Flexible Enrolment Automation with Plugins Michael Aherne University of Strathclyde @michael_aherne
How we used to do enrolment automation Problems we encountered How the enrolment plugin architecture helped us improve How we do enrolment automation now Lessons learned
The old way Corporate Database View CS101 Person1 Person2 Person3 Moodle Database Enrolment Plugin Person1 CS101 Student Person2 Person3 Lecturer CS102 Person4 … CS102 Person2 Person4
Problems with the old way Multiple class codes taught together (“crosslisting”) Department / faculty sites Cohorts from multiple academic sessions taught together External database dictates Moodle structure Rollover to next session needs new database view
Enrolment plugins Enrolment method instances introduced in Moodle 2.0 Instances can be added to courses and configured individually Plugins are more or less free to do what they want to with instance data
The new way New enrolment plugins developed Class Programme User profile “Criteria”
The new way Class-based enrolment
The new way Programme-based enrolment
The new way Profile-based enrolment
The new way Criteria-based enrolment
The new way CS101 Person1 Person2 Person3 Corporate Database Tables Student Person2 Person3 Lecturer CS102 Person4 … CS102 Person2 Person4 CS101 Person1 Person2 Person3
What we learned Enrolment plugin architecture supports almost anything Academics hate being constrained by technology Change Moodle to support business practices, not the other way round
Flexible Enrolment Automation with Plugins Michael Aherne University of Strathclyde @michael_aherne