Enrolment FAQ

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

• If you are a teacher in a course, go to Settings > Course administration > 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 > Course administration > Users > Enrolment 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.

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 change the spelling of "enrol" to "enroll"?

Install the American English language pack (en_us) via Settings > Site administration > Language > Language packs then choose it as the default language for the site in Settings > Site administration > Language > Language settings. All new accounts on the site will then have en_us set as the preferred language in their profile.

If the spelling of enroll remains unchanged, check that en_us is set as the preferred language in your own profile settings.

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

• Flat file enrolment includes an email notification feature when enrolment is complete; however there is no option for self enrolment.
• Work around: Using groups to identify recent new arrivals

When a student self-enrols, can the welcome email message be customised?

A teacher can customise the message at course level as follows:

1. Go to Settings > Users > Enrolment methods
2. Click the edit (hand/pen)icon for self enrolment
3. At the bottom of this screen is a box where you can customise the message for your course

An admin can customise the message for the whole site by editing the welcometocoursetext language string. See Language customization for further details.

How can the course welcome message be disabled?

• In a course, you can disable the message by clicking on Settings > Course administration > 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.

How can I prevent certain teachers from appearing in the course participants list?

1. Go to Settings > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles and click on the teacher role
2. Click the 'Duplicate role' button
3. Rename the role as 'Non-participating teacher' or similar
4. Enter moodle/course:view in the filter and tick the checkbox to allow the moodle/course:view capability
5. Click the 'Create this role' button
6. Go to a course then Settings > Course administration > Users > Other users
7. Click the 'Assign roles' button and assign users the role of 'Non-participating teacher'

How can I get the grades back for a user who was accidentally unenrolled?

See the section on unenrolment and user data in Unenrolment.

Why does my course have a lot 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 MDL-31497 if you would like to vote for it to be fixed.

See also

• Using Moodle Enrolment plugins forum

Using Moodle forum discussions:

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