Manage your content guide

You can set Restrict access conditions when you are creating an activity, resource or section. To add these after you have created the content.

1. Open the activity.
2. Select Settings on the contextual navigation menu. This opens the activity settings.
3. Scroll down to Restrict access.

   

4. Select the Add restriction... button. The options available display in an overlay window.  
5. Restrictions available are:
   • Activity completion (if in use on the module),
   • Date,
   • Grade,
   • Group (if groups created on the module),
   • User Profile, 
   • Restriction set.
6. Set your restrictions and scroll to the end of the settings and select Save and return to module.

The Activity completion restriction only displays when you have used Activity completion on an activity or resource on the module. You can use the Activity completion settings to define what constitutes completion of an activity. Restrict access in combination with Activity completion means that you can require that students view certain resources or complete certain activities before moving on to others.

Activity completion example

Week 2 materials are available only if the student has read the Week 1 Presentation. This requires you to:

1. Set an Activity completion setting for the 'Week 1 Presentation'. Completion tracking to be set to Show activity as complete when conditions are met and Require view is checked.
   
2. Set Restrict access setting for the 'Week 2 Presentation'. Select the Activity completion option from Restrict access and set the criteria to Week 1 Presentation must be marked complete.

The Date condition enables the timed release of documents or activities to students from or to a set date. This feature is used to guide students to read articles at a set point in their module or to ask them to complete a piece of assessment at a particular time, e.g. an in-class multiple-choice test.

Every user account in Moodle has profile fields like: name, city, country, etc. You can select to restrict availability of materials base on a student's Moodle identity. Some useful profile fields are:

• First name
• Last name
• Email address
• Course code*
• Programme code*
• Route code*
• Mode of attendance* (refer to e.g. part-time, full-time, or distance taught mode)
• Occurrence* (refer to mode of attendance and month of intake)
• Student status* (e.g. if the student is current)

*This data is drawn from our student record system - SITS and is recorded in specific coding. Please liaise with your course office if you want to utilise these fields.

You can require students achieve a specified grade in order to view the resource/activity or section. You can specify a condition for any grade activity on the module or for the overall course grade. You can enter either a minimum value (at least percentage), a maximum value (less than percentage), both, or neither by selecting the relevant checkbox.

Lecturers can guide students to different resources based on each student's existing knowledge, thereby personalising each student's route through the module based on their achievement.

For example, a mid-term formative quiz has been set. Those students who achieve more than 70% in the quiz will get access to Report 1. Those who achieve less than 70% will be given access to a follow-up presentation.

If groups or groupings are set up in the module, it is possible to restrict the activity or resource to a certain group or grouping (which is a cluster of groups). If you choose the option 'Any group', the resource/activity will be available to any student who has been assigned to a group. It should not be misinterpreted as students who are not associated with any group.

This Restriction set allows you to add a set of nested restrictions combining the use of the above conditions in order to achieve a more complex logic. In the example below the content is only available if the date is after 26 September if students have received a grade greater than or equal to 50. 

Restriction set example

This Week 2 material will be available only after 26th September at 9am, and it will be available to students in Group A or Group B only.

If you add more than one restriction, you need to decide if all the conditions need to be met in order to release the content or if only some of them need to be met to trigger a release of the content.

If ALL the conditions need to be met, these are AND conditions.

If ANY of the conditions are required before the activity is made available, these are OR conditions.

No matter which condition you have chosen, you must decide whether to indicate to students that content is restricted along with the restrictions or to hide the restricted content and the restrictions completely. 

To set these options, you use the eye icon next to the condition(s) you set in the Restrict access settings.

• If the eye is closed then students who do not meet the condition will not see the activity at all. As a staff member you will see text (hidden otherwise) after the restriction in the activity card. In the example below the New Quiz activity will not display to students until they have completed the Introductory Quiz and it is after 15th August at 9am

• You may need to provide some information to students via a label or description that hidden resources are available and what they need to do to view these. You could include this in your topic introduction. For example, once you have completed the Introductory Quiz and it is after 15 August you will be able to take the New Quiz. ​​​​​​​
• ​​​​​​​You must close the eye when you are using User Profile conditions to restrict access to assignments for students who have extensions of extenuating circumstances.
• If the eye is open, the students who do not meet the conditions will see the activity and it will have information about why they can't access it yet. The New Quiz below is displaying for students as not available until the Introductory Quiz activity is marked complete and it is after 15 August at 9am.

The shut-eye takes precedence. For example, you could have two conditions, one based on date (with eye shut) and one based on completing a previous activity (with eye open). The activity will not appear for students until the date; then it will be visible with information for students explaining that they need to complete an activity before they can access the materials. When students complete the activity they can access the resources.