Multiple Attempts in a Course

Multiple Attempts in a Course

by Hal MacLean -
Number of replies: 3

I am pretty sure I am missing something obvious here, so please feel free to point me in the right direction!

Using Moodle 2.7.5+

How can I set up the system so that a user who re-enrols into a course after a set amount of time has elapsed does not show as having already completed the course when they enter it?

The situation is one of corporate training - users need to repeat courses on an periodic basis and we need to report on who has and has not done so. The course content is pretty much identical year on year and we don't really want the overhead of duplicating the course and naming it with a year prefix... however that seems to be the only way.

It seems like we need to flush the completion records so that a user can complete the course one year, then re-attempt it the next as if it were a new attempt. The completion report should only show the current year's attempts, and therefore show as 'not complete' for the user when they re-enter after the elapsed time (let's say it's a year, for argument's sake). 

It would be good to be able to filter the completion report by date, showing only the current year, whilst retaining all previous years as old attempts. 

Has anyone done this already?

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In reply to Hal MacLean

Re: Multiple Attempts in a Course

by James Hamilton -

Hi Hal, 

What we do is backup and restore the course and then use the course reset function to flush the course completions. 

So, the process looks something like this:

  1. Backup the existing course, move it to a hidden and archived category.
  2. Restore as a new course
  3. Reset the new course: deleting all completion data, grades etc.

Another option is to reset the existing course deleting completion data, SCORM attempts etcetera and to issue a new badge for the new cycle. This way you can use a new badge for each cycle, keeping the existing badges and issuing a new badge for the next year. You'd then use the list of badge issues for the completion info for previous cycles.

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In reply to James Hamilton

Re: Multiple Attempts in a Course

by Hal MacLean -

Thanks James - that's kind of what we are doing here, although I am thinking that is a pretty manual process... I'd like to try to automate as much of that as I can.

In thinking this through, I believe it is worth a new kind of enrolment plugin for a course...

The plugin could:

• Set access durations and lock access after the date or duration has passed so no-one can get into the course. This prevents us needing to flush data, but we keep an old course in the system -we may set it to 'hide'.

• Run a backup of the course at the end of the access duration, and auto-restore into the same category (this will need scripting, as I don't think there is an auto restore feature built in to Moodle)... and exclude all user data

• Have options for setting a new title or appending a date to the restored course title

• optionally assume the same access duration for the new course as well.

Then all we need is to send emails to all users (assuming it is for all users) to notify them that they either failed to complete in time, or did complete and now need to renew, and link them to the new course where they are all auto-enrolled... 

This way we can apply the course duration through enrolment rather than trying to extend the course module itself, and the duplicate course will sit in the system nice and clean, so everyone gets into it as a new course. 

Additionally, this prevents us needing to change content in an existing course where people have already completed - if we update a SCORM, for example, the course completion will still say they have completed it, even when there is new content. In effect, we would change the history of their completion by altering the course content... and we'd not want to do that! smile

Does this seem a reasonable outline for a new plugin, do you think?


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In reply to Hal MacLean

Re: Multiple Attempts in a Course

by Mark Whitington -

Hi Hal,

You could try the "upload course" from within the Admin settings for your website if you are the Admin.

A CSV file can create multiple courses using others as a template. This process has numerous settings that may assist you.

Users are not enrolled but can be by other methods including CSV uploads.

Cheers

Mark

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