Enrolment FAQ

How do I prevent students from enrolling themselves in a course?

• If you are a teacher in a course, go to Settings>users>enrolment methods and disable (close the eye) of the self-enrolment option.
• If you are site admin, go to Settings>Site administration>plugins>manage enrol plugins and disable (close the eye) of the self enrolment plugin.

Why can I not add a cohort to my course? (I know there is one!)

Only admins and managers have the right to add a cohort, so a regular teacher will not see "cohort sync" in the dropdown in Settings>users>enrolment methods; nor will they see the "Enrol cohort" button in Settings>users>enrolled users. For more information on the capabilities involved,see Cohorts

Why are users being unenrolled for no apparent reason?

• In a course, go to Settings>users>enrolled methods and click the edit (hand/pen)icon of the self-enrolment option. Check the time in the dropdown next to Unenrol active after...

(See Unenrolment for a full list of what controls unenrolment.)

• As a site administrator, you can specify the default time after which a user is unenrolled in Settings>Site administration>plugins>enrolments>Self enrolment

Why are all students enrolled in all courses?

If the default role for all users in Site Administration > Users > Permissions > User policies is set to student rather than authenticated user (the default setting), this will result in all students being enrolled in all courses.

Another possibility is that users are assigned the system role of student. Check Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Assign system roles and unassign users as necessary, then reassign them the role of student in the course context.

Why can't I select "External Database" from the enrolment plugins drop-down menu in the course settings?

Only interactive enrolment methods may be chosen in the course settings. Non-interactive enrolment plugins are set for the entire site in Site Administration > Courses > Enrolments. Please refer to the interactive enrolment section of Enrolment plugins.

How do I enable students to unenrol themselves from courses?

To enable students to unenrol themselves from any course:

1. Access Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.
2. Click the edit icon opposite the student role.
3. Change any/all of the capabilities enrol/authorize:unenrolself, enrol/manual:unenrolself, enrol/paypal:unenrolself and enrol/self:unenrolself (depending upon which enrolment plugins are enabled for the site) from not set to allow.
4. Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

See Unenrolment for instructions on how to enable students to unenrol themselves from a particular course.

How do I prevent teachers from unenrolling themselves from their course by mistake?

1. Access Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.
2. Click the edit icon opposite the teacher role.
3. Change the moodle/role:unassignself capability from allow to not set.
4. Click the "Save changes" button at the bottom of the page.

How do I change the spelling of "enrol" to "enroll"?

Simply install the American English language pack (en_us) then choose it as the default language for the site. Or edit your language settings.

Is there a way for teachers to be notified when students enrol in a course?

No notifications will be sent when students are allowed to enrol by the Internal enrolment process. It can be done by changing the open source code, but not by through the interface. Other enrolment methods (for example Flat file) can allow emails when enrolment is complete but these are not student initiated.

When a student self-enrols, they get a welcome email message. Can a teacher customise this at the course level?

• Yes. In the course, go to Settings>users>enrolment methods and click the edit (hand/pen)icon of Self enrolment. At the bottom of this screen is a box where you can customise the message for your course.

How can the course welcome message be disabled?

• In a course, you can disable the message by clicking on Settings>users>enrolment methods Click the edit (hand/pen) icon to the right of Self enrolment. Remove the tick from "Send course welcome message".
• The message can be disabled throughout Moodle by the site admin via Settings>Site administration>plugins>enrolments>Self enrolment.

Why does my course have lots of duplicated guest access settings?

This is a bug with courses which have been restored. It seems that each time they are restored, extra guest access settings appear. It doesn't appear to affect use of the course however. The tracker entry is here if you would like to vote for it to be fixed.

Where in the database is the relationship between user and course?

Prior to Moodle 1.7, enrollments were represented by two simple tables: mdl_user_students and mdl_user_teachers. Under the new Roles and Capabilities System introduced in Moodle 1.7, the concept of enrollment has been generalized. The word "Enroll" should literally be read as "Assign a role to." To accomodate this flexibility, the database model has changed. There is now a mdl_role_assignments table that holds the equivalent information. For more information, see the roles development documentation

Help! Now Admin login does not work

Have you switched from internal to external enrolment and now nobody can log into your Moodle site? Site login has to do with authentication but an error with enrolment can produce a fatal error. You will have to solve this by altering the MySQL database (preferably with phpMyAdmin). Forum discussion here.

Look in the mdl_config table the name of the setting is "enrol_plugins_enabled". Edit the value list to remove the value database from the list of comma separated values, save, and you should be able to access your site again.

Alternatively the following MySQL command line should work, but is not recommended.

mysql -u username -p moodle_db_name
UPDATE `mdl_config` SET `value` = 'manual' WHERE `mdl_config`.`name` ='enrol_plugins_enabled' ;

See if you have merely forgotten your password.

When users access a course, Moodle returns 'This course does not allow public access'. What does this mean?

This could mean the course is a Metacourse and does not have, or no longer has, any courses associated with it. A metacourse ONLY gets its enrollments from other courses. See the "Child courses" link in the course administration block. Or check Course Administration > Settings > Is This a Meta Course? and set it to the default which is "no".

See also

• Using Moodle Enrolment plugins forum

Using Moodle forum discussions:

• Unenroll/Reenroll Question
• Best practices for end of school year, start of next?