X Close

Digital Education team blog

Home

Ideas and reflections from UCL's Digital Education team

Menu

Globally Deactivating Portico Enrolments in Moodle

By Karen Shackleford-Cesare, on 23 May 2017

Context

When Portico enrolments are active on a Moodle course, student enrolments on the course are automatically updated overnight to mirror the Portico student list for the associated module. Consequently, students who change courses, or withdraw from their studies either permanently or temporarily, are automatically un-enrolled from their Moodle courses. Usually, this is desirable when students change/drop modules within the first few weeks of term. But, if Portico un-enrols students after they have been awarded any grades, these grades become inaccessible, which can be very problematic.

Note: the grades, submissions and logged activity are not deleted, and can be accessed again if the student is re-enrolled manually. But, when a student is no longer enrolled on a course, there is just no way to view their content.

Remedy

To reduce the likelihood of this particular “missing grades” problem occurring, the decision has been taken to deactivate Portico enrolments globally in Moodle, six weeks from the start of each term. Hence, after this juncture a student who discontinues a course won’t be automatically un-enrolled. Thus, any user with the requisite permissions can continue to access this student’s grades, etc.

Will Portico enrolment deactivation un-enrol the students on my course(s)?

No. Anyone enrolled on a course before Portico enrolments are deactivated will be unaffected by this change and will therefore still be enrolled on the course afterwards.

What do I need to do?

If a student is un-enrolled from a course while Portico enrolments are active, but the grades they received, etc. are still needed then the following needs to be done to re-link the student’s data to the student:

  1. Enrol the student manually and tick the ‘recover grades’ option when doing so.
  2. Do this for each affected student on each course.

The enrolment must be manual as automated Portico enrolments does not offer the ‘recover grades’ option, so even if students are restored in the module by Portico, and then re-enrolled on the course, their grades/work will not be re-associated.

Any ‘new’ students who would normally have been enrolled via Portico enrolments, who still need to be enrolled on a course after Portico enrolments has been deactivated, will need to be enroled manually or be permitted to self-enrol using an enrolment key.

Can I re-activate Portico enrolments on my course(s)?

Yes. However, please assess whether you risk losing access to some students’ grades before you do this. For instructions on re-activating Portico enrolments, please see:

https://wiki.ucl.ac.uk/display/MoodleResourceCentre/M06a+-+Portico+enrolments

Note: Portico enrolments can be ‘deactivated’ within the course at any time by anyone with Course Administrator or Tutor access, thereby stopping any updates to the list of enrolled users on the Moodle course.

Will Portico enrolments be globally re-activated?

No, they will not be globally re-activated, but you can activate Portico enrolments in your course(s) at any time. However, they will be globally deactivated again, 6 weeks into each term.

Leave a Reply