Best practice forum (Archived)

Restrict view of activities and resources in a course

 
Sarah Cao
Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by Sarah Cao - Monday, 11 March 2013, 10:56 AM
 
Hi, is there a way to restrict a user's view/access to only certain resources and activities?
I have a client with an existing course with a number of activities and resources. While those who are enrolled would have to access all of them for completion, occasionally there are users who do not need to learn everything, and should preferably have a limited view of the course without the extraneous content. 
I know it can be done with groupings for activities. However, for resources, it seems that it can be enabled in an experimental feature called "enable group members only", and I want to avoid this in case it causes issues in the gradebook. 
me
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by George Angus - Monday, 11 March 2013, 2:17 PM
Group Totara

Hi Sarah,

Is it possible to move some of the resources into activities? Such as including urls/files in the description of the activity? Or is it possible to have access to resources conditional on activities? 

Perhaps having two courses might be the best workaround.

Can you get back to me with more details?

regards,

George.

Sarah Cao
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by Sarah Cao - Monday, 11 March 2013, 2:49 PM
 

Hi George,

The way it is currently set up in this course is that their content is linked from their intranet, and they use the LMS for quizzes and to track url/page resource views for completion. We suggested a low-tech workaround where the user can just enroll and do what they need to do, but in the long run, they'd prefer to hide the extra content from view.

I thought of having the course split in two and linking them in a program, but since the course is based on a weekly schedule, it may be unwieldy for the learner to have to flip back and forth between the two courses each week. Plus, each user that would need a limited view may not require the same limited view.


As an example:

Course

  • URL 1
  • URL 2
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Quiz 1
  • Quiz 2
  • (etc., over a span of weekly topics)

All enrolled users so far have to complete all items. However, we have an exception of a user that doesn't need to learn all of the training. We want them to only view and access:

Course

  • URL 1
  • Page 1
  • Page 2
  • Quiz 1

and have the rest hidden. Occasionally, there may be another user that would require something like URL 1, Page 2, Quiz 2 (so also limited, but different from the previous user).

Craig Eves
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by Craig Eves (Totara Support) - Monday, 11 March 2013, 2:45 PM
Group Totara

Hi Sarah

This might be able to be done through creating a role that has very limited access to view activity content eg don't allow to view wiki pages.

You could base this new role on the guest role - then enrol the users in the course with the new guest type role or use the allow guest access setting for the course. If you don't want anyone able to access the course as guest then create a guest password for the course.

This would mean people enrolled as guest are able to view content types that is allowed  but are unable to complete activities to receive a grade for the course.

Craig

Sarah Cao
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by Sarah Cao - Monday, 11 March 2013, 2:52 PM
 

Hi Craig,

The user would not be limited to content type in this use case; for example, they would need to view one page but not another. 

I explained it a bit further above, but I'll look into the roles you suggested.

me
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by George Angus - Monday, 11 March 2013, 3:16 PM
Group Totara

Hi Sarah,

My feeling is this would be a whole lot simpler and easier to manage just to use audiences and taylored courses.

cheers,

George.

Amir Elion
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by Amir Elion - Monday, 11 March 2013, 3:22 PM
 
Hi Sarah
You should still be able to do this with roles.
Set up a "limited learner" role and assign it to those people.
In each activity which is not supposed to be viewed by them override permissions of this role and set view to "disallow" I think.
Amir
me
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by George Angus - Monday, 11 March 2013, 5:56 PM
Group Totara

Hi Amir,

I think your solution is the best. What has to be done is the all the activities need to be hidden, in the permissions of those you want to see the activities set "View hidden activities" to "Allow" and in those who you dont set to "Prevent".

cheers,

George.

Sarah Cao
Re: Restrict view of activities and resources in a course
by Sarah Cao - Wednesday, 13 March 2013, 1:45 PM
 
I will try out your suggestions and see if they work for this use case, thanks George, Craig, and Amir!