Cookbook

General

1. How do I allow guests to access my course?
2. My course is currently unavailable. How can I let a particular student access it?
3. How do I send a message to several users?
4. How can I record attendance through the semester?
5. How do I grade Attendance?




How do I allow guests to access my course?
By default, during the first four weeks of the semester, any authenticated user (i.e. everyone in HUJI) can access your course.
You can change this period of time, disable guest access entirely or enable it also for unauthenticated users (i.e. open your course to the world), and/or set a guest password, as follows:
  • In the Administration block, under Course administration, click on Users
  • Click on Enrolment methods
  • Click on Guest access
  • Modify any of the fields and click on Save changes
See FAQ question Where do I configure Guest access and Self enrolment?

Note: Guest access to a CSE course is limited to CSE users (unless the course is open to the world).
The value of Use CSE authentication in the course settings determines whether the course is recognized as a CSE course.
See Tools for CSE courses.


My course is currently unavailable. How can I let a particular student access it?
Assign capability moodle/course:viewhiddencourses to one of the Utility user roles as follows:
  • In the Course administration block, under Users, click on Permissions
  • In the Advanced role override menu, choose e.g. Utility user 1
  • Search for entry moodle/course:viewhiddencourses
  • Check its Allow checkbox and click on Save changes at the bottom of the page
Now assign the student the Utility user role as follows:
  • Go to page Participants
  • Find the student's entry
  • Click on the editstring icon in column Roles.
  • Click on ▼
  • Select role Utility user 1
  • Click on save to save


How do I send a message to several users?
You can send a message to several users in one of two ways.
  1. Using a Moodle group and the Messaging drawer
    • Create a group or use an existing group.
    • Ensure that Group messaging is enabled and that you are also a member of the group.
    • Open the Messaging drawer using the balloon icon or dropdown menu in the top bar.
    • Select the group from the Group section of the Messaging drawer
    This is considered a single message.
  2. From the Participants page:
    • Select the users you wish to send a message to.
    • Select option Send a message from the With selected users... menu
    This is considered as an individual message to each of the users.


How can I record attendance through the semester?
Suppose: There is a lesson every Monday at 10:00, students must record their attendance during the first ten minutes, and get one point for every lesson attended:
  1. Create an Attendance activity:
    • Set the Maximum grade (section Grade) to the number of weeks in the semester
    • Set Sum grades to Yes. (See recipe below.)
  2. Click on tab Add session
    • Set Date to the first day of the semester
    • Set Time to 10:00-11:00
    • In section Multiple sessions
      • Check Repeat the session above as follows
      • Check Monday
      • Set Repeat until to the last day of the semester
    • In section Attendance recording:
      • Set Allow students to record attendance to Yes
      • Check Rotate QR code
    • Click on button Add
  3. Click on tab Status set
    • For entry Present, set Points to 1 and Available for to 10
    • Click on button Update
Project the QR code during at least the first ten minutes of the lesson. (Click on qrcode in the relevant entry in the Sessions tab).
Students should scan the QRcode from their MoodleMobile app


How do I grade Attendance?
The grade in the Gradebook for an Attendance activity is the sum of the grades in all the sessions for which the student's attendance was recorded, out of the maximum possible for just those sessions.
Thus assuming four sessions with a default Status set (Present => 2, Late => 1, Excused => 1, Absent =>0), if the student was marked as Present in two, Late in one and not at all in the other, his grade would be 5/6 i.e. 83.33%.
Thus the default Gradebook grade is not useful unless one takes care to ensure that attendance is marked in every session for each student that should have attended the session.
A more useful grade can be obtained by enabling option Sum grades in the Attendance settings.
Using the above example, the student's grade would be 5.
If the Maximum grade in the Attendance settings is set to 8, his Gradebook grade would then be 5/8 i.e. 62.5%.
Note: After toggling Sum grades, one must save at least one session (even without making any changes) in order to update the grades in the Gradebook.

This works nicely also if there are multiple Attendance activities, e.g. one for each group.
Simply create a category in the Gradebook and move all the Attendance activities to it.
Then the student's grade for the category is the sum of his grades in all sessions in all Attendance activities for which his attendance was marked.

Option Sum grades is a HUJI feature.