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Using Restrict Access

A separate Moodle Resource article introduces Activity Completion in Moodle. Another way to manage student progress through your courses is by using Restrict Access. Instructors can restrict access to any activity in Moodle by enabling these restrictions in the activity setup process (or by choosing Edit Settings for the activity). When creating an assignment, for example, turn editing on, choose Add an activity or resource, then select Assignment and click Add. In the initial setup page, scroll down to the Restrict access section and click on Add restriction. Several restriction options are available.

Image of Moodle's Add restriction options

Activity Completion – If you want to ensure students complete a prior activity, choose this option and select which activity must be completed. If you set the grade needed to pass the prior activity in its settings, you may select that the student has to complete and pass the prior activity.

Date – Use this option If you want to make sure that your students cannot access the activity until a certain day and time.

Grade – This option enables you to select a specific prior assignment and set that students must have a grade that is greater (or less) than a certain value you select in order to have access to the assignment.

User Profile – Selecting this option will enable you to allow or restrict access to the activity by any field in the user profile.

Restriction Set – This option enables the instructor to create complex rules nesting any of the options above. For example, one might set restrictions that students may access a quiz only if the students completed a review activity, received a passing grade on an earlier practice quiz, and waited until a specific date.

Hide/Show Option – Note this interesting option in the Restrict Access settings. When you select a restriction to add, the specific options for that restriction appear on the screen. To the left of those options is an eye icon (the typical Moodle show/hide icon). This means that the student will see the assignment on his or her Moodle page, but it will be greyed out if the restrict access conditions aren’t met. Clicking on the eye icon will change it to an eye with a diagonal line through it, indicating that the activity will be not appear at all on the page of any student that does not meet the criteria you select. This means that you could set up a situation where, for example, you have students complete a quiz, then set follow-up activities for students based on ranges of quiz scores. Students would only be enabled to see the activity specific to their score.

If you want to get more adventurous with your course, use Restrict Access to “gamify” your course. For ideas with extensive links to specific ideas, see the Gamification section of the Using restrict access page at the Moodle documentation web site.  To learn more about Restrict Access, see the following resources at the Moodle documentation web site:

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