Restrict Access to an Activity, Resource, Week or Topic in Moodle

Overview

Restrict access settings are used to restrict or hide resources from students under different conditions. Instructors can use this to make students' access to learning materials dependent on conditions such as:

students' completion of a previous activity—use the Activity completion settings to define what constitutes "completion"
the current date (you can set from and until dates)
students' grades for a previous assignment, or for the entire course so far
a particular user profile field (e.g. Country, ID number, Surname—you can restrict access to an individual user this way).

You can restrict access to individual resources or activities, and to entire course home page sections.

The Hide feature may also be used if conditions are not needed and material needs to be hidden to all students. Stealth Mode can also be used to hide activities in the course home page but still allow students to access if they have a URL to the material. Instructions for this can be found in the Advanced Guide section of the Hide an Activity or a Resource from Students page.

This page provides instructions for configuring restrict access.

When to use

Restrict access can be used to selectively release content and create a self-paced learning environment in which students must attain a certain grade on one activity before the next resource in a sequence becomes available to them.

Resources can also be released only to specific students by applying either the 'User profile' and 'ID Number' restriction to restrict to specific zIDs or with groups/grouping restrictions.

If you only want to hide a resource to all students, restrictions are not necessary. Items may be hidden by opening the 'Edit' menu beside an activity or section and clicking 'Hide'

Edit menu open beside a book resource and mouse clicking 'Hide'

You can also do the same thing for course sections to hide everything within a section.

Mouse clicking on 'Edit' menu beside a section and selecting 'Hide topic'

You can also restrict access to an activity or resource using groups and groupings.

Benefits

The Restrict access settings allow you to tailor your course to specific students' needs, making it more flexible and responsive.

Guide

Step by step instructions

Restrict access to a resource or activity to students

In the edit menu of an activity or resource, find restrict access and click Add restriction.
In the Add restriction selection box, click the type of restriction you want to add. The box closes and the appropriate fields display under Restrict access.
After selecting a restriction, complete the fields to set the parameters of the restriction. This is different depending on the restriction
- Activity completion:
  - Select the relevant activity and completion condition.
  - Note: for Activity completion restriction to be available, Activity completion must be enabled for the course and there must be at least one activity with Activity completion enabled. For details about enabling Activity completion for the course and on individual activities, see Set up Activity Completion in Moodle
- Date:
  - Select either from or until
  - Then select an appropriate date, month, year, hour and minute.
- Grade
  - Select the activity
  - Enter the grade parameters in one or both of the two percentage fields.
- Group or Grouping:
  - Select the relevant group or grouping that will be the only group to access the activity.
  - Note: For restriction by group or grouping to be available, there must be at least one group or grouping configured in the course. For details about using groups and grouping, see Create a group in Moodle, and assign an activity to it
- User profile:
  - Select the profile field in the first dropdow
  - Set condition to restrict to in the second and third field.
  - For example, to restrict access to an individual student, you might select ID number into the first field, select contains into the second field, and enter the student's ID number in the third field.
- Restriction set allows complex groups of restrictions to be created:
  - Click Add restriction within the new restriction set and add restrictions as you normally would (ie steps 2-3)
Add as many restrictions as are appropriate to the activity, then above the restrictions list select whether the student must/must not match all/any of them. If you need a mixture of these logic conditions, consider using a restriction set.
If you want the activity hidden from students who do not meet a condition, click the Hide icon beside it .
At the bottom of the page, Save your changes.

Restrict access to a course home page section to a single group/grouping

In addition to restricting access to a course home page section in the ways detailed in the instructions above, you can also restrict access to an entire week or topic on the course home page. One example is to only give access to certain groups or groupings, all other available restrictions can also be used.

Click Turn editing on .
Click the Edit summary icon for the relevant page section.
On the Summary page, expand the Restrict access section.
At Access restrictions, click Add restriction.
In the Add restriction selection box, click Group or Grouping. The box closes.
On the Adding or Updating page, under Restrict access, select the relevant group or grouping.
Specify any other relevant restrictions, referring to the instructions above.
If you want the activity hidden from students who do not belong to the specified grouping, click the Hide icon beside the restriction .
Click Save changes.