General developer forum

Ger - All things are possible; however, I'm not sure that the second password on the same user account is going to fly. I think if you have a separate user then it should be a separate account. I think then the teachers could message the parents. One concern I have about putting parents on a site is that I do not want the parents to be able to message the friends of the parent's child (i.e. other students). Hopefully there will be greater controls with messaging improvements. I think with separate accounts you could use either messages of even have a parent forum where only the parents can see the information in a course. Taking advantage of roles with separate parent accounts seems to me the more prudent way to go. Peace - Anthony

Hi Gers,

just a thought, have you considered?..

1. creating a 'Parent' role & allowing desired capabilities (eg read blogs, forums etc) to that role.
2. as admin, accessing the student profile page & assigning the Parent role, then selecting the parent concerned.
3. using the 'Mentee' block, so parents have quick access to their child's data on site or my moodle page.

I'm planning to implement above for our current school.

Cheers, Chad

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Parent_role
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Mentees_block

As a developer (but not a Moodle developer), let me throw another concern into the mix... how do you handle the security issue of a computer-savvy child getting a hold of their parent's password and having access to information they shouldn't be seeing?

At the very least, the parental section should have an introduction on how to keep their account information secure, including topics like...

• Make your password hard to guess. Don't use anyone's birthday. Don't use the name of the dog. Use a combination of letters and numbers and symbols.
• Always remember to log out of your account, and do not have your web browser remember your password for you.
• Ideally, when multiple people are using the same machine, each should have a separate account on the computer, so if passwords are stored in the browser, they're in different accounts in the operating system.

If we want to make the parents work a little, we might even qualify their security knowledge by making them take a quiz or graded lesson.

If we want to be really draconian about it (and I have been in the past, for systems that require a lot more security, like banks)... make each student buy a thumb print scanner for their computer to manage identity verification, instead of using passwords.