Moodle in English: Pre-Req Course Restrictions

Pre-Req Course Restrictions - Possible?

by Beth Haggenjos - Thursday, August 6, 2015, 2:59 AM

Is it possible to have multiple courses within Moodle with additional pre-requisites courses and automated-enrollment after a pre-req is completed?

Example Courses:

NEPA 1, NEPA 2, NEPA 3, NEPA 4, etc.

Is there a way (plug in, etc.) to restrict access to higher level courses until lower level courses are completed (i.e., completing NEPA 1 before starting NEPA 2)?

My goal is to have automated enrollment with pre-req's to eliminate the manual enrollment process if a learner completes a pre-req course and is ready to take the next course. Any suggestions?

Thank you for your time!

Beth Haggenjos

Re: Pre-Req Course Restrictions - Possible?

by Andrew Leer - Friday, August 14, 2015, 9:49 PM

I believe this is much more easily accomplished by splitting a single course into sections and then placing the resources for each section greater than 1 and conditionally displaying it based on the grade of the previous quiz.

For example, the NEPA 1 section would always be displayed, but displaying the NEPA 2 section would be dependent upon the grade of the final quiz of NEPA 1.

To do this:

Enter your course
Click the Turn on editing button, if it is not turned on.
Click the wrench at the top of your NEPA 2 section with the tool tip "edit section"
The "Summary of NEPA 2" page will display.
Expand the "Restrict Access" section.
In the "Grad Condition" dropdown, select "Quiz: NEPA 1"
In the "must be at least" textbox type the % grade that the student must accomplish to advance to the NEPA 2 section.
Note that multiple conditions can be added, these can be interpreted as AND conditions, in which more than one criteria must be met to display the section.
In the "Before section can be accessed" dropdown select "Hide section entirely" to not display it to the user until they are ready to take it, or select "Show Section Greyed out with Restriction Information" to display it to the user before they complete the quiz.
Click "Save changes"

Repeat this for each subsequent section depending on the previous sections' quiz.

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Re: Pre-Req Course Restrictions - Possible?

by Beth Haggenjos - Friday, August 14, 2015, 11:49 PM

Thank you Andrew! I will try your recommendation to see if that works. Each of the courses use Activity Completion and Conditional Release, so this should be a simple fix for our needs.

(crossing fingers that this works)

Have an excellent weekend!

Beth

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Re: Pre-Req Course Restrictions - Possible?

by Beth Haggenjos - Monday, August 17, 2015, 8:39 PM

Andrew,

The steps provided do not allow you to choose sections from a different course, which is the issue I'm trying to find a simple solution for. When I tried to set restrictions, I was not able to set an activity from an another course as the restriction. I could only choose an activities from the course I was within when trying to set the restriction.

All - There was another recommendation, which is a plug in called Auto Enrol. I plan to test this one next. If this one works out, then I will try to remember to share again, otherwise feel welcome to contact me to see how things went if you are in a similar situation.

Crossing my fingers that this next one works,

Beth

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Re: Pre-Req Course Restrictions - Possible?

by Andrew Leer - Monday, August 17, 2015, 9:13 PM

Correct, the solution I provided above only works for sections within a course, not per-requisites. I guess that's not a standard functionality of the system and you need a plugin for that.

Where I work we have a bunch of "courses" (school room terminology) listed as sections (Moodle terminology) in a moodle course, and then we're able to control which courses a person can take based on the results in the other sections quizes.

Sorry if that was confusing, and good luck.

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Re: Pre-Req Course Restrictions - Possible?

by Dave Perry - Monday, August 17, 2015, 9:22 PM

We use enrol_auto to make it easy for staff and students to access pages that are college-wide. For staff it's great, as it can look at a moodle profile field as a restrictor (e.g. we put a Staff/Student flag from their network profiles into the Institution field, and the plugin can say 'only add them to this page if they have Insitution set to Staff'), but I've not seen any settings that will cover your pre-requisites.

Unless you lock a profile field that auto-enrol can use from users editing it, and write a script which runs every so often (e.g. a Scheduled Task on Windows Server) and manually changes the value of that field itself. A bit of a fudge way of doing it, but you might be able to work to something like that?

HTH

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Pre-Req Course Restrictions - Possible?