Personalized course start times

Personalized course start times

by Ron Raney -
Number of replies: 5

Hello I'm using Moodle 2.6.2+

Hypothetically, let's say we enroll 100 different users into a single course.

By default, you set the course date and everyone follows along with the course schedule. Everyone enrolled in this system must start at the same time, and upon completion, end at the same time.

What if people need to be able to start at different times? Can you set up individualized start times for the same course?

To be clear, let's say we have a 10-week course. There are 100 users that need to be enrolled. But they cannot all start on the same date. Do you have to create a course for each start date?

I hope my question is clear and thanks for your help.


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In reply to Ron Raney

Re: Personalized course start times

by Emma Richardson -
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Interesting that this same question has come up a couple of times now.  The quick answer is no, afaik, you cannot assign different start and end times for a course....

However, if you get away from the time idea, you can set completion settings on the course and then start groups of students separating them out with groups and using completion and restrictions to push them through the content in the correct order..

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In reply to Ron Raney

Re: Personalized course start times

by ben reynolds -

We do individually-paced math courses in Moodle. Students are added and removed daily. We even allow students to postpone.

We do not set dates on the course start. We have groups, as Emma mentioned. Students are added to the groups to maintain about even numbers. Our registration system (separate from Moodle) calculates when a student's term is done. We use a csv file once a day to upload new students and remove students whose time has run out.

Technically, we use suspend both for postponements and and end of term. Suspend preserves the students' data but prevents them from doing any work in the course.

Since these are individually-paced courses, there is no schedule to follow. Students can do as much math as they can stand in a 3-month period.

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In reply to Ron Raney

Re: Personalized course start times

by Hartmut Scherer -
Hi Ron, 


The discussion about "Something between Weekly and Topics format" can give you more ideas.

With kind regards,

Hartmut

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In reply to Hartmut Scherer

Re: Personalized course start times

by Ron Raney -

Thanks everyone. I guess I will try self-enrollment (?). It seems that someone has had success using the weekly format for a course, and not setting start dates, and allowing self-enrollment. So I guess I will test that out for the next few days and report back. I have doubts because I don't see how you can hide "future" content from an enrolled student. Currently, the only way I know how to do this is to make each week "available" using time, or dates. I use activity completion to restrict access, but I don't want our participants to "race through" the content. It is important in my project that they have the material for each week become available gradually. Maybe there is an obvious solution to this that I will discover on my own.

Thanks again for your feedback.

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In reply to Ron Raney

Re: Personalized course start times

by Eder dos Santos -
Hi, Ron

On one hand, you can set an enrollment's period for students.

By the other side, you can set an interval of availability for resources and activities, editing their settings. At this case, you can't set different availability periods for one resource.

Maybe you solve it by setting groupings for activities / resources, enroll students within such groupings and clone the resources as many times as groups you have, but it will take a lotta work!

Regards.
Eder
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