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  1. Teaching
  2. Technologies
  3. Educational Technology
  4. Moodle
  5. Build Courses in Moodle
  6. Build Your Moodle Course
  7. Adding Course Content

Restrict Access to an Activity, Resource, Week or Topic in Moodle

Overview

You can use the Restrict access settings to make students' access to learning materials dependent on:

  • students' completion of a previous activity—use the Activity completion settings to define what constitutes "completion"
  • the date (you can set from and until dates)
  • students' grades for a previous assignment, or for the entire course so far
  • a particular user profile field (e.g. Country, ID number, Surname—you can restrict access to an individual user this way).

You can restrict access to individual resources or activities, and to entire course home page sections.

With the moodle 3.3 release, there is also option to keep the activity available but hidden from the students ( Stealth Mode). Instructions for this can be found in the Advanced Guide section of the Hide an Activity or a Resource from Students page.

This page provides the relevant instructions.

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When to use

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When to use

You might use the Restrict access settings, for example, to create a self-paced learning environment in which students must attain a certain grade on one activity before the next resource in a sequence becomes available to them.

Or you might allow a single individual student to access a resource or activity by adding a User profile condition specifying that the student's ID number displays in the ID number field of their user profile.

Alternatively, to make a resource or activity unavailable to students you can simply hide it until you want to release it. To do this, click the Hide icon next to the item's title

A similar icon displays at the upper right of each course home page section, and you can use this icon to hide the entire section:

You can also restrict access to an activity or resource using groups and groupings.

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Benefits

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Benefits

The Restrict access settings allow you to tailor your course to specific students' needs, making it more flexible and responsive.

Guide

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Step by step instructions

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Step by step instructions

Restrict access to a resource or activity to students

  1. Are you creating a new activity or resource, or restricting access to an existing one?
    • If creating, complete all the relevant sections of the Adding a new [selected resource or activity] page, then expand the Restrict access section.
    • If changing an existing item, on the course home page click its Update icon to access its Updating page and expand the Restrict access section.
  2. At Access restrictions, click Add restriction.

    moodle-assignments-step2.png
     
  3. In the Add restriction selection box, click the type of restriction you want to add. The box closes and the appropriate fields display under Restrict access.

    moodle-assignments-step2.png
     
  4. On the Adding or Updating page, complete the fields to set the parameters of the restriction.
    • To restrict access by Activity completion, select the relevant activity and completion condition. Note: for Activity completion restriction to be available, Activity completion must be enabled for the course and there must be at least one activity with Activity completion enabled. For details about enabling Activity completion for the course and on individual activities, see Set up Activity Completion in Moodle
    • To restrict access by Date, select either from or until, then select an appropriate date, month, year, hour and minute.
    • To restrict access by Grade, select the activity and enter the grade parameters in one or both of the two percentage fields.
    • To restrict access by Group or Grouping, select the relevant group or grouping that will be the only group to access the activity. Note: For restriction by group or grouping to be available, there must be at least one group or grouping configured in the course. For details about using groups and grouping, see Create a group in Moodle, and assign an activity to it
    • To restrict access according to User profile field, select the field into the first field, the appropriate condition into the second, and enter any relevant text in the third field. For example, to restrict access to an individual student, you might select ID number into the first field, select contains into the second field, and enter the student's ID number in the third field.
    • To add a nested set of restrictions, click Restriction set in the Add restriction selection box, then click Add restriction within the new restriction set and complete steps 3 to 4.

      moodle-assignments-step2.png
       
  5. Add as many restrictions as are appropriate to the activity, then above the restrictions list select whether the student must/must not match all/any of them.

    moodle-assignments-step2.png
     
  6. If you want the activity hidden from students who do not meet a condition, click the Hide icon beside it .

    moodle-assignments-step2.png
     
  7. At the bottom of the page, Save your changes.

    moodle-assignments-step2.png

Restrict access to a course home page section to a single grouping

In addition to restricting access to a course home page section in the ways detailed in the instructions above, you can also restrict access to an entire week or topic on a course home page by granting access only to a nominated grouping. To do this:

  1. Click Turn editing on .
  2. Click the Edit summary icon for the relevant page section.


     
  3. On the Summary page, expand the Restrict access section.


     
  4. At Access restrictions, click Add restriction.


     
  5. In the Add restriction selection box, click Grouping. The box closes.


     
  6. On the Adding or Updating page, under Restrict access, select the relevant group or grouping.


     
  7. Specify any other relevant restrictions, referring to the instructions above.
  8. If you want the activity hidden from students who do not belong to the specified grouping, click the Hide icon beside the restriction .


     
  9. Click Save changes.

Additional information

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Further assistance

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Further assistance

If you experience technical or other issues, consult the Where to get help page.

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Page last updated: Friday 4 October 2019