Course Administration
Maybe you need to modify your course name, or hide the course from students?
This guide provides basic information about administering your course site.
Course Name
A course within UR Courses can be renamed, whenever appropriate, if you are able to edit the course content.
Enrolment is based on the Course ID number, which is not editable, so changes to the course name will have no effect on enrolment.
To rename a course within UR Courses, please follow these steps:
- Click on the Settings option from the navigation bar.
- In the General Section page, change the name of the course as desired within the Course full name field. This is the title of the course displayed on the Dashboard and at the top of each course page.
- The Course short name can also be changed, although it must be unique. The short name of the course is displayed in the navigation and is used in the subject line of all email messages associated with the course.
- Once you are ready, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save and display.
Course Availability
A UR Courses' site can be made available or unavailable to students at any time. Controlling availability can be helpful if enrollment occurs before the course content is ready for students or if you want to prevent access to the entire course for specific periods. Note: Students can not access the site when hidden.
If your course is hidden, You will see a banner on your main course page alerting you to this fact.
To change the availability of a course within UR Courses, please follow these steps:
- Within your course, click on Settings option from navigation bar.
- On the Settings page, change the course visibility setting to Show or Hide as desired. Show means the course will be available to students, and Hide indicates it will be hidden from them.
- Once you have made your changes, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save and display.
Course Summary
A course summary can be provided to students in advance, or in place of, access to the full course. The summary can contain images, links, and even attached files.
The course summary is always available to students enrolled in the course, even when the course itself has been made unavailable.
To update the course summary for your course, please follow these steps:
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Within your course, click on Settings option from navigation bar.
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On the Edit course settings page, scroll down to the Course summary area. You can include information about the course which will be viewable on the Dashboard and Site home pages.
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Once you are ready, scroll down to the bottom of the page and click Save and display.
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To see the summary as a student might, visit the My Courses page and select the view as Summary.
Associate Enrolment
Enrolment processing begins one month prior to the start of the term.
To associate enrolment with your course, follow the steps outlined below.
- If your course isn't quite ready for student access, or you want to open it to students at a later date, ensure that it is not currently available to students.
- Click on Settings in the options
- Go to General
- Ensure that Course Visability says Hide.
- Open Add Enrolment select the appropriate term.
Note: The sections in Banner that are linked with your account will be listed if they have not already been associated with another course.
- Select the sections you wish to associate with the current course.
Assigning Roles & Adding TA’s
When you have the Teaching or Course editing role within UR Courses, you are able to assign roles to other users within the same course. There are 7 basic roles to choose from:
- Teaching – Teachers have full access to all aspects of the course.
- Course editing – same capabilities as the Teaching role (full access to the course, including creating or editing content, resources, and activities, and grading), except they are not listed as a course contact for the course.
- Non-editing Instructor – can teach in courses and grade students, can see items that are hidden, but may not add, remove, or alter content, resources, or activities. Can view all group activities.
- Lab Instructor – same capabilities as the Non-editing Instructor role, but labelled differently for context.
- Teaching Assistant – same capabilities as the Non-editing Instructor and Lab Instructor role, but labelled differently for context.
- Student – can view visible resources on the course page and participate in activities, but cannot alter resources or activities, cannot see grades for anyone but self. If groups are used, can access information in own group.
- Invited Guest – the same capabilities as a student, but Invited Guests will not show up in the gradebook.
To add someone to the course and assign a role:
- Select Participants from Course navigation.
- Click on the Enrol users button to find members to assign a role.
- In the Select users field, enter the individual’s ID number or name. Click on the correct individual (even if there is only one result).
- Within the Assign roles dialog at the bottom of the dialog, choose the role you want the individual to have from the menu near the top. In order to add a TA to the course, we're going to select the Teaching Assistant role.
- Continue to add names to the list as needed.
- Once you've found the individuals, make sure the correct role has been selected and click on Enrol users.
- Once you’ve clicked Enrol users, the individual will now appear within the list of enrolled users and be a participant in the course with the selected role.
To assign a role to someone already in the course:
- Select Participants from Course navigation.
- Find the user whose role you want to change.
- Click the Pencil icon in that user's Roles column.
- Select the desired role you wish to assign from the drop down menu.
- If you wish to remove a role, you can click the X beside the role to unassign it. The Student role cannot be removed from users added through External database enrolment.
- Click the save icon to finish adding the role.
