Metacourse FAQ
A meta course's students come from other courses.
Why are regular courses called a child of a meta course?
There have to be some mysteries in life :) According to Moodle mythology, a meta course is the head of a virtual family (or commune) of courses. The idea was to create a single course where students in many courses could come and exchange ideas and information without having to enroll. Thus it is the meta course that creates the virtual family relationship between courses.
From the meta course point of view, it is the parent of the virtual family of it's children. Remember this is all about the meta course and not the non-meta courses. In Moodle, there can be all sorts of virtual families (each "headed" by a meta course) that share/use the same children.
I want to change a regular course to a metacourse, what do I do?
In a regular course, you can only change the "Is this a meta course" course setting when the course has no enrolled students. So if you have enrolled students, you will have to unenroll them by using the Course administration block>Assigned roles>Student menu. Select all the existing users in the student role and move them to the potential user side.
I want to change a metacourse to a regular course, what do I do?
In a metacourse, you can only change the "Is this a meta course" course setting to "no" when there are no child courses linked to the course. In the course administration block, use the "Child courses" link and move all the "courses already assigned" side to the "courses available side". Sometimes it may be necessary to leave the course and comeback in for the course settings screen to change.
This course does not allow public access error
Making a metacourse visible before the metacourse is properly setup can cause Moodle to return 'This course does not allow public access' when users would ordinarily be able to access through internal enrolment. Verify that the linked "child" course(s) exists. Remember a metacourse ONLY gets its enrolments from other courses.
