Cohort sync students into all the courses in one category?

Cohort sync students into all the courses in one category?

by Frank Black -
Number of replies: 4
Moodle v32


· Our students are grouped into a dozen different cohorts.
· There is one particular category containing 40 courses.
· How to use cohort sync at the category level, to enrol most of the cohort groups into all 40 courses?

This seems like it should be possible. But I'll be damned if I can find how to do it.
The alternative seems to be to add the dozen cohorts individually to each of the 40 courses!? Surely that can't be right?


The 'cohort management' at category level just seems to be for limiting or confining certain cohorts to within a category.
But these category cohorts still appear to require to be applied at course level, rather than the category level?


Thanks for any clarification, or ideas about how to do this.

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In reply to Frank Black

Re: Cohort sync students into all the courses in one category?

by Frank Black -


What would happen if I edited the student role to be available at category level, and then assigned
all the relevant users to the role of 'student' (from the category management page)?

Would that be akin to enrolling them in all the courses in that category, without actually enrolling them?

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In reply to Frank Black

Re: Cohort sync students into all the courses in one category?

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

It's possible to use Category enrolments - it might be worth reading the documentation page (and considering the possible issues).

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In reply to Mary Cooch

Re: Cohort sync students into all the courses in one category?

by Frank Black -

Thanks Mary. It's a good suggestion, but I'm not really inclined to go that way, since it is depreciated and as you say, it has some performance issues. Also, I don't think I would be able to use my already meticulously created cohort groupings - I'd need to add users individually by searching for their names.

OK, so basically 'category enrolment' is not something that the native cohort system can do. I'm not in much of a position to install plugins either (if any exist), so that is not really a great option - I'd have to be sure that the plugin was going to solve the problem flawlessly out of the box before I attempted to convince the technician to install it!


Could you comment on what I wrote before...

> What would happen if I edited the student role to be available at category level, and then assigned
> all the relevant users to the role of 'student' (from the category management page)?
> Would that be akin to enrolling them in all the courses in that category, without actually enrolling them?


I don't quite understand the permission system, and can't really imagine what the effects of doing this are: giving users the 'student' set of permissions for all the courses in the category, but without them actually being enrolled in the courses by the normal means. Would they, for instance, be able to post on a course forum like a properly enrolled student?

Thanks for any clarification you can give. You're a star.

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In reply to Frank Black

Re: Cohort sync students into all the courses in one category?

by Mary Cooch -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators

Could you comment on what I wrote before...

> What would happen if I edited the student role to be available at category level, and then assigned
> all the relevant users to the role of 'student' (from the category management page)?
> Would that be akin to enrolling them in all the courses in that category, without actually enrolling them?

That is pretty much what category enrolments. With the official Category enrolments they are enrolled in the courses and can post to forums etc. Each time a new course is made they will be automatically enrolled in that (should you wish)

Although category enrolments has a warning, I have to say I haven't personally seen many people complaining about performance issues with it on here - so either it IS ok, or those people don't come here to complain (or nobody uses it, but as it was such a popular feature in earlier versions of Moodle, I think there will still be people around using it.)


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