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Introduction to managing course participants

This guide provides a summary and links to explain how people are enrolled on Moodle spaces either automatically or manually, what the roles they are allocated allow them to do, and what changes can be made via the Participants page.

Guide contents

Participants

Participants is the collective term used for all users who are part of a Moodle space.

To appear in Moodle, the University ID must be, or have been, active i.e. fully enrolled after the start date and before the end date as set in Student Records. 'Visitors' to the University (e.g. External Examiners) will need a University number and IT account.
  1. Click on the burger icon to open the Navigation Drawer if not already open.
  2. Click Participants to open the participants list.

This shows who is enrolled on a space - this list can be searched, filtered and sorted to identify participants.

Editors can see the following information about each participant:

    • name
    • University photo
    • ID
    • email address
    • role they have been allocated in this Moodle space
    • group (if applicable)
    • last access date (of that particular space)
    • enrolment status on the Moodle space - active or suspended.

From this page, editors can make the following changes to participants:

    • manually enrol other members of the University onto the Moodle space - click the Enrol button
    • add participants to groups - click the pencil icon in the Groups column
    • change a participant's role - click the pencil icon in the Roles column

Students can only see the name, photo, role and groups for other participants. They cannot make changes or see other information.

Enrolment

Participants can be manually enrolled on spaces by editors via the Enrol button. However, most users are added using other enrolment methods.

  • automatically from SITS according to their module enrolments. All modules have a Moodle space, and students are automatically added. Moodle spaces are not visible, by default, until edited and made live. Students enrolled by this method cannot be manually removed.
  • automatically from a webgroup based on webgroup membership - this process can be setup manually by departmental or central Academic Technologists to link to both module based and ad hoc Moodle spaces. Students enrolled by this method cannot be manually removed.
  • via Warwick auto-enrolment which can be limited to specific departments and statuses (UG, PG and staff).
  • via self-enrolment methods which also gives the option to add people directly to groups.

See the guide on Enrolment methods for more information.

Roles

Participants are automatically or manually given one or more roles, and each role provides different permissions defining what they can do on a Moodle space.

Common roles are Course Leader and Editing Teacher (both are editor roles), Non-editing Teacher, and Student.

Editors have permissions to add, update, and remove activities, change the course format, manually enrol participants, set assignments, and mark student work.

Non-editing teachers are able to participate in activities to support students and to mark student work.

Students can participate in activities such as forums, wikis, lessons, quizzes and submit assignments via the Moodle space.

See the guide on Roles and permissions for more information.

Status

Participants will appear as either Active or Suspended.

Status of students in SITS-based modules is controlled by data outside of Moodle and cannot be manually amended.

To be active in Moodle, the University ID must be active i.e. fully enrolled, after the service start date, and before the service end date. In addition:

  • Students must have the correct (and approved) Module enrolment for SITS-based Moodle module spaces.
  • People must appear in the relevant webgroup for Moodle spaces if using the web group enrolment method.

Groups

Participants can be added to groups which can be used to provide instanced versions of activities and to create Teams channels via the Moodle >Teams sync process.

Groups are created and students added:

  • manually by editors via the Participants > Groups page
  • automatically using Tabula small group sync which can be set up by a departmental or central Academic Technologist

It is also possible to add participants automatically to groups using self-enrolment.

See the guide on Groups and groupings for more information.

Participation and engagement

It is important to understand how engaged students are with their courses in order to identify students who need additional support. Moodle can help track participation, engagement and progress.

  • Activity completion provides a simple report showing a list of participants and whether they have completed activities.
  • Activity report is a simple report with no filters. It will show how many participants have accessed an activity and when it was last accessed. Please see the Moodle Docs for more information on Activity Reports.
  • Course participation report is a list showing all participants, with details for the individual activities, showing who has viewed or submitted work to an activity. This will show if a student has completed a quiz or lesson, added a forum post or a wiki entry, or submitted an assignment (for example).
  • Logs allow editors to see which resources or activities have been accessed in a course, and when. It is possible to see if an individual student has viewed a specific resource or participated in a particular activity. Search can be limited to a specified period of time. Please see the Moodle Docs page on Logs for more information.

For more advanced guidance see Participants (Moodle Docs).


The information on this page relates to Moodle v3.10 and was last updated August 2021.

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