Itamar Tzadok

I'm not sure what you mean by "As Site admin, one has a  button that removes the add-a-block". Can you post some screenshots? Also, are you using a core theme? If not, you should switch to a core theme and see if you encounter the same issue.

While there are two levels of editing - admin and regular - the TEO and BEO are effectively interchangeable within a level. They turn the same editing mode on/off to the same effect. The TEO label would typically be used in the course context and some other contexts such as gradebook where you edit more than blocks or no blocks at all. The BEO label would typically be used in module contexts and admin pages where you would only add/remove blocks. So there is no real need to add the BEO option next to the TEO option. One is sufficient and the more general TEO should probably be preferred.

I'm not sure that the TEO/BEO has anything to do with your concern about the left column. If I understand you correctly, the issue is that despite moving all blocks to the right column or docking them, the fake 'Add a block' remains in the left column, and so in editing mode the content area and right column are shrunk or pushed outside of view. At least I had such an issue.

The 'Add a block' block is rendered in the default column which in most cases is the left column. The proper way to make it render in the right column is to use a custom theme which defines the right column (side-post) as the default column. This of course would affect the default location of all other blocks so may not be the best approach for everyone. The other option is to add a specialized configuration setting to set the default column of the 'Add a block' block. HQ, however, doesn't like to add further configuration settings so this is not likely to happen. Using CSS might be very tricky and is not likely to function well.

Can you commission an answer with a piece of fresh chocolate?

I haven't looked into this for awhile, but as far as I can tell there are still no case or conditional statements in the gradebook calculations. However, similar effect could be achieve with some basic arithmetic functions which are available for these calculations. The main problem would be that even a few cases would result in long formulas. But you may be able to make it more manageable by distributing the calculations between several grade items.

Here are a few old threads with some approaches for similar issues:

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=141957#p620274

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=142262#p621690

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=140915#p625938

https://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=147147#p647956

hth

Have you tried restricting moodle/course:update?

I've implemented such functionality on several occasions. It can be implemented as a fairly simple local plugin which listens to a designated event such as 'user graded' and when the conditions are met enrolls the user to the next course in the predefined list.