To remove someone from the course:
Anyone who is enrolled in a course manually by the Instructor MUST also be unenrolled manually by the Instructor. It is important to remove Non-Editing Teachers every semester as previous Teaching Assistants will still have access to the course and any grades entered.
- Select Participants from Course navigation.
- Find the user to be removed from the course.
- In the Status column, click the trash icon to remove the user from the course.
- Click Unenrol to confirm removing the individual from the course.
Groups and Groupings
You can create groups in your course to use with certain activities and help organize your students.
Why use groups?
- You are an instructor in a course where you have several sections and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you only see one section at a time.
- You are an instructor sharing a course with others and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you don't see the students from your colleagues’ sections.
- You want to allocate a particular activity, resource or topic section to just one section or set of students and you don't want others to see it.
Group levels
A group or grouping can be used on two levels:
Course level - The group mode defined at the course level is the default mode for all activities defined within that course. To use groups you need first to set a group mode in Settings.
Activity level - Each activity that supports groups can also have its own group mode defined. If the course setting "Force group mode" is set to "Yes" then the option to define the group mode for individual activities is not available. If it is set to "No", then the teacher may change the group mode.
Group modes
There are three group modes
- No groups - There are no sub groups, everyone is part of one big community within the course.
- Separate groups - Each group can only see their own group’s work; the work of other groups is not visible or accessible.
- Visible groups - Each group works in their own group, but can also see other groups. (The other groups' work is read-only.)
For example, enabling either separate or visible groups on an assignment drop-box enables staff to filter the student submissions to see only those from a particular tutor group. With visible groups, students can see which other groups are doing the same activities as they are; with separate groups, they do not know which other groups are doing the same activities.
Using groups with discussion forums allow teachers to restrict interaction between students. Separate groups mean only students in the same group can see and participate in discussions within a particular forum. Visible groups allow students to see other group's discussions, but only participate in their own group's discussions.
Note: Where visible groups are used or the participant can access all groups, the user's own group is shown first, followed by other groups.
Enabling Groups
Group mode can be enabled at the course level to utilize the full potential of group features.
To enable group mode at the Course level
- Select Settings from Course navigation
- On the course settings page, scroll down to the Groups section.
- Within the Groups section, select the Group Mode.
- For Force group mode, choose Yes or No. If the group mode is "forced" at a course level, then the course group mode is applied to every activity in that course. Individual group settings in each activity are then ignored. This is useful for setting up a course for a number of completely separate cohorts.
- Click Save and display.
To enable group mode within Activities
If a group mode is not selected at the course level, group mode settings can be enabled individually for each activity.
- Turn on Edit mode.
- Edit an existing resource or activity or create a new one.
- Under Common module settings, in the Group mode field, choose No groups, Separate groups or Visible groups.
- Click Save and display.
Note: The Group mode can only be used if a group mode was not forced in course settings. See the previous section for more information on Group mode in Settings.
Creating a group
- Select Participants from Course navigation and from the dropdown select Groups.
- On the resulting page, select Create group.
- On the Create group page, add a group name and optional description (displayed above the list of group members on the participants page), enrolment key and picture (displayed on the participants page and next to forum posts)
- Select Yes for Group messaging if you wish to engage in group conversations. You will then be able to send group messages from the messaging drawer. Make sure you are in the group as well as your students. See Messaging for more information.
- Select Save changes to return to the main Groups page.
- Create additional groups as necessary.
- Select the group to which you want to add participants, then click the Add/remove users button.
- On the resulting page, use the Add button to move users from the Potential members list on the right to the Group Members list on the left. To select multiple users at once, hold the Ctrl key on the keyboard while clicking on the desired users.
- Once group members are selected, click Back to groups to see the groups and group members.
- Update any other groups as necessary.
An optional group ID number (an advanced setting) may be added for matching the group against external systems. Group ID numbers are not displayed anywhere on the site. Within a course, all group ID numbers must be unique. Thus it's not possible to create a group with a duplicate group ID number.
Auto-create groups
Auto-create groups allows Moodle to create groups either randomly, alphabetically or by ID number when the number of groups or number of students desired for each group is specified.
- Select Participants from Course navigation and from the dropdown select Groups.
- On the resulting page, select Auto-create group.
- On the General section, enter a Naming scheme.
A naming scheme can be created automatically. # is replaced by sequential numbers, and @ by letters. For example:
Group @ will create group with a naming scheme Group A, Group B, Group C . . .
