Best practice forum (Archived)

How to 'retire' a course

 
? ?
How to 'retire' a course
by ? ? - Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 1:03 PM
 

Hi, can someone tell me how to 'retire' a course - it needs to retain all user data, and it needs to be plainly visible to 'Systems Administrators' that it should not have any new enrollments.  Thanks, Ali

 
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Craig Eves
Re: How to 'retire' a course
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Tuesday, 20 March 2012, 6:59 PM
Group Totara

Hi Ali

I think the best way to do this would be to go to the course settings and Availability and choose This course is not available to students

This option allows you to "hide" your course completely.

It will not appear on any course listings, except to trainers of the course and administrators.

Even if learners try to access the course URL directly, they will not be allowed to enter.

Making a course non enrollable has no effect on non-interactive enrolment plugins (e.g. External database enrolment). Also, users can always be assigned the role of learner via the Assign roles link in the course administration block.

The user data will be retained if the course is made non available.

Craig

 
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Austen Sinclair
Re: How to 'retire' a course
by Austen Sinclair - Wednesday, 21 March 2012, 5:14 PM
Group PartnersGroup TXP Site Administrator

Hi Ali

We had this issue and now do the following:

1, added a new top level Category for the site called: "Historical Courses"

2, Set this category to not be visable to staff

When we archive a course we add 'Archived_' to the front of the short & full name and move it into an appropriate sub-category in the hidden "Historical Courses".

For staff, their course (score & date recieved) remains visbale in reports (record of learning) and when they try and visit the course they get the 'This course is currently unavailable to students' error message. We don't get many calls asking why they can't see the course and the assuption is that the 'Archived_' bit signals why.

Because we haven't changed any other settings reporting doesn't break.

Admin and the course owners can still see the course as they can see hidden categories.

For the sake of completness (from our Howto: Archive course page)

How do we identify courses to be archived?

We use the 'Course report - Archive Candidates' to identify courses suitable for archiving. This reports lists last access, last F2F session offered, and critically if there are any linked Competencies that are dependant on this course.

When do we Archive courses?

A course page is archived on the following criteria:

  • No access in 12 months (respecting the annual cycle of much of our work)
  • No access in 6 months - where there are less than 10 staff enrolments OR the course is not visible to staff.

There are occasions where we learn of courses on the same subject (despite the Course publishing criteria!) and are advised that one is preferred. In this instance the practice is to either; Archive the non-preferred course (particularly if there doubt over the current course owner), or move it into the Development Area (which also excludes staff from seeing the course).

Exclusions:

  • The course is 'Required' for a Competency in a Individual Development Plan Role Template
  • If there are future date Face-to-Face sessions offered
  • The course is in the Development area

Cheers
Austen

 
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