I'll have to look into it but disabling it shouldn't be that involved. I'm in the middle of end of the semester grades and then heading to the States for summer break so I'll be unattached from the web for a few days but I'll check into it in a week or so.

Jason

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