Moodle Plugins directory: Enrol by Category (enrol_self + waiting list + x) | Moodle.org
Enrol by Category (enrol_self + waiting list + x)
Matthias TylkowskiThe plugin allows users to enrol into a course if they finished a course in a specific category previously.
The plugin is inspired by the enrol_self and can be used in the same way. Additionally a waiting list can be enabled and a category can be specified as requirement to join.
Category restriction
When a category is selected as requirement participants can only enrol if they finished a course in that specified category before. Additionally a timelimit can be set to limit the course to participants which for example have finished a course in the specified category at most 6 month earlier. The timelimit can be configured to count from when the course starts or when the course was created.
Waiting List
A waiting list feature can be enabled. When the maximum amount of participants is reached, additional participants can join the waiting list.
Participants on the waiting list are informed about open spots by a scheduled task running daily, which runs by default at 2pm server time. The amount of participants to be informed at once can be configured and is 5 by default. The fastest participant(s) will receive the spot(s). Participants which don't react to the email will only be informed 5 times to avoid inactive users blocking spots in the course.
The teacher can manually enrol participants from the waiting list into the course bypassing the maximum participants limit. Using a bulk enrol feature, multiple participants from the waiting list can be enroled into another/the current course at once.
Automatically join group
If the course uses groups, a group can be selected in the enrol configuration. Users which enrol via this enrolement method will then be automatically added as members to the selected group
This is useful if the course has multiple enrolment methods and also uses groups to show different content to different users
Useful links
Screenshots
Contributors
I am unable to PM you. Please PM me.
Thanks,
Joe
I'm unable as well. I suppose we have to be contacts. You should have contact request from me.
Regards,
Matthias
Don't see a contact request from you. Tried to send you a Friend request on Facebook.
Joe
Is it possible to add the following features:
- clean up task or some way so deleted students are removed from the list
- student view-only access to the waitlist w/ the ability to remove oneself from waitlist (no emails listed)
- add sequence column to the waitlist
Bug:
- a student is allowed to join the waitlist as many times as they want resulting in duplicate records and exception errors displayed if Developer mode is enabled for 'Debug messages'
Thanks,
Mustafa
thank you.
Can you elaborate more on the last two bullet points and explain how a student managed to join multiple times?
For the second point students land on a waiting page (screenshot 2) where they can leave the waiting list if they want to. What do you mean by "no emails listed"?
First off, thanks for the quick response. As for how a student manages to join multiple times; if that same student revisits the main course page where they initially enrolled, they can still see the enrolment section with the message "Maximum number of users allowed to self-enrol was already reached. You can join the waiting list..." and the [Join waiting list] button, and if the student clicks on it thinking they were not added the first time, another record is created in the waiting list and a new position.
For the second point; the idea here is for transparency we currently have a list (Google spreadsheet) accessible to all candidates (readonly) so see where they are on the list, similar to screenshot 3 but with position and name only. This is not a big requirement if it is too much to implement.
I have another question regarding waitlisting in general if you don't mind. How do notifications work when a slot becomes available? Does the course administrator need to increase the 'Max enrolled users'? Our course enrolment is set to Manual now and we have 14 student limit. I tried entering 14 in the 'Max enrolled users', but 14 more students can enrol right away before waitlisting kicks in, is there a way around this for existing fully occupied courses?
Thanks again,
Mustafa
thank you for bringing this bug to my attention. It is fixed now.
The student can see his own position on the waiting list. For privacy reasons we don't show the complete waiting list, even just names only, to students. Only the teacher has access to the complete waiting list.
Regarding your other question: There is no global course members count. Each enrolment method handles the users that have enroled with it. If you enrol users via manual enrolment those don't count for the enrol by category plugin. For existing courses there would only be the option to limit max enroled users to 1 or you clone the course and only use enrol by category enrolment, except for the teacher which should be manually enroled. Then you can set your limit and everything should be working as expected.
A slot becomes available when users which have been enroled via the enrol my category enrolment method leave the course or if the max enrolled users limit is increased.
Regards,
Matthias
Regarding slots becoming available for students, when you say "leave the course", do you mean when the student achieves course completion (marked as completed by Moodle) or un-enroled or both?
Best,
Mustafa
as far as I know students which complete a course are still enrolled. They have to be unenrolled for slots to become available. They can also unenrol themselves. Maybe it can be combined with the "unenrol inactive after" option. Students which completed the course will probably not be active in it anymore.
Could you tell me more about your use case? It looks like you have a continous course. But since you limit the amount of paticipants it is not a self learn course. Why are you not doing new courses every term?
Regards,
Matthias
Students often like to reference course material after they have completed the course, so most probably we will get students requesting access to the course again after they have completed it.
Best,
Mustafa
Basically our case involves a training course with a first-come first-serve basis with a limit of 14 students given present instructors capacity. Unlike college style courses, the course is not based on a semester or anything like that, we have around 16 modules in the course and instructors would select from the list of active students and work with each student independently until the student finishes the modules. Once a student completes the course another can be enrolled to take their slot. I hope that makes sense.
Your plugin is ideal for managing our enrolment, but we were wondering what is the best way to automatically make a slot available without and students in the waiting list enrol themselves once a slot becomes available. As I mentioned, students tend to continue to want access to the course modules for reference purposes as this course is one of a 3-part course curriculum to achieve a certification, and each course builds on the one before it.
Thanks again,
Mustafa
the simplest solution I can think of is to copy the course and unenrol the "graduates" from the original course and manually enrol them into the copied one. Then they can access the modules fro reference and in the original course you always only have the 14 active students and benefit from the funktionality of this plugin.
Regards, Matthias
Is there a way to change the time of day the message goes out to the ones on the waiting list?
The description mentions a scheduled task that runs at 2pm, but I can't find a setting to change the time of this task.
Regards, Knut
Tasks are handled outside of the plugin. You can find them under "Site Administration -> Server -> Tasks -> Scheduled Tasks" there are multiple Tasks if you search for enrol_bycategory. The one you are looking for is called "send_waitlist_notifications"
Regards, Matthias