Group # will create group with a naming scheme Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 . . .
- Select whether to create a specific number of groups or as many groups as necessary to accommodate a specific number of students.
- On the Group Members section, the Select members ... allow yous to choose from roles assigned within the course, available cohorts, groups or groupings. Select the appropriated one for your course.
- Select how you want to allocate members.
- When selecting Members per group, depending on the number of users in the course, the last group can end up with significantly fewer members than expected. You can select Prevent last small group to avoid the situation. If the last group would be smaller than 70% of the expected size, it will not be created. Instead, Moodle will allocate additional members to existing groups rather than create a new group with few members.
Example 1:
- You have a course with 80 students and you let auto-create groups with 30 members per group. There would be just 20 students in the third group which is 66% out of expected 30. Moodle will auto-create only two groups with 40 students in each.
Example 2:
- You have a course with 81 students and you let auto-create groups with 30 members per group. Moodle will create three groups with 30, 30 and 21 members respectively because 21 is 70% out of expected 30.
- The Ignore users in groups checkbox should be ticked to only select group members from users that are NOT already in a group in the course.
- The Include only active enrolments checkbox provides the option to choose whether to include suspended users in groups.
- On the Grouping section, you can create a new grouping and allocate the new auto-created groups to be created to it, or add them to an existing Grouping.
- Press Save.
Prior to creating the groups, you can view the groups.
Groupings
Groupings are most commonly associated with releasing an item (assignment, file) to one person or a small group while hiding from the rest of the participants in the class. Creating a grouping allows the release of specific material to a select number of students, teaching assistants, designers, etc.
In order to understand Groups and Groupings consider, for example, at the Olympics, there are different sports (gymnastics, swimming, track) and many countries. There are two ways to think of an Olympic athlete: by the sport they compete in or by their nationality. To be part of the United States Olympic Team, you must first be a swimmer, a gymnast or a runner. You cannot be in the US Team without first being an athlete in a specific sport. The sport is your group. Your country is your grouping. You must belong to a group before joining a grouping.
Several groupings can be created containing different groups. Use groupings if, for example, there are two sections of a course that will share some documents but should not share exams, assignments, activities or group work.
- Select Participants from Course navigation and from the drop down select Groupings.
- Click Create Grouping. Give the grouping a name and click Save Grouping.
- The grouping will now show up in a list on the main Groupings page.
- Press the Groups icon to add a group to the Grouping.
- Select a group or groups from the Potential members list and press Add to add them to the Grouping.
- Press Back to groupings.
Assigning Groupings to an Activity
- Turn Edit mode on.
- Edit an existing resource or activity, or create a new one.
- Under Common module settings in the Group mode field, ensure that Visible or Separate groups is selected.
- In the Grouping field, choose the Grouping.
- Click Add group/grouping access restriction to restrict this to a particular Grouping. This activity is now only available to members of the groups that are associated with the chosen grouping. Students not in that grouping will not see the activity on the course page at all.
Restricting an activity, resource or course topic to a particular group
To be able to restrict an activity, resource or course topic to a group, Restrict access must be enabled. This will result in a 'Restrict access' section in the activity, resource or topic settings and a group restriction can then be added.
Groups overview
A overview of groups and groupings is available via the Overview option in Participants > Groups > Overview.
The table may be filtered to display particular groupings or groups and it will also display students who are not in a group.
Course Import and Backup
Import
Course activities and resources can be moved from course to course using the import function. This will allow teachers to re-use instead of re-creating one or more activities or resources.
To import:
- From Course navigation > More > Course reuse, select Import.
- Select the course to import data from. Press Continue.
- You will be presented with the backup settings page. Use the check boxes for import activities, blocks and or filters as types of items which will show on the next screen.
- Select the elements you want to include in the import in the Schema settings step.
- Review and click Perform import or click the cancel or previous buttons. The confirmation page will place green check marks and red marks next to the backup settings and include item list for you to review.
- You should see the "Import complete. Click continue to return to the course." message, or an error message indicating that the import process did not take place.
Create a Backup
A course backup can be made within UR Courses at any time if you are able to edit the course content. This can be useful to preserve an instance of the course or to ensure that the course can be restored to a certain point in time.
Information services will retain a course backup for six months after the end of the semester the course was last delivered. To ensure you have a copy of your course, it is advised to make your own personal backups before and after making major changes to your course.
