Metacourse

A meta course is a course that is "with" or dependent upon one or more courses for student enrollment. A meta course automatically enrolls participants from one or more other courses.

Enrollments

Meta course enrollments occur only through another course that the meta course links to - its child course. This means that students cannot enroll in the meta course directly. Nor can a teacher or administrator cannot enroll students directly in a meta course.

In the simplest form, a child course only needs to contain only the Students who are to be enrolled in a metacourse. There do not need to be resources, assignments, or wikis, etc., just the Students. In the simplest form, the metacourse cannot contain Students, but will have resources, assignments, wikis, etc.

Examples: one child course can be associated with many meta courses. Or one meta course can have many child courses associated with it. Both the child courses (non-meta courses) and the meta courses are independent and can be recycled many times, that is, each can be associated with many of the other. However, child courses cannot be associated with other child courses and meta courses cannot be associated with other meta courses.

Creating a meta course

To create a meta course, set "Is this a meta course?" to yes in the course settings. After saving the course settings, you will see a list of "child courses" to choose from.

Select screen, one course has been selected so far.

It is possible to add more courses for this one to get it's enrollments.

Note: Do not be misled by the "Child Courses". You are adding courses that the meta course will be dependent upon for its students.

In Moodle 1.5 and 1.6, if a meta course is chosen, the students page changes from listing/searching for students to listing/searching for courses. In Moodle 1.7 onwards, "parent courses" appears in the teacher's administration block.

Graphic Meta course examples

1 course that gets its enrollment from 4 other courses

X is a meta course and Courses 1, 2, 3, 4 are normal courses with standard student enrollments. Students enrolling in Courses 1 or 2, or 3 or 4, are automatically enrolled onto Meta course X. The meta course is dependent upon its enrollments from each of the non-meta courses.

For example, a math teacher has 2 algebra and 2 geometry courses and wants a "home room" to place things of interest for all of their students. The teacher creates a meta course called "Teacher's home room" and links the algebra and geometry courses as the "child" courses.

More advanced. The math department has 4 teachers who have each created a "home room" meta course. The department has several "after school" activities, such as a math club, student tutors bulletin board and job shadow program. The department creates a meta course called "Math lounge". This meta course gets its enrollments from each of the teachers home rooms. The department had to create a course for students who no longer were taking a math class, who wanted to be enrolled in the "Math Lounge" meta course.

1 course that sends its enrollments to 4 other courses

Meta courses 1-4 each have created a "child" link to Y which is a normal course. Students enrolling on Course Y are automatically enrolled in Meta courses 1-4.

For example: this would be used, when all five courses are intended to have exactly the same students.

More example uses

Here are some more scenarios of meta courses. They should also help you to understand how they work with student enrollments.

Meta course(s) used as libraries

One or more meta courses are used as a library of resources and activities.

For example, the English department has collected material useful in writing papers. Teachers can direct or embed a link to a specific reference about citations, or how to select a topic for a paper or suggested reading compiled by students. Thus an English 101 course should be one of the links in the "Writing Papers" meta course. This Meta course holds a resource called "Citations made easy", a Lesson "Select a topic" and a Wiki or database called "Suggested readings from classmates".

A Diploma course sends its enrollment to meta courses

A Diploma program involves courses D1, D2, D3, and D4. In this case, you would create a "Diploma" course as a normal course (non-meta course). You would then designate programs D1 through D4 as meta courses and each would show the Diploma course as the "child" course. When a student enrolls in "Diploma", he or she will be automatically enrolled in courses D1 through D4.

Core subjects with fees based upon course groupings

You have 3 course subjects and want to offer them for sale in different packages. The meta courses will contain your subjects. A normal (non-Meta course) course will be the gateways to the meta course(s). Course 1 is your gold package. Meta course A, Meta course B and Meta course C all link to Course 1. The silver package is Course 2. Meta courses A and B link to Course 2. You have also set up individual courses that have a link from a specific Meta Course to them. Thus you can offer and charge for each meta course separately or in some combination.

One course, different student fees

You have one "Wizbang" course but want to charge a different rate based upon the type of user. The "Wizbang" meta course is the one that holds the content. You create a courses for "Wizbang for Large Corporation users" and "Wizbang for Small Business users". The Wizbang meta course is linked to "Wizbang for Large Corporation users" and "Wizbang for Small Business users" courses.

Tips and Tricks

Draw a map of your courses

Get a piece of A4 paper (oversized), draw boxes for courses and give them names. Add lines to connect the boxes to show relationships. Label the meta courses (alternatively, color the meta course boxes). Add arrows to the lines so you will know where enrollments come from. This is a great tip from the Business Uses forum.

Groups do not transfer

Meta course enrolments do not transfer groups from the and enrolment does not happen immediately, but occurs next time the cronjob runs.

Transfer of roles

By default all role assignments from child courses are synchronised to meta courses. However, the "Roles that are not synchronised to metacourses" setting in Administration > Users > Permissions > User policies enables administrators to exclude particular roles.

Restoring a meta course

When restoring a meta course with the option "deleting the course first", you will notice that the enrollments that were used by the course previously are now gone. In order to re-link the course, navigate to the new course and select the link "Child Courses" from the "Administration" block on the main course page and re-link the course to its parent.

See also

• Related courses block - contributed code that shows meta or child course relationships

Using Moodle forum discussions:

• Metacourses? Forum discussion
• Metacourses and Roles in 1.7 Forum discussion
• Best reference for describing a metacourse Forum discussion
• Assign student in course Forum discussion