Enrolling students via Cohort configured as Category context

Enrolling students via Cohort configured as Category context

by Chris M -
Number of replies: 3

Hi,

I'm trying to configure my Moodle instance in such way that:

  • there will be one category between many others which will be dedicated to one specific area (let's say a "project related"). In this category I have couple of courses. 
  • I have a cohort ("project members") in which I assigned couple of students (for this use case let's assume that other students are not included in this particular cohort)
  • the cohort is created in context of this "project" category.

Each course in this "project" category has "self enrollment" configured as "Only cohort members" set to "project members". 

Thanks of such configuration the students in this specific cohort can enroll themselves to all of the courses in this category which is great. Other students (not in this cohort) get the comment about defined restriction and that they can't enroll (I would prefer to hide unavailable courses from the audience to minimize questions but it is like it is, or I don't know how to set it wink ).

And here is the problematic part:
when at some point in time I decide to disable an access to one project member (e.g. he is leaving the project) and I remove him from the cohort, in the result he can't enroll himself to another course in this particular category but he still has the access to the course in which he already enrolled himself earlier.
What I wanted to have is to some way of cascading the access rights:
  • student is in a cohort -> has an access to the courses in the category -> he can enroll to the courses in this category; 
  • student lost his rights -> he can't enroll to other courses in the category AND we are taking back the rights to the courses in which he is enrolled (like it is mentioned during assigning members of the cohorts: Removing users from a cohort may result in unenrolling of users from multiple courses which includes deleting of user settings, grades, group membership and other user information from affected courses.).
Currently it is working partially, the student that was removed from the cohort can't enroll to the other courses in the category, but still has the access to the previously accessed courses.

I know that I can assign the cohort to the course and not to the category, but I don't like to assign all of the project members upfront to all courses and make the courses somehow mandatory for everybody (some are not relevant for all members because of its specific). And in such case the reasoning of creating cohort in context of category is drastically minimized, at least in my opinion (e.g. the category is only visible for the cohort members would be a nice feature).

Would you be so kind to help me sort my issue out?

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In reply to Chris M

Re: Enrolling students via Cohort configured as Category context

by Randy Thornton -
Picture of Documentation writers
This works as designed because the enrolment method is Self-enrolment, not Cohort enrolment.

With the cohort enrolment method, it's the cohort membership that controls the user's enrolment. With Self-enrolment with a Cohort restriction, it's only restricting who is allowed to initially enrol.

The Self-enrolment cohort restriction merely restricts who can perform the self-enrolment initially to get into the course. Once enrolled they are the same as any other Self-enrolled user in the course: what cohort they are in no longer matters or controls their enrolment. Removing them from the Cohort has no effect on the enrolment. Therefore the student still has access to the course because they are still enrolled in it via Self-enrolment. You would need to manually unenrol or suspend the enrolment if you want to take away their access to the course.

Whereas the Cohort enrolment proper will unenrol them (or whatever action you have set in Plugins > Enrolment > Cohort sync :: External unenrol action) when you take them out of the Cohort.
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Randy Thornton

Re: Enrolling students via Cohort configured as Category context

by Chris M -
Hi Randy,
sorry for so late response.
You clarified the topic in a very clear manner, I managed to configure it as suggested and it works flawlessly.

It is great that the Moodle community is so open to help to solve even so newbie's questions.
Many thanks!
In reply to Chris M

Re: Enrolling students via Cohort configured as Category context

by Randy Thornton -
Picture of Documentation writers
You are most welcome. Glad that helped you solve the issue.