Restrict access to sections and activities (2024)

The restrict access feature enables teachers to restrict the availability of any activity, resource or course section according to conditions such as date, grade obtained, group or other activity completion.

It allows gamification of courses and provides a way to guide students through a course in a specified order, creating alternative pathways and introducing repetition (for example).

Such mechanisms can allow teachers to offer learning experiences that cater more to individuals, providing reinforcement when it is needed.

In this guide:

• Add a restriction
  • Restrict access by activity completion
  • Restrict access by course completion
  • Restrict access by date
  • Restrict access by group
  • Hide restriction information from students
  • Restrict access using a nested restriction set

Add a restriction

1. Go to the Moodle space and enable Edit mode .
2. Click the Edit next to the item you want to restrict access for.
3. Click Edit settings.
4. Click Restrict Access to expand the section.
5. Click the Add restriction button.
6. Choose the restriction type:
   • Activity Completion
   • Course completion
   • Date
   • Group
7. Optionally, hide this restriction information (and the activity) from students

Finally, restrictions can be set up as 'restriction sets' which offer the possibility of creating several criteria using all/any to create complex conditions.

Restrict access by activity completion

This is one of the more commonly used restrictions. It requires a student to complete another activity before this one is made available. The settings allow this to include completion of any one of a group of activities, or all of the selected activities.

1. Follow the steps to add a restriction above.
2. Click Activity completion.
3. Choose Must from the drop-down (i.e. that the student must have completed the activity).
4. Use the drop-down boxes to:
   1. Select the activity that must be completed - this will show all activities in the Moodle space that have activity completion enabled.
   2. Select must be marked complete or must be complete with pass grade if appropriate.
5. Click Save and display.

Restrict access by course completion

This requires a student to complete another course before this activity or resource is made available.

1. Follow the steps to add a restriction above.
2. Click Other course completion.
3. Click on the drop-down to show a list of all Moodle courses. This may be slow depending on the speed of your computer.
4. Select the Course that must be completed for this activity or resource to be made available to the student.
5. Click Save and display.

Restrict access by date

Restricting access by date allows sections or activities to be made available at specific points through a course e.g. weekly readings or quizzes. They can also be hidden after a specified date.

1. Follow the steps to add a restriction above.
2. Click on Date.
3. Choose Must from the drop-down menu.
4. Use the drop-down boxes to select from or until, and specify the date and time.
5. Click Save and display.

Restrict access by group

It is possible to restrict access to sections and activities by group. This option is available if there are groups set up in the Moodle space.

1. Follow the steps to add a restriction above.
2. Click on Group.
3. Choose Must from the drop-down menu.
4. Use the drop-down boxes to restrict access to students in a specific group, or to all groups.
5. Click Save and display.

For more information on restricting access via groupings, see the Create groupings guide.

Hide restriction information from students

Please note the eye icon to the left of each restriction. You can toggle this between the open and shut state for each restriction. In the event of a conflict, the shut eye always takes precedence and the activity or section will not be visible to the student.

• If the eye is SHUT then students who do not meet that part of the condition will not see the activity.
• If the eye is OPEN the students who do not meet that part of the condition will see the activity but it will be greyed out. They will have information about why they can't access it yet.

Restrict access using a nested restriction set

This opens up the possibility of having students complete one, all, or any number of activities. For example, students might have to complete one of two groups of activities by nesting two student must match all of the following restrictions within a student must match any of the following restriction. Students will have to have completed either group 2 or group 3 in order to access.

For more guidance on using Restrict access please see Moodle DocsLink opens in a new window. This page also has links to gamification examples that use Restrict access in complex ways to encourage participation and engagement with materials.

The information on this page relates to Moodle v4.1 and was last updated October 2023.