To create a backup of a course within UR Courses, please follow these steps:
- From Course navigation > More > Course reuse, select Backup.
- On the first Backup settings page, 1. Initial settings, select the desired options to include within this backup.
The IMS Common Cartridge 1.1 setting is only required if you intend to restore this course within a system other than UR Courses that also supports the IMS Common Cartridge 1.1 format.
- If you wish this backup to include only a subset of course elements, or to further review what will be backed up, click Next. To skip this and continue to backup the entire course, select Jump to final step.
- If you selected Next, review and confirm selections. Press Perform backup.
- When the backup file has been created, press Continue.
- The backup will appear in the Backup area. The file can just be left here or can be downloaded to a Network drive.
Restore a Backup
A backup file can be restored to create a new course, restore activities and/or resources into an existing course, or overwrite the contents of an existing course completely.
To restore a course:
- From Course navigation > More> Course reuse, select Restore (if you are restoring into a course).
- Upload the backup file or choose a file in the course backup area or user private backup area and click Restore.
- Confirm: Check that everything is as required then click the Continue.
- Destination: Choose whether the course should be restored as a new course or into an existing course then click the Continue button.
- Settings: Select activities, blocks, filters and possibly other items as required then click the Next button.
- Schema: Select/deselect specific items and amend the course name, short name and start date if necessary then click the Next button.
- Review: Check that everything is as required, using the previous button if necessary, then click Perform restore.
- Complete: Click Continue.
Notes:
- If you are restoring a course with user data (forum posts for example) then the user data will keep the original dates, whereas the activities and sections will change according to the new course start time you set.
- If your new course has fewer sections than the course you are restoring, the extra sections will appear as "orphaned activities". Increase the number of sections in the new course to make them visible.
- If you are restoring a course from a different Moodle site and you obtain the error message "Trying to restore user (admin) from backup file will cause conflict", you can enable the setting 'Allow admin conflict resolution' in Site admin > Courses > Backups > General import defaults.
- When restoring a course containing calendar events from activities e.g. assignment due dates, these events will appear in the calendar a short while after restoring the course. The events are added to the calendar via a cron task. Restoring multiple courses will result in queued tasks with a possible delay before events appear in the calendar.
Course File Upload Size Limit
The initial file upload size limit is 128 MB (older courses may have a limit of 16 MB), but it is possible to change this. Size limits apply to files instructors upload to the site, student submissions to assignments and quizzes, and files attached in the course Email tool.
- Within your course, click on Settings option from navigation bar
- Click on Files and uploads
- Click on the dropdown menu and select the size you wish to use. Note: none of these file sizes are intended to allow uploading, submitting, or emailing of video or audio files.
- Click Save and display.
Participants
Participant List
The Participants list shows all individuals that were enrolled in the course during the semester. Anyone that is currently enrolled in the course. Students that have withdrawn from the course during the semester. These students will no longer have access to the course but appear as suspended in the participants list. Last access to course will identify when the student last opened the course module.
Participant Filter
Instructors can change the view of participants in the course by using a filter. This allows the instructor to refine the list to a subset of participants based on specific criteria. There are two methods for filtering the list of participants:
- select from pre-defined options such as keyword, role, and status
- add additional conditions
The participants filter can be set up either by only selecting from the pre-defined filter options, or by using a combination of both methods (a pre-defined filter option and additional conditions).
To Add a Participant Filter
- Indicate who should be displayed in the list of participants by selecting an option from the Match drop-down list: match none of the criteria, any of the criteria, or all of the criteria.
- Select one of the filter options provided in the drop-down list.
- A new drop-down list will appear to the right of the pre-defined filter option just selected. The options available in the new drop-down list will be based on that pre-defined filter option. Select the appropriate option.
- If that is all the criteria required for filtering the participants list, click on the Apply filters button to display the filtered list. If additional conditions are required, proceed with the next steps.
- Add additional conditions by clicking on the Add condition button.
- Create the next filter using selections from the Match field and the two drop-down lists that appear. This is the same process that was used to create the first filter.
- Additional filters can be added by clicking on the Add condition button and making the appropriate selections from the Match field and two drop-down lists.
- Click on the Apply filter button to display the filtered list.
To Remove a Participants Filter
- To remove all filters, click on the Clear filters button.
- To remove individual filters, click on the X at the right end of that filter’s row.