There are three ways to control what students can see and access in your course:
- Use availability dates to hide or lock content before a start date and after an end date
- Manually hide a topic or module
- Use release conditions to hide an item from students who have not met one or more conditions in the course.
Availability dates
In VIULearn, you can add a start date, due date, and end date to your modules, sub-modules, or content topics. Dates help students know when you expect them to complete an activity or read a content item. You can use dates to both control access and help guide students through the materials and activities.
There are three types of dates available in VIULearn.
- Due date: the due date in VIULearn does not impact whether a student can see or access an item. Due dates give students informaiton about your expectation. In activities such as assignments, you will be able to see if a student submitted after the due date when grading. Students can subscribe to receive notifications based on due date. For example, a student can opt in to receive a notification in VIULearn when adue date is 2 days away.
- Start date: Students cannot access an item in your course (topic, module or activity) until the start date. Unlike a hidden item, students can see the title of the upcoming item and when it will be available. However, they cannot open it until the start date passes.
- End date: Students cannot access content or activities in your course after the end date has passed. Just like with start dates, students will be able to see that the content item or activity exists, but will not be able to open it.
Use availability restrictions carefully. Students can become frustrated if they are unable to move through content at their own pace. In particular, avoid end dates for course materials that students may need to review later. Due dates are a great way to give students information about the course pacing without limiting their access.
- Select Content from the course navigation bar.
- Go to the module or content item you want to add a date to
- Click the Bulk Edit button.
- Click the Add dates and restrictions... text below the item
- Add a date, by clicking on the appropriate field and selecting a date from the pop up calendar
- Click the blue Update button.
- Click the Done Editing button.
Release Conditions
You can use Release Conditions to create custom learnign paths in VIULearn. Students cannot see a module, item or activity with an attached Release Condition until they have met the condition.
For example, you can set up a Release Condition that only makes your assignment visible once students read the directions. To do this you would add a condition to the assignment that students view a page in content. once the student views the page in content, they will gain access to the folder to submit their work.
You can base restrictions on performance on an activity such as the score on a quiz. If you have taked the WHMIS course in VIULearn, you have experienced this kind of release condition being used. In that course you must pass the module quiz before moving on to the next module.
If you attach multiple conditions to an item, you can choose wether students need to meet all the attached conditions or only one of the conditions. For example, you could require users to visit the first three content topics in a unit before gaining access to an associated quiz.
Please note: Release conditions are not re-evaluated for a user once they have cleared them. This means that if a student meets a condition and then you later change a grade or move them to a new group, they will still have access to previously unlocked content. To give an example:
Jane added a release condition to Module 2 that requires students to receive 75% or higher on the Module 1 self-test before accessing Module 2. A student receives 80% and unlocks module 2. Jane then discovers there was a problem with how the quiz was grading and this results in the student's grade being reduced below 75%. Even though the student no longer meets the condition Jane had set, they will continue to have access to module 2.
Best practices for Release Conditions
Create all of your course materials and set up your Release Conditions before the course opens to users. This gives you a chance to check for mistakes in the conditions or for circular, contradictory, or unnecessary conditions. If you add new Release Conditions after users have accessed the course, users might be confused by resources disappearing. Since conditions cannot be reset, you also risk having users meet conditions before your resources are ready (e.g., accessing a content topic before it is finished).
Each condition you associate with a tool takes additional time for VIULearn to process. Using as few conditions as possible to set up a learning path minimizes the amount of time that users spend waiting for pages to load.
For example, you set up a content topic, a quiz, and an assignment submission folder for the second week of class. You want users to read the topic before taking the quiz, and you want them to read the topic and attempt the quiz before submitting the week’s work to the assignment submission folder. For the assignment submission folder, you only need to attach the condition that users attempt the quiz. Since users must read the content topic before they can take the quiz, it is not necessary to add this condition to the assignment submission folder.
A circular reference makes it impossible for users to satisfy a set of conditions. For example, if you set the condition that users must view a content topic before they can access an assignment submission folder, and then set a condition that they must submit a file to the assignment submission folder before they can access the content topic, you have a circular reference. Users can’t satisfy either condition without satisfying the other one first.
Circular references are more likely to occur with long chains of conditions. For example, a content topic that depends on a quiz that depends on a assignment submission folder that depends on a checklist that depends on the content topic.
Ensure that your conditions are not impossible for users to satisfy. For example, a condition that users must achieve greater than 100% on a grade item would be impossible (unless bonus marks are available for the item). If users are unable to satisfy a condition, they are unable to access the content or tools to which the condition is attached.
Contradictory conditions occur when two or more conditions that cancel each other out are associated with an item. For example, the conditions “User must achieve greater than 49.9% on grade item 1” and “User must achieve less than 50% on grade item 1” are contradictory. Users could not satisfy both conditions at the same time; they would not be able to see the item associated with these conditions.
Set up a Release Condition
- Select Content from the course navigation bar.
- Click on the content item you want to add the condition to.
- Click the Bulk Edit button.
- Click the Add dates and restrictions... text below the item.
- Click the Create button to create and add a Release Condition.
- Use the drop down menus to select the conditions students must meet before the content item is visible. Once you select a condition from the first drop down menu, additional configuration options will appear. Items in the first drop down menu are organized by tool.
- When you have finished setting your conditions, click the blue Update button to save your changes.
- Once you have finished making changes, click the Done Editing button to exit the Bulk Edit mode.
- Select Content from the course navigation bar.
- Navigate to the content item you want to add a condition to.
- If you want to add a Release Condition to a specific topic, click the Bulk Edit button
- Click the Add dates and restrictions... text below the item.
- Click the Browse button to view and select from a list of conditions you have previously set up in the course.
- Check the box next to the condition you want to attach and click Attach.
- Click the blue Update button to save your changes.
- Click the Done Editing button.
Hide a topic or module
Hidden content cannot be seen or accessed by students. If you hide a single topic, students will not see that topic.
- Select Content from the course navigation bar.
- Find and click on the module or sub-module that you want to hide.
- Click the eyeball icon on the right side of the page (across from the "Add Dates and restrictions..." option).
- Click the toggle button to change the module from visible to hidden.
- Your change will be saved automatically and you will see a confirmation pop-up at the bottom of the pag
- Select Content from the course navigation bar.
- Find and click on the module or sub-module where the content topic you wish to hide is located.
- Click the grey Bulk Edit button.
- Click the eyeball icon next to the topic you wish to hide from learners.
- Click the toggle button to change the topic from visible to hidden.
- Repeat steps 4-5 for each Topic you wish to hide in that module or sub-module.
- Once you are finished, scroll back up to the top of the page and click the blue Done Editing button.