Inactive but still accessible courses

Inactive but still accessible courses

by Peter G -
Number of replies: 11

Hello,

I am struggling to manage the visibility of my courses effectively. Specifically, I'm looking to achieve three different kinds of behavior for different circumstances:

  1. Active courses (courses from current semester or always-open-courses/MOOCs/etc.)
  2. Inactive courses (courses from past semesters, unlisted but still accessible to enrolled students)
  3. Hidden courses (courses under development or otherwise intended as inaccessible)

I am able to achieve (3) using the "hidden" option, of course, and (1) is the default active state, but I am struggling with (2). Is there a way to make a course accessible to enrolled students (from their "my courses" dashboard block, for example), but removed from the master course list? 

The use case is that we want students to be able to access their course materials from past semesters without cluttering our course listings (at example.com/course/ for example) with past offerings. We're on 3.6.3.

Thanks in advance!


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In reply to Peter G

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Joost Elshoff -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Hi Peter,

Sure, what you're describing is most definitely possible, but with a few remarks:

  • Active courses (visibility: Show, startdate before now, enddate after now or NULL) will be shown with the All or In progress filter in the Course overview block.
  • Inactive courses (visibility: Show, enddate before now, course completion optionally set) will be shown with the All or Past filter in the Course overview block. 
  • Hidden courses (visibility: Hide) will only be shown to users who have a role in the course with the permission 'moodle/course:viewhiddencourses' set to Allowed. 

As long as a user remains enrolled in the course, he/she will have access to his/her materials and results. For courses with an enddate in the past, or that have been completed, these courses should be read only.

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In reply to Joost Elshoff

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Rachel Grzymkowski -

Hey Joost 


Is there anyway to have the course not shown in the catalog but show on the dashboard? This is the feature we really need. I don't want students seeing hidden courses in the catalog. It creates confusion because we release the same courses every quarter. I have my enddates for the course enabled and ending in the past. I would hope this alone would remove the course from the catalog but as i log in as a student i can still see the course. 

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In reply to Rachel Grzymkowski

Re: Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Melanie Scott -
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You could create a category or set of categories that are hidden and move the unhidden courses to those areas. Then they can't get to the categories but the courses are available. I *think* this is possible...it used to be but I've been using Moodle so long and so many things have changed...(for the better!) it is possible it doesn't work that way any longer--but I think hidden category is not equal to hidden course.

I used to run a site with ~2000 courses per training year.  Every year, we copied the courses and updated content.  We had a category for each training year and categories under to differentiate between topics & special groups.  We left the previous year courses visible (for our reports), but made sure the instructions were clear as to which ones were open--and put the training year in the title.  Good times.
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In reply to Joost Elshoff

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Peter G -

Hi Joost,

Thank you so much for your reply. What you are describing here works perfectly for the block labeled "My courses" on the dashboard, but I'm struggling comprehensive course catalog (at example.com/course/, for example). These "inactive courses" (with end dates before now) still show up in the complete list of courses.

Is this intended behavior, or do I have something set wrong? Is there a way to keep courses visible on the "My courses" block but set them invisible on the example.com/course list?

-Peter

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In reply to Peter G

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Joost Elshoff -
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Hi Peter,

I guess that's not a bug but a feature ;). If you don't allow self enrolment, these past editions of your courses won't be accessible for new enrolments. The user would be able to see the course and open it, but would then see a page with a notification such as 'At this moment, you can't enrol in this course'.

It would be interesting to see if there's a plugin or improvement to streamline this, but that's more a developer's thing...

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In reply to Joost Elshoff

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Peter G -

Thanks Joost, I greatly appreciate your help. I'm surprised to learn this isn't a more common need, and it makes me wonder if I'm thinking about things in the wrong way.

Some of our courses we run multiple times a semester, with different instructors and slightly different activities. Even just after one year, we've got six different instances of one of our professional development courses, and it's already making our master course list very user unfriendly.

Do you have any idea how other organizations approach this? Is the standard practice here to just cut off access to the course materials as soon as the term is over?

-Peter


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In reply to Peter G

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Rachel Grzymkowski -

There is also a feature called Freezing that can make all content in the course Read-only on Moodle 3.6. 



Attachment Freezing.png
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In reply to Rachel Grzymkowski

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Joost Elshoff -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

Hi Rachel,

Context freezing is still an experimental feature that needs further elaboration. On a production site, I would try to avoid even thinking about the option, until it is no longer experimental.

If you do want to freeze a course context, it is frozen for all users enrolled in it (as far as I know). This would not really be a useful option, in my opinion. 

In the situation where you run the same course various times a year, with another set of active participants, you could consider the following:

  • create a 'master version' of the course
  • duplicate the master version for every time you're running the course
  • manage any changes that may occur in the master version, so the latest iteration of the course is always available to the newest group starting the course
  • enrol a new group of participants in the latest copy of the master version
  • apply an end date that suits the period these participants will be in the course

This way, all users only have 1 course in their Course Overview on their Dashboard: the one they were enrolled in. This course automatically moves from In progress to Past, when the end date has passed. 

If, for some reason, your Moodle instance is restricted in terms of size and storage, and these restrictions prevent the above mentioned, use Course completion criteria instead of the end date to have the course marked as completed (and moved to Past) for those groups of participants who have successfully completed the course.

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In reply to Joost Elshoff

Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Rachel Grzymkowski -

Hey Joost 


Welllll we did enable Freezing in production. So oops there. We want the course to be read-only after the course past date and to my knowledge just having the course is Past doesn't prevent the user from logging in and completing the material but Freezing does. And yes, we want this for all users so Freezing meets the need for us.  


I am VERY interested in this Master version...can you send me a link to documentation to show how i do this? 

Are you just describing the act of duplicating a course because it's what we do already but it still doesn't take care of the fact that we want students to be able to access the content in their Past courses but not be able to finish the course past the end date. As far as i know, end dates just move the course to Past, not disable the user from completing material past the date. Also, we are in a corporate environment and want users to be able to enroll themselves. 


Looking forward to your reply. 

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In reply to Joost Elshoff

Re: Re: Inactive but still accessible courses

by Peter Diedrichs -
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Hi Joost, do you know when "Freezing" is planned to be non-experimental? This is a feature we have been wanting for many years! We are running 3.6 now.
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