Keywords: enrolment, category, department, undergraduate, postgraduate, access, editor, edit, editing
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Category level enrolments enable departmental administrators and other staff who have oversight of a department, access to all the Moodle courses for that department. Moodle categories reflect the faculty and department structure of UCL. In some departments these are also split into undergraduate and postgraduate courses, so it is possible to assign staff access to either of these independentlyare based on the data structure described in Portico/SITS, namely Faculty > School/Institutes/Departments > Academic Entities (ANAT, COMP, HIST etc) prescribed by the Academic Model Project. Staff can be enrolled as course administrators or with a 'no-email' role that means these staff aren't inundated with email alerts from discussion forums, but can still edit the courses within the categoryUCL Support Staff, Course Administrators or Tutors, or MyFeedback Departmental Administrators.
Why use it?
Category level enrolments means mean that staff who require access to all Moodle courses within a department do not need to be manually added to every course individually. They can be added once to the department's category and then have access to every Moodle course within that category. There is also a 'no-email' role option for Course Administrators, so these staff aren't inundated with email alerts from discussion forums, but can still edit the courses within the category.
Who can assign category level access?
Each department should have a member of staff who has category level access to that department's Moodle courses. You can ask this person to enrol you as the MyFeedback Departmental Administrator for your department (or a sub category within the department - e.g. for only the undergraduate or postgraduate modules, assuming the category has been set up in this way).
Before I start...
If you do not know who has category level course administrator access for your department's Moodle courses, go to one of your Moodle courses and follow these steps:
- In the Settings block, click Users and then Enrolled Users
- Filter the Enrolment methods to show only those with Category enrolments. Click Filter.
- You will need to contact one of the people listed here as a Course Administrator and ask them to assign you with MyFeedback Departmental Administrator access.
If no-one in your department has category level course admin access yet, the appropriate person will need to follow the normal process to apply for this access, so they can then assign MyFeedback Departmental Administrators. You can find out more here: Moodle Category level access.
How do I set one up?
A category level Moodle Course Administrator can add MyFeedback Departmental Administrators by following these steps:
- First of all, ensure you have the approval of the relevant Head of Department (or similar) before granting anyone this access.
- Login to Moodle.
- Scroll to the bottom of the Course Overview block and click Browse all courses on UCL Moodle ...
- This will bring up a menu of all UCL Moodle categories. Find the category that contains the Moodle courses for which to grant someone MyFeedback Departmental Administrator rights.
- NB: This might involve clicking through to sub categories such as postgraduate or undergraduate categories (if these exist).
- Once you have found the category, if you scroll down on the right hand side you should see a Settings block, locate and click Assign roles.
- Find the MyFeedback Departmental Administrator role and click on this, so you can assign colleagues to this role.
- User the Potential users box to search for those you wish to add and then add them by clicking on their name and then clicking Add.
- Repeat this as many time as needed. There is no save button.
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Detailed step-by-step guidance on Category enrolments is available from moodledocs. If you find any inaccurate or missing information you can even update this yourself (it's a communal wiki). If you have a specific question about the tool please contact the Digital Education team. |
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MyFeedback Departmental Administrator access must also be granted at category level. Visit M52c - MyFeedback for Departmental Administrators for further information.
Types of Moodle category roles?
| Role | Description |
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| Category Administrator | Category Administrators can do anything within a course, including enrolling students, editing content, adding activities and grading students. This role is identical to the Course Administrator role, but can only be assigned at category level. Used for non-academic staff who require edit access. Category Administrators appear in the participants list of each course within their category and they receive notifications. |
Category Administrator (No E-mail) | Category Administrators (No E-Mail) can do anything within a course, including enrolling students, editing content, adding activities and grading students. This role is identical to the Category Administrator role, but THIS ROLE DOES NOT RECEIVE E-MAIL NOTIFICATIONS and USERS DO NOT APPEAR IN THE PARTICIPANT LIST. Can only be assigned at Category level. |
Non-editing Tutor (No E-mail) | Non-editing tutors can view and grade students' work, but may not edit content or alter activities or resources. It is used for academic staff, external examiners and teaching assistants who can grade student work, but DO NOT require edit access. THIS ROLE DOES NOT RECEIVE E-MAIL NOTIFICATIONS. Can only be assigned at Category level. |
| Category Observer | Can view courses, including hidden courses and activities, but may not grade students, edit content or alter activities. This role may be suitable for staff such as those in the Library, Digital Education or Arena. Copy of Staff Observer Role. Can only be assigned at Category level by Site Admins. |
| MyFeedback Departmental Administrator | Allows Departmental Administrators to view MyFeedback student assessment reports for their department. |
| Web service role - UCL Migratecourses | Web services role for UCL Migratecourses. |
| Accessibility Assistant | Accessibility Assistants can view and edit course content, and access Ally's feedback and course report. They cannot view or edit grades or assignment feedback. |
| Faculty Learning Technologist | Faculty Learning Technologist can do anything within a course, including enrolling students, editing content, adding activities and grading students. THIS ROLE DOES NOT RECEIVE E-MAIL NOTIFICATIONS. Can only be assigned at Category level. |
| SSW Supporter | For staff who require read-only access in order to support students with accessibility issues/SORAS. This role is functionally similar to the student role. This role does NOT have editing permissions. The role does not show up in Moodle course level reporting. The role can be assigned at course level and if appropriate at Category level to allow access to courses without having to request this from local course admin/tutors. |
| Student Auditor | A Student Auditor has access to everything on the course, but is not able to submit assignments, post to forums, see quizzes and so on. They have access to content for all the groups, but at the same time they do not show up in activity and completion reports. |
Who can assign category level access?
Only the Digital Education team is permitted to assign category level access. Approval from the Head of Department should be sought for any new enrolments at a category level, as this grants access to a large number of courses.
How to obtain Moodle category level access?
There are two types of roles below:
Read-only / Non-editing role: A written email confirmation from the Head of Department will need to be sent to Digital Education to request access for particular staff.
Any editing roles: In order for any UCL member of staff to gain editing category level admin rights in Moodle, they will need to complete the Administering your Moodle course and provide written email confirmation from the Head of Department specifying the member of staff and the Moodle category to which they require access. The w ritten email confirmation from the Head of Department will need to be sent to Digital Education.
Caution
Do not provide other members of staff with category level access. It is a trusted role with unrestricted access to all Moodle courses within a category and thus requires Head of Department approval with access managed by the Digital Education team. Please see the instructions above for how to gain category level access.
Note that if you are enrolled at category level, you may need to search for a course and enrol yourself onto it for it to show in your Course Overview when you log in.
Enrolling someone with a course administrator role means they will receive email alerts every time someone posts to an announcements forum that is set to 'force subscribe' (the default setting). They can disable all their alerts, but this means if that person is actually teaching or supporting a few of these Moodle courses , then they will miss important information. A better To avoid the emailed announcements, one option is to enrol them be enrolled at category level with the 'no-email' role to stop discussion forum emails from all courses, and then to enrol the staff member as the a standard course administrator on the courses they are actively teaching / supporting to ensure they still receive these communications.
Examples and case studies
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Questions & Answers
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Further information
-If you have a specific question about the tool please contact the Digital Education team.