Enrolment plugins

Location: Administration > Courses > Enrolments

Course enrolment

Once you have set up user authentication, created some courses and assigned teachers to them, the next thing to consider is course enrolment i.e. assigning users the role of student in a course.

By default, students can enrol themselves on whatever courses they choose. They do so by clicking on the course name then answering yes to the question "You are about to enrol yourself as a member of this course. Are you sure you wish to do this?" This method of enrolment is called internal enrolment. You can restrict users from enrolling on whatever courses they choose by setting an enrolment key.

A trick to avoid the confirmation message is to make a link to the course with '&confirm=1' on the end after enrol.php e.g. http://moodle.org/course/enrol.php?id=50&confirm=1 Which will take you straight to the course page and enrol you transparently.

Whilst internal enrolment is an effective and efficient way to of managing course enrolment, particularly if you don't have a lot of courses, Moodle also provides a number of other enrolment methods (or enrolment plugins). They include:

• Authorize.net Payment Gateway
• External database
• Flat file
• IMS Enterprise (from 1.6 onwards)
• LDAP
• Paypal
• Moodle Network (from 1.8 onwards)
• OSCommerce (non-standard)

Setting the enrolment method

Choosing an enrolment plugin

To set the enrolment method:

1. Click on Courses in the Site Administration block, then Enrolments.
2. On the enrolments page, click the enable checkbox opposite your chosen enrolment plugin. If you wish, you may choose more than one enrolment method. For example if you have some courses which students must pay for and some free courses, you can use PayPal and internal enrolment.
3. Select the default plugin for interactive enrolment (see below).
4. Click the "Save changes" button.
5. Click on Edit opposite the enrolment plugin(s) you have chosen.
6. Configure the required settings and click the "Save changes" button.

Multi-enrolment

Template:Moodle 1.6From Moodle 1.6 onwards, multi-enrolment is supported, with one plugin set as the default plugin for interactive enrolment.

Interactive enrolment

Interactive enrolment triggers only when a user tries to enrol on a course. The user has to do something interactively in order to be enrolled, such as clicking "Yes, I do" (Internal enrolment), or paying some money (Authorize.net Payment Gateway, Paypal).

The interactive enrolment plugin for a particular course may be selected on the Course settings page.

Login-time enrolment lookups

Login-time enrolment lookups perform a lookup against an LDAP/AD, database or SIS server. You can have several plugins set to perform login-time lookups.

Unenrolment

Unenrolment may be controlled by the following:

• The longtimenosee variable in Administration > Configuration > Variables (or Administration > Server > Cleanup in 1.8), which specifies the time limit for which, if students haven't logged in, they are unenrolled from courses.
• The Enrolment duration in the course settings, which unenrols students after the specified time has elapsed.
• Enrolment plugins may decide that the enrolment has expired; for example, if it is not present or current in an LDAP, Database or SIS server.

See also

• Using Moodle Enrolment Plugins forum
• Using Moodle Can't use External Database Enrollment Plugin forum discussion