You've figured out how you are going to authenticate users in Moodle and have learned how to set up two authentication plugins. We now need to consider how you are going to enroll users in courses. You may choose several different methods depending on the course and the purpose of the course. In Chapter 2, Moodle in Hiring and Interviewing we set up a course to manage the hiring process for a new position and we enabled self-enrollment so the applicant could enroll in a course that corresponded to the position they were interested in. This is one way to enroll users in a course.
You can also enroll users in courses manually. Teachers and Moodle administrators in a course can assign users a role and thereby enroll them in the course. At the end of Chapter 2, Moodle in Hiring and Interviewing, you also learned how to assign roles, and so we won't bother going into that again. However, there may be some instances where you want to automate course enrollment. For example, your company's HR system includes a talent management system and you want to use this information to auto-enroll users in the appropriate training courses. Moodle has several enrollment plugins which will allow you to automate the enrollment process.
Similar to what we did previously with the authentication plugins, we will first briefly describe the enrollment plugins available and then choose two among them for more detailed examples.
- Cohort sync: If you are using cohorts, then this will synchronize course enrollment with cohort members.
- External database: Like the database authentication plug-in, an external database can be used to look up enrollments. The database would need to contain, at a minimum, fields for a course ID and user ID.
- Flat file (CSV): This allows you to import user enrollment data using a specially formatted text file. The file is a comma separated file usually consisting of four or six fields.
- IMS Enterprise file: This allows you to import enrollment data using a specially formatted XML file. The file must follow the IMS Enterprise file format.
- LDAP enrollments: This allows you to manage enrollment using an external LDAP server in addition to managing authentication. The LDAP tree will need to contain groups that map to courses and entries containing unique identifiers that map to students.
- MNet remote enrollments: This allows remote enrollments between Moodle sites in the Moodle Network.
- PayPal: It allows you to set up paid courses. Students trying to enroll will be given the option to make a payment to enter. You have the option of setting a site-wide cost or individual course cost.
So let's get into some more detailed examples with the flat file and external database enrollment plugins.