Open and closed cohorts

Using open and closed cohorts

Most courses on OpenLearn Create are open for anyone to enrol and complete without any barriers.

However, some courses are set up for closed cohorts – that is, a specific group of people – so are not open courses. On OpenLearn Create, this is done by using a password called an ‘enrolment key’ as a barrier to enrolment, and switching off guest access to the course so that the content cannot be seen by anyone who has not enrolled.

Note: Some activities such as quizzes will require enrolment for them to be viewed and completed, even if guest access is allowed.

There are various options for open and closed courses:

• Open cohort: Anyone can enrol and anyone can see the course content without enrolling (open enrolment, guest access switched on, no need for an enrolment key).
• Open enrolment: Anyone can enrol and only those who have enrolled can see course content (open enrolment, guest access switched off, no need for an enrolment key).
• Closed enrolment: A restricted group of people can enrol and anyone can see the course content without enrolling (enrolment key applied, guest access switched on). This combination is unusual.
• Closed cohort: A restricted group of people can enrol and only those who have enrolled can see course content (enrolment key applied, guest access switched off). 

If a course is a closed cohort, it is better that it does not appear in the free courses listing on the site because anyone finding it there and clicking on it for more information will get the enrolment key screen with no further information about the course or how to obtain the enrolment key. The only way to stop it from appearing in the free courses listing is to set it up in a private collection.

Private collections do not appear in the collections section of the website. They are set up for organisations who do not want their collection to be publicly available and are usually for a specific group of users. The private collection page can still be found by search engines but the content of closed cohort courses in the private collection cannot. A private collection can only be set up by an OpenLearn Create platform manager.

Setting up an enrolment key

You need to have the Course Manager role to be able to set up an enrolment key for your course and switch off guest access in OpenLearn Create. To get this role you will need to complete a data declaration form, so please contact openlearncreate@open.ac.uk to request the form.

Setting up a course with an enrolment password

To set up an enrolment key, go to the Administration block on the left-hand side of the screen. Click on OpenLearners and then Enrolment methods.

Click on Guest access. In the form that appears go to Allow guest access and select ‘No’ from the drop-down list before clicking on Save changes.

Click on Manual enrolments. In the form that appears go to Enable manual enrolments and select ‘No’ from the drop-down list before clicking on Save changes.

Click on OpenLearn Enrolment. In the form that appears go to Enrolment key and type an enrolment password for your course into the text field before clicking on Save changes.

Groups and enrolment keys

You may wish to run the same course with several supported cohorts, either at the same time or in successive groups.

You can use the groups function to set up each cohort, which will need a title, a cohort code, a description and a cohort enrolment key.

Create groups

In the Administration block click on OpenLearners and then Groups.

Click on Create group.

In the form that appears, fill in the Group name, Group ID number, Group description and Enrolment key fields. Try not to make the enrolment key easy to guess: ideally it should be a mix of upper- and lower-case characters, at least one special character such as * or #, and some numbers. When you’ve done this, click on Save changes.

You can edit the group details by clicking on Edit group settings. 

If you want to import several groups with their associated enrolment keys, you can import them in a .TXT file that contains the values separated by commas. You will need the following headings for the data in the .TXT file, so the data for each group should be in this order:

groupname,groupidnumber,description,enrolmentkey

Using group enrolment keys for enrolment

To set up the course to use group enrolment keys instead of a course enrolment key, go to the Administration block and click on OpenLearners and then Enrolment methods.

Click on Guest access. In the form that appears go to Allow guest access and select ‘No’ from the drop-down list before clicking on Save changes.

Click on Manual enrolments. In the form that appears go to Enable manual enrolments and select ‘No’ from the drop-down list before clicking on Save changes.

Click on OpenLearn Enrolment. In the form that appears go to Enrolment key and type an enrolment password for your course into the text field. Go to Use group enrolment keys and select ‘Yes’ from the drop-down list. This will activate the group enrolment keys instead of the course enrolment key you have just entered, which is still needed as part of the settings but will not be used by your learners. Ensure that the Default assigned role is set to OpenLearner before clicking on Save changes.

Your learners will only be able to enrol on the course with the enrolment key you send to them for their cohort. They will only need to use the enrolment key once, unless they accidentally unenrol themselves from the course and want to enrol again.

Restricting course activities to cohort groups

If your course has several cohorts and one forum, it is possible to set the forum to have a separate forum space for each cohort group.

In your forum, go to the Administration block and click on Settings.

Go to the Common module settings dropdown. Go to Group mode and select ‘Separate groups’ from the drop-down list before clicking on Save changes.

This means that each group member can only see their own group – other groups are invisible.

You can use the group function for other course activities such as Choice (poll), wiki, glossary or blog.

Manually adding a user to a group

A course manager can assign enrolled users into groups manually.

Go to the Administration block and click on OpenLearners.

In the list of names of enrolled users is a column for Groups. Click on the pencil icon (Edit groups) for a user and choose the appropriate group from the drop-down list that appears. Forum moderators can have more than one cohort group to moderate, whereas learners will usually only be in the one cohort group they were assigned to when they used the key during enrolment.

It is also possible to add or remove users from a cohort group via the Groups screen by clicking on the group’s name and using the Add/remove users button.

Notifying your learners about enrolling on your course

If your course is open to anyone to enrol on then when it has been published it will appear on OpenLearn Create’s list of free courses listing. As well as promoting the course yourself, people will find your course using search engines or by visiting the site and searching the list for courses to study.

If your course is a closed cohort course in a private collection, you will need to notify the learners about it yourself. You can explain on the private collection page how learners can obtain the enrolment key for the course they want to study.

You can also send out an email from you or your organisation to a group of learners, telling them that they need to:

• register an account (if they don’t already have an OU account)
• log in to OpenLearn Create with their account
• go to the course URL and enter the enrolment key in the enrolment screen – you will need to:
  • include the course URL and enrolment key in the email
  • ask them not to share the enrolment key with anyone else. 

If you have sent out an enrolment key to learners, you will need to monitor who has enrolled on the course.