Users mysteriously unenrolling

Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Howard Miller -
Number of replies: 11
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers

Does this ring any bells with anybody....

The crime scene:

  • Moodle 1.5.4
  • A course with a large number of students 600+
  • large number of groups, order of 100
  • enrollment is by enrollment key
  • students are not allowed to unenrol themselves
  • the site does have automatic enrolment (by mysql db) enabled on the site but it is not used on this course (the id number is empty)...
  • ...but it was not empty to start with, we took it out just in case
  • all 600+ students where added manually and then added to groups
  • Enrolment duration is Unlimited

The problem is that the students are steadily unenrolling. In the first day more than 100 simply dropped off the course. We have spoken to some of the students and they claim they saw nothing unusual. However, when autmatic enrolment was on they where getting asked for an enrolment key when they should have been let in automatically (not that they should have been out at all).

Other courses on the site (lots!) appear to be working fine - a mixture of automatic and key based enrolment is used.

Sorry to be so long winded, but does anybody have a clue or recall a bug. Upgrading to 1.6 or newer is not currently a simple option.

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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Eric Malone -
I'm going to bump this because it just happened to us. Out of nowhere, two students were unenrolled... then another... then a whole class (of 3). I restored them but I checked the course settings and nothing is abnormal! I'm using 1.8.2.

Thanks,
Eric
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In reply to Eric Malone

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by John Isner -
Be sure that you are interpreting "Enrollment duration" correctly. The enrollment duration is the number of days a student may be enrolled in (i.e., be a participant in) the course. When the specified time elapses, the student is automatically unenrolled from the course, which sounds like what's happening to your students.

Enrollment duration does NOT specify the period of time that the course is open for enrollment (a common misinterpretation).
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Lesli Smith -
Coincidentally, this just happened to me yesterday, and I am running 1.8.2, too. I've been investigating all kinds of possibilities as I have my course enrollments set at "unlimited." Anyway, I re-enrolled him and dropped him back into the right group yesterday, only to find that he was not listed in my participants today. I've re-enrolled him again and will keep you posted. If he is unenrolled somehow again, I'll contact my tech support and get back to you if they figure out there's a bug. The irony of course is that he's a kid who hates computers, and I've had to struggle with him all year to get him to submit work online. Now if he's actually trying, he won't be able to get into the course. sad
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In reply to Lesli Smith

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Crafton Williams -
i'm experiencing this peculiar issue as well in 1.8.3 . The workaround I used was to disable the cron job. I'm not sure what exactly in the cron script is causing this problem, but I plan to check it out thoroughly as soon as I get a chance. I'll post any of my findings here.
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In reply to Crafton Williams

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Lesli Smith -
Hi. Over the weekend I enrolled the student in question two more times only to have him be "unenrolled." Again, he is one I really have to cajole to go online, so he hadn't, I guess, actually logged in for 123 days. I was a bit shocked that I'd let it go that long, but I've been a little lenient on allowing students to turn in work on paper this year. Anyway, this is what I got back from tech support today. Just in case this is your issue, too, I'm posting this message here, too:

Hi Lesli, yes it is a bug in 1.8 with the longtimenosee setting: /admin/settings.php?section
=cleanup - this unenrolls students from all courses if they don't login to the site. The default is 120 days. You can set it longer. The bug is that it unenrolls students from courses even if the instructor/admin has manually re-enrolled them. The bug is listed as being fixed in 1.8.3.

At first I was a little concerned that I'd need to know how to get to the right php string to fix it, but thankfully, the admin panel is now configured with this handy little search capability for the php-impaired like me. wink Pic attached. Hope this helps fix your issue, too. I've bumped up my setting to 365 days.

Attachment Picture_1.png
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In reply to Lesli Smith

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Steve Hyndman -
Why set it to 120 days....why not just set it to "never"?
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In reply to Steve Hyndman

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Crafton Williams -
neither of the proposed solutions worked for me. I can confirm that the bug still exists in 1.8.3
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In reply to Crafton Williams

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Lesli Smith -
Re: set it to "never." Good point in most cases. I set my academic site to 365 just because I can be sure that most courses end within a year, but never would make "spontaneous" unerollment less likely.

Re: still exists in 1.8.3. Hmmm...I think I found the correct bug report for this, but I'm not sure. If it is still happening, you should reference the old ticket (if it applies) and make sure this issue is reinstated. Sorry my solution didn't work for you. I'm off to see if he is unerolled again. In the meantime, though, I came up with my own solution that might throw things off a bit. I changed his password and enrolled as him briefly just so the threshold would go back to zero.
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In reply to John Isner

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Eric Malone -
Duration is set to unlimited, haven't had any problems since the whole course got dropped. (knock on wood) I will report back any other abnormalities.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Paul Nijbakker -
Hi,

What I would try, given that the obvious causes do not seem to be responsible here, is to create a new clean course and copy the offending course into that one and then see if the problem persists.

Rgrds,
Paul.
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In reply to Howard Miller

Re: Users mysteriously unenrolling

by Howard Miller -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Just a follow-up as I have been asked. We never got to the bottom of this. We have long since upgraded to 1.8 and the problem has not recurred.
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