Enrolment FAQ

General Enrol and Unenrol Questions

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

If you are a Teacher in a course, go to Course administration > Users > Enrolment methods and disable (close the eye) of the self-enrolment option. If you are site admin, go to Site administration > Plugins > Manage enrol plugins and disable (close the eye) of the self enrolment plugin.

Why are users being unenrolled for no apparent reason?

In a course, go to 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 unenroled in 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 enroled 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/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

To enable students to unenrol themselves from a particular course:

1. Go to Course administration > Users > Permissions
2. Click the Allow icon (+) opposite the appropriate unenrolself capability (corresponding to the method in which students are enroled) and allow the Student role

Note: If students are manually enrolled in the course, then enrol/manual:unenrolself should be allowed; if students self-enrol, then enrol/self:unenrolself should be allowed.

How do I prevent teachers from accidentally disabling enrolment methods in a course?

Edit the teacher role in Administration > Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles and uncheck the capability moodle/course:enrolconfig.

I don't see the 'Enrol users' button when clicking on 'Enrolled users'

Make sure Manual enrolment is enabled in your course. If you are using only external types of enrolment, but the course has no manual enrollments allowed, then you would not see the 'Enrol users' button as it is control outside the course.

If you should be able to do this, make sure you are in the Teacher or other role that has this capability. Make sure you did not inadvertently leave your self in the Student or Editing Teacher role when using the Switch roles to... button.

Self-enrolment Questions

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

Flat file enrolment includes an email notification feature when enrolment is complete; however there is no option for self enrolment.

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 Administration > 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 customisation for further details.

How can the course welcome message be disabled?

In a course, you can disable the message by clicking on Administration > Course administration > Users > Enrolment methods and 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 the site by the administrator in Administration > Site administration > Plugins > Enrolments > Self enrolment.

How can we set which e-mail address the welcome message comes from?

By default, emails come from main site administrator account's email address. A site administrator can set a different email address at Site administration > Server > Support contact and it will be used instead.

An administrator can also force the system to use the No-reply address instead. This is set in Site administration > Plugins > Message outputs > Email > No-reply address and > Always send email from the no-reply address.

Cohorts, Meta-courses, Guest, and other enrolment types

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

Since Moodle 2.8, teachers by default can add cohorts to their courses but only if the admin has set the cohort to be visible and available in the category where the teacher is trying to use it. Check with your site admin or manager if you think you should be able to enrol a certain cohort.

I am using Paypal but users can access my course without paying

Make sure you don't also have Self enrolment without an enrolment key enabled. This would allow users to bypass Paypal. (If you need some users to self enrol for free as well as clients enroling through Paypal, then add an enrolment key in the self enrolment settings.)

Can I have a metacourse of a metacourse?

This is not possible. See Course meta link. You might be able to use Cohorts instead.

Miscellaneous

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

"Enroll" is the spelling in the American dialect of English. To switch your site to use this, you should install the American English language pack (en_us) via Administration > Site administration > Language > Language packs then choose it as the default language for the site in Administration > Site administration > Language > Language settings.

All new accounts on the site will then have en_us set as the preferred language in their profile. This will not, however. automatically update the language of any existing users. They should then be told to set en_us as the preferred language in their own profile settings.

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

Who appears on the participant list is controlled by their role. Anyone in the default Teacher role will show up there. One way to work around this is to create a duplicate role from Teacher which has one small difference in Permissions. Do this as follows:

1. Go to 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 Administration > Course administration > Users > Other users
7. Click the 'Assign roles' button and assign users the role of 'Non-participating teacher'

How can I change who shows up on as the Teacher on the Site front page course catalog?

This can be set by the administrator in Site administration > Appearance > Courses > Course contacts. If you use the duplicate a Teacher role trick above, you can also then control whether they show up in the course catalog for all users as well as the course participants list.

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

See the section on unenrolment and user data in Unenrolment related to the setting in Site administration > Grades > General settings > Recover grades default.

What is the difference between unenrolled and suspended?

A user who is suspended from a course can no longer access the course themselves, but their enrolment and all their data and activities in the course are unchanged. Use suspend when you wish to block access for a user from a course, temporarily or permanently, but do not wish to affect their data there in any way.

Unenrolment removes the user from the course, and depending on other settings, may remove or delete their course data including grades.

See the section on Suspended or Unenroled in Unenrolment for more details.

How can I suspend a user from a course?

As a Teacher you can do this in Course administration > Users > Enrolled users and clicking the Edit (gear) icon next to the user name and changing their status from Active to Suspended. This is convenient for a single or small number of users.

To do this en masse for many users, a site administrator or Manager can suspend users from courses via a text/csv file from Site administration>Users>Accounts>Upload users using the enrolstatus field. See Upload_users#Fields_that_can_be_included for more details.

See also

• Using Moodle Enrolment plugins forum

Using Moodle forum discussions:

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