Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by John Flatness -
Number of replies: 8

I'm looking to use the enrolment on payment feature, but want to limit the number of course participants.

My reading of things is that there's a limit setting for the self enrol feature, but not for enrolment on payment.

To me it looked like such "size limits" had to be implemented by each enrolment method, so if one doesn't have it, then you're out of luck or rolling your own. Or am I just missing a separate feature that can limit the course size elsewhere?

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In reply to John Flatness

Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by Renaat Debleu -
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I do NOT agree that all enrolment methods should have size limits. The enrolment on course completion is a good sample, you promise the user if they complete a course, they will be enrolled. If you add a maximum number of users, you only generate frustration and hundreds of emails of students who think they have the right to be enrolled.

The same with payments, if you promise your students that they will be enrolled when they pay, you make a commitment to those users.  What happens if 2 users pay on the same moment when there is only one place available? You open a box of Pandora with refunds - complaints - and most of all: frustrated students.

Sometimes I'm forced using the key enrolment feature with a maximum of participants. Again and again when the maximum number of users is reached, I receive emails from students who want access. In 99% of the cases, I make an exception, give the user access, and promise myself never to make the mistake again...

R

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In reply to Renaat Debleu

Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by John Flatness -
As for the possibility of two students paying for the last seat at the same time: 1) I'd hope that the system would just prevent one of them from paying and tell them the course is full, but 2) if it couldn't or wouldn't work that way, that wouldn't be the end of the world either, to have a pretty rare possibility to go just slightly over the limit.

The situation I'm thinking about is this: I want to run a course for-pay for up to 30 students. The limit prevents me from unexpectedly getting, say, 50 students, or 100 students before I've noticed and can manually disable enrolment. Even an imperfect limit with a corner case where I might get 31 if I'm very unlucky would be vastly preferable.
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In reply to John Flatness

Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by John Flatness -
I missed the time limit for editing, but was going to add:

If anything, I'd make the argument that a limit on enrollments is even more important for the "on payment" method than for others. As you pointed out, payment both sets up an expectation and entitlement from the student, and leads to messy refunds if you need to walk it back. In a situation where the course legitimately can only be offered to a certain number, having Moodle be able to enforce the limit avoids those problems: I don't have to go and refund a student if they simply weren't allowed to sign up in the first place.
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Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by Renaat Debleu -
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I understand your view, but you assume that only one payment integration is enabled.

The enrolment in Moodle is basically an OR situation:

  • OR you were manually enrolled
  • OR you used the correct enrolment key
  • OR you paid using PayPal
  • OR you paid using Alipay
  • OR you paid using a bank transfer
  • ....

So limiting the amount of users in a payment gateway only makes sense when there is only one payment system available. What if tomorrow GooglePay and/or ApplePay is integrated into Moodle?

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In reply to Renaat Debleu

Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by John Flatness -
Sure, I'm aware of how the enrolment system works (at least vaguely), that all the enabled methods for a course are alternative options (ORs, as you say).

My question is: can I do what I want (accept paid enrolment with a limit on the number of participants), and if so, how? To my knowledge there's no course-wide limit to set, and the enrolment by payment method doesn't offer a limit, so is the answer just "no, you can't do that"? That's my current understanding, which this conversation has reinforced. If that's the case, my suggestion is that it should be something that's possible to configure.

To your specific point about multiple and future forms of payment: my understanding is that "on payment" is a single enrolment method that uses the payment gateway system. So it would seem to me that an enrolment limit set there (were one to exist) would apply to any payment gateway system used, including hypothetical future ones. Of course this doesn't apply to, for example, the legacy PayPal-only method, but I wouldn't consider that a problem. Having other methods enabled would "work around" the limit, but the same applies to the existing self-enrol limit: again, I don't see that as really presenting a problem.

Now, I'd be perfectly happy (maybe even more happy, actually) with a limit that was set on the course rather than the enrolment method, such that regardless of the method used, the course would close to new enrolments once the limit was reached for the entire course, counting all enrolment methods together. However, the only existing/historical instances of size limits I could find were done for a specific enrolment method only (like the one for self-enrolment). My assumption therefore was that a course-wide limit was unlikely to happen, and one specific to the enrolment by payment method would be more realistic. Of course, maybe it turns out neither is likely to happen.
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Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by Dan Marsden -
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Unfortunately I'm not aware of any plugins that would allow you to do this, but it does sound like a useful feature that we should build into the payment enrolment method- I can also see it being useful to provide 'early-bird' style pricing,  for example the first 10 people who sign up before a certain date could use the early bird price and a 2nd payment enrolment method could provide the full price for late comers.

If you're willing to fund the development effort to add this sort of feature you should contact your local moodle partner and ask them to help(disclosure: I work for a moodle partner)

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In reply to John Flatness

Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by Emma Richardson -
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I simply don't understand why there is not the option to cap enrollment at the course level instead of the method level...that seems like such a basic need.
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In reply to Emma Richardson

Re: Course size limit plus enrolment on payment

by Ron Fallara -
I very much agree this does seem like a rather large gap. What if I was setting up an in person course. If there are only 30 chairs in the room I should be able to cap the course at 30. 
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