Course completion enables the teacher to set the required elements that must be completed in order to achieve the course. This can be used in the same way as activity completion, and it can also be used to complement it.
For example, an online course can contain a wide range of resources and activities that could be a mixture of required elements alongside further supplementary resources. However, some of these activities, such as the assessed elements, might need to be tracked separately by the teacher and looking through the whole activity report could be quite time consuming. This is where course completion can be used.
Within the course, where course completion is to be added, click on the Administration block and click on Course Completion:
We have a number of options within the Completion completion screen. We can enable one or many options and choose whether all of these options are required or the course will be complete if any one of them has been achieved. These options are as follows:
- General: This is where we can choose whether all the options that we set are required or if any of them can be completed (in which case, as long as one of them is completed, the student will complete the course).
- Condition: Activity completion: All resources and activities that have activity completion added to them will appear in a list here with a checkbox next to them. It is here that we will choose the required elements that need to be achieved in order to complete the course. For our example, there is a list of all the assignments within the course. Put a tick next to each assignment in your course. At the bottom of the list, there is also an option for you to choose whether students need to complete all or any of these activities. You can see these options in the following screenshot:
- Condition: Completion of other courses: If other courses on the site have course completion set up, we can choose other courses that need to be completed before this course can be marked as complete. Students can work on the online courses concurrently but the course where this setting is enabled will not be marked as complete until the chosen prerequisite courses are also marked as complete. We also get an "any or all" option again.
- Condition: Date: If this option is enabled students will not be able to complete the course until at least the date set.
- Condition: Enrolment duration: This is similar to the date option but instead of specifying a date, we can choose a length of time that the student needs to be enrolled on the course. If enabled, students will not be able to complete the course until at least the specified number of days from which they became members of the online course.
- Condition: Unenrolment: This will mark the course as complete when a student is unenrolled from the course.
- Condition: Course Grade: If enabled, a course pass grade can be set. Once the Gradebook course total meets this grade for a student, this element will be marked as complete on the course completion report.
- Manual self completion: If this option is enabled, students will be able to indicate that they have completed the course. If we use this option, the self-completion block must also be added to the course to give students the option to choose Complete course.
- Manual completion by: This can be used as a final checking procedure. If a role is chosen here, any user with that role will need to check all the activities and manually confirm that the work is completed. This is very useful where additional paperwork or checking is required. We also get an "any or all" option here to choose whether multiple roles need to sign off the completion or only one is required. For our example, choose Teacher.
- Click on Save changes.
It is possible to access the course completion report through the Reports option within the Administration menu in the same way as the activity completion report. However, there is also a block available to further enhance the use of course completion.
To add the block, do the following steps:
- Click on Turn editing on.
- Find the Add a block option (usually at the bottom of all the existing blocks on the left-hand side of the course) and click on Add.
- Choose Course completion status.
The block will look like this to the teacher:
Click on View course report. You will see a report similar to the activity completion report but it will only show the options, resources, and activities that were chosen in the course completion setup process:
The report shows ticks for Activities that have been completed successfully or crosses where a student has not yet met the specific requirements for the activity and has not been awarded the required pass grade (when a Grade to pass has been set). There will be no icon shown for the activities that are not yet complete. Note that under the Activities title it says All indicating that all the activities are required.
Under the Approval heading, there is a Teacher column. This is used by the teacher to manually tick when they are satisfied that all the required elements have been completed. If no role is set up for manual completion, this column will not be in the course report. If multiple roles had been set up, they would all appear here. Notice again that it shows the All the approval roles are required message. In this case, only one is required.
If self-completion has been turned on, this will also be shown here.
Finally, the Course heading has a Course complete column. When all the required elements have a tick within them, a tick will automatically appear in this column.
As with the activity completion report, you can view specific students, download the report, and use groups on this screen.
A student will see a different version of this report and, of course, it will only show them their own data. Let's take a look at what Madeline W would see.
On the main screen of the course, Madeline sees a summary of her progress to date in the Course completion status block:
Madeline can see that the course is currently in progress and that two out of the five required activities are complete. Madeline can get further information by clicking on More details. This will show the following window:
This provides further information about the activities that need to be completed and the current status of each item required. If the activities are complete, the completion date is shown.
If self-completion is enabled for the course, students will also see a Self completion option within this report. When using this option, the Self completion block must also be added to the course. This block contains a link that says Complete course. This is clicked when the student is ready to complete the course (that is, when they feel that everything is finished and complete):
After clicking on the Complete course text, the student will be asked to confirm by clicking on Yes or No:
Please note that students can click on this even if the required course activities are not yet complete.
Note
The activity and course completion reports are updated when the cron job is completed on the server. This captures the most up-to-date information in relation to Moodle activities to ensure the reports are up to date. If the reports need to be constantly up to date, the cron job might need to be set up to run regularly. Speak with your Moodle administrator to find out more about the cron job.