Can we leave messaging on between teachers, and between teachers and students, but disallow students from messaging each other?
I found an old thread from 2006 that addressed this but nothing from a more recent version of moodle.
Thank you!
There is, and it is the same process, go to Site Admin > Users > Permissions > Define Roles and select the "Student" Role via the settings icon on the far right.
Go to Find and enter the part word messag and you should get 22 hits, that is 11 capabilities that can be set. Change all to "Prevent" and that will kill any student messaging.
Repeat for other, senior, Roles, except Guest etc, and set those to "Allow", if not already set.
Perfect! Thank you very much for the help!
Please note that Colin's solution will only work if your students are assigned the role of student as a system role i.e. they are a student in every course.
If your students are enrolled as students in particular courses, the messaging can be restricted as described in the documentation Messaging FAQ.
All messaging capabilities only apply in the system context i.e. as a system role, since messaging is not restricted to within a course.
Let us know if anything in the documentation is unclear, so that it can be improved!
If your students are enrolled as students in particular courses, the messaging can be restricted as described in the documentation Messaging FAQ.
All messaging capabilities only apply in the system context i.e. as a system role, since messaging is not restricted to within a course.
Let us know if anything in the documentation is unclear, so that it can be improved!
Hi Helen,
I am unable to get to the System Level to affect changes to the Permissions there; in particular the site:sendmessages capability.
I understand this capability can only be changed at the System Level.
My problem: (Moodle v. 2.9.1; Logged in as Admin)
My Problem: I am unable to change permissions at the system level.
On the "Editing role 'Teacher' " page, at the bottom, the note says..."The permissions highlighted in teh table below are the defaults for the role archetype currently selected above."
No table appears, although I have "Show Advanced" activated.
Thanks!
Hope you can help me understand better this issue.
As I've understood it, it seems to me that method prevents students from send messages to anyone.
Is that right?
While the thread starter (and me too) would like to prevent students from sending messages to other students, but ok to send messages to teachers.
Thanks
While the thread starter (and me too) would like to prevent students from sending messages to other students, but ok to send messages to teachers.
So to be clear, the messaging system is designed to allow users to send messages to pretty much anyone. Every year I have enabled it, my teenage students go insane trolling each other with the system. Disabling it is a must. That's a shame since it's a great way to notify students, and keep a record of what was sent rather than dealing with email and forums.
So I'm working on the core hacks to Moodle 3.5 restrict student message to just between the teacher and the students. Moodle developers definitely have moved classes around in the Message folder which is why the old 3.0 hacks do not work anymore.
If you are a student:
- Searching for contacts only pulls up teachers and administrators accounts.
- When clicking a students profile, a student can only see the SEND MESSAGE and ADD CONTACT button if they are viewing a teacher profile.
- When you get a message from a teacher, the BLOCK CONTACT link is missing.
Let me know if there's anything I'm missing.
FYI, The viewparticipants role has no effect on messaging. I've seen people post this as a possible solution. All it does is kill the participants link in the Navigation block.
If students use the forum, they can still click on a user name, go to the profile and then click the MESSAGE button.
Hello Sam,
I am interested in your core hacks as I have the same need. Where can I find your code if it is permissible for you to share it?
Thanks,
Madhu
There is, and it is the same process, go to Site Admin > Users > Permissions > Define Roles and select the "Student" Role via the settings icon on the far right. Go to Find and enter the part word messag and you should get 22 hits, that is 11 capabilities that can be set. Change all to "Prevent" and that will kill any student messaging. Repeat for other, senior, Roles, except Guest etc, and set those to "Allow", if not already set.
Just wanted to add, you need to click the ADVANCED button to actually set the PREVENT radio button.
It's under System->Send Messages to Any User. Set that to Prevent.
I know many people just disable messaging together, but as I teacher I like to send reminders and notes to students through the system. It's tough to ignore the big red YOU GOT MAIL flag at the top of the screen.
Everyone's situation is a little different. I am one who completely disables messaging. Students and teachers can email each other or use their social media. This has never been a problem for me. Some might think it is a little extreme. Might your teacher do just as well with email?
I would agree with both those comments, I too completely disable messaging, There are more than enough alternatives already available to everyone. Besides, there are few students who do not have mobile/cell phones to use for bullying someone else, or do their sexting, the real reasons for my disabling messaging. However, the question was around allowing some users access to messaging, and disable for others and I would allow anyone the opportunity to find out for themselves the consequences of this kind of half-hearted approach. (I am trying not to be unkind here, we often learn stuff more thoroughly by the things we don't think of when we do them.)
Yep Colin, you did a great job addressing the real question. I was just trying to provide a perspective.
Actually, many years ago I read a book about Moodle Security, and it suggested disabling messaging for some reason. I took its advice. Also, since I am my moodle's administrator and professor, I don't feel comfortable having students use messaging for social purposes and me having access to all of this.
Yes, here on moodle.org I do use messaging. But that is because we often do not have a person's email address.
You could also try this if you have access to the Moodle root directory and don't mind editing code:
Thanks @Greg Lind
Why would you ban students to email each other?
Martin
Why would you ban students to email each other?
For some reason, when male 14 year olds discover the messaging system on moodle, they love to troll and send things called "memes" to each other rather than working on assignments. I think it's because it's instant and shows up as a notification on the other person's dashboard.
It's different than email. They don't see to do that with email systems.
I'm configuring the search contacts SQL to only return back editing role accounts like teachers and managers.
The culprit is this method.
In my case I used to teach 11 to 14 year olds in a computer lab, and the girls were just as mean and hateful about what they would write about and send to each other, as the boys were. Since I was "responsible" for anything that went on in the class, I eventually learned to use the Dialogue plugin with it setup so they could ONLY send to me.
Before Dialogue, I would tell them we would use internal messaging or email, until someone broke the rules. In the days before many of them had home computers, it would usually take a couple of weeks before someone would write something dumb such as, "I'm going to beat you up when we get off the bus this afternoon." At that point I would turn off messaging, email, ...whatever we were using that year. Once nearly everyone had a home computer, we never made it through more than two days, before someone would write something that was NOT allowed. The record was my last year of teaching...15 minutes into the first class period of the day. The next day, Dialogue would be set to allow messages to only me.
Interesting Al, but I found the girls were actually more cruel than the boys. Boys were aggressive and quickly threatened violence, "Shut up or I will beat your head in" but girls...wow! My vocabulary expanded rather rapidly for cruel insult the first few times I ran into this issue.
Oh yes, girls. Middle school girls (US). My wife had a class whose reputation was so ugly through her whole school. They were mean to each other. They didn't behave in class. I subbed for my wife one time, thinking these girls would be easily quashed by a man with a mustache. No way.
Yet, individually, they were quite nice. It was just when you put them all together . . . And this was true all the way through to graduation from high school.
Note: I'm not in favor of disabling messaging, but my students are all distance ed. Less than 1% of them know each other f2f.
I've figured out for Moodle 3.5 to disable messaging between students, but keep it enabled between teachers and students.