There are many cases in which it is useful to restrict access to material in Moodle. For example: sharing information with graders or making extended-time versions of quizzes or assignments.
The process to make a resource or activity available to only certain members of a course in Moodle is a little convoluted but works well once set up.
To limit access, you need to create a grouping. A grouping is a group of groups. The easiest way to set up restricted access is to create a single group containing the members course that should be able to access the material. Then create a grouping which contains the group you create. You can then set the resource or activity to be visible to the grouping you created. Confused? So was I, but see the step-by-step directions below and you should be okay. Email help@swarthmore.edu if you need assistance.
1. First, create a group containing the members of course that should have access to the item.
Go to the Settings block → Course administration → Users → Groups
, some professors need to sharing homework solutions with graders.
Procedure
Create a group of users (students, graders, TA's, etc) that can access the content. If a student is not in the group, they won't be able to see the content.
Go to Participants → Groups (from dropdown menu)
Click Create group
Create a new group and give it a descriptive name. None of the other information is required. Click
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Save changes
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.
You should now see your group in the groups listing. Click on the group name, then on the
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Add/remove users
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button
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. Find users to add and click the
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Add
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button to add them to the group. When you have
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finished adding all the group members,
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2. Now create the grouping containing the group you created in step 1.
Click on the "Groupings tab and create a grouping. Use a unique name. If you called your original group "group1" something like "group1_grouping" is fine. Save the changes.
Add your group to the grouping by clicking on the "group" icon (the last icon in the edit column for the grouping) and click the "Back to groupings" button. Verify that the grouping now contains your group.
3. Create or update the resource or activity you want to limit access to.
Under the "Common Module Settings" click on the "Show Advanced" button.
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return to your course main page.
For the resource or activity you want to limit access to, click toggle edit mode on at the top right corner, click on the activity, then Edit settings
Under Restrict Access, add a new restriction
Select Group and pick the group you want to have access to the item
Click on the eyeball next to your group so that the item will be hidden totally from users not in that group
Save changes. When you return to the course main page you will see
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Whew! Not simple, but this is the way to limit access to resources and activities.
Other notes
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an indication that the item is restricted
Additional Notes
Restricting Topics
It is possible to add a group restriction on a topic or week. Follow the same procedure as above, but set the restriction on the entire topic. You will need to leave the topic and all its contents visible, but Moodle will display a label indicating that access to the topic is restricted. You do not need to adjust the permissions/restrictions for any of the items within the topic. If the topic itself is restricted so will all the contents of the topic.
Viewing as a Different Role Doesn't Work as Expected
Roles and Groups in Moodle are two different things. It is possible to switch your role to see what a Student or Grader sees, but it is not possible to set a specific group. Because we can only restrict visibility based on groups, it isn't possible to verify that the visibility of a topic or item based on group membership.
For example, if you have users enrolled as the "Grader" role, put them in the "Student Graders" group, and restrict homework solutions to only be visible to the "Student Graders Group", switching your role to view as a "Grader" won't allow you to see the homework solutions because there is no way to preview what someone in the "Student Graders" group would see. If you would like to make sure your course is set up properly, please get in touch with your Academic Technologist and they can verify your settings.