M36 - Restrict access

Keywords: condition, show, hide, release, conditional release, restrict access

What is it?

Restrict access (which used to be called conditional release) is a feature that allows course administrators and tutors to release resources and activities for their students based on specific criteria such as date, received grade or participation.

Restrict access can be used with activity completion in order to hide items until other activities are completed (e.g. viewed, or a particular grade received).

Why use it?

If you require your students to read a resource, or add a post to a forum before they can take a quiz, you can use restrict access to ensure the prerequisite activities are completed.

Who can use it?

Tutors and course administrators can apply restrict access settings to an activity or resource and specify whether students see a message about the item being hidden until released, or whether it is completely hidden from students until release.

Students will either see a message stating the item is unavailable until the conditions are met, or the item will be completely hidden until released.

Before I start...

Make sure you have enabled activity completion on your course and the activities or resources you would like to check are complete, before revealing other items.

How do I set it up?

Applying conditional release to an activity or resource

Now you have enabled the activity completion for the required resources or activities, you can now apply the conditional release.

1. In the top right hand corner of your course, Turn editing on
2. Select the resource you would like to apply the activity completion to, and click on the edit icon

You have two options here, Grade options or Activity completion conditions:

• Grade condition allows you to select a grade you want the student to achieve before the item is made available to them.
• Activity completion condition allows you to implement conditions for non-graded items. *NOTE: Questionnaires have an option where the 'Student must receive a grade to complete this activity', which means when a student submits the questionnaire they get 100% for the questionnaire and it is marked as complete. This means you can restrict activities and resources to only those students who complete the questionnaire. E.g. you might provide additional exam tips for those who complete the module feedback.

For both options, you can apply more than one condition by clicking on the Add 2 activity conditions to formOnce you have chosen the conditions, you can then choose how you want to display the item to students before they have completed it. The item can either be greyed-out, with the restriction information available, or it can be hidden entirely.Click Save and return to course or Save and displayOn the course home page, you will see your activity with the restriction message appearing underneath:

Restricting access to an entire section

You can restrict access to an entire section of your Moodle course area based on date, name, grouping, activity completion, or grade condition.

1. Go to your area and Turn editing on.
2. Go to the section for which you want to restrict access.
3. Click its Edit icon; a page displays on which you can edit its Summary.
4. Scroll down to the Restrict access settings.

1. Change the settings as needed, then scroll down and Save changes.
2. Check your section is displaying as intended, either by enrolling a colleague in one of the roles affected, or contacting the Digital Education team.

Caution

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Examples and case studies

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Questions & Answers

Restrict access FAQs are available on moodledocs.

Further information

See: activity completion for how to restrict access based on activities and resources students have viewed and completed.