Managing Moodle Users

[lindylou]

I am exploring ways of setting up a website for my LA colleagues to easily publish T & L resources (stuff from courses etc) to our schools. We do have both a public site and an Intranet, but neither of these have proved suitable (I won't bore you with the details!). I need this site to be account-holders only.

Moodle fits the bill for ease of use for editors/contributors and for users to navigate the content. My problem is how to enable school staff to create their own accounts in Moodle that does not leave me approving or managing potentially thousands of accounts. I find the Moodle information not very helpful in the intricacies of all the authentication options. ](*,)

I don't have access to databases of users in our schools, so am probably looking at limiting access by school email domains or something similar. I have a Moodle site I have been playing with for some time, but user management has me foxed for what I want to do.

Is there someone on Edugeek, experienced with Moodle and possibly at an LA or RBC level, who would be willing to explain account options to me?

I know Learning Platforms will eventually deliver what we need, but my colleagues want to move faster than that. This LA is not procuring a single solution for our schools, so it will take time to settle down.

Thank you in anticipation!

[Geoff]

Which version of moodle?

[CyberNerd]

Becta want all the authentication done through Shibboleth.
(using local schools directory systems) this is probably your best approach:

http://shibboleth.internet2.edu/

[CyberNerd]

google "shibboleth moodle" bring some usefull links

[alan-d]

Just a thought but couldn't you set up LDAP to authenticate from multiple servers? ie one from each location?

[Geoff]

No the LDAP implementation doesn't work like that.

[Ric_]

IIRC there is an option for users to create their own accounts with their email address. You simply need to use a password on each course and give the password to those who you wish to have access.

[Geoff]

Yes, it's the 'email authentication' option. You can also limit what 'email domains' are acceptable for registration. So if you limited it to 'yourlea.ac.uk' then you're set (assuming everyone has an LEA allocated email account.

This would certainly work here in Lancashire, because our email accounts are either of the format of someone@someschool.lancsngfl.ac.uk or someone@someschool.lancs.sch.uk. You'd simply specific both the lancsngfl.ac.uk and lancs.sch.uk domains as valid email domains and you'd be set.

[lindylou]

Thanks everyone! What a great crowd :thumbup:

To answer various queries, my Moodle is on v1.6 (I think I read 1.7 has a few glitches?). I'll certainly look at the Shibboleth links with regard to Moodle. I know how it is meant to work, but I thought there were some issues with Moodle.

The plan of giving every course a key is one I considered, but I really just want staff to create their own accounts to save me too much hassle (there's only 'lil 'ol me for this stuff in our LA and it's only part of my job, so available time is precious). That way all school staff can access all materials, there's no reason for them not to do so - I just can't make this site public as our corporate rules on branding etc are really severe. That's one of the reasons I can't easily use our existing public or Intranet sites.

Sounds like email authentication is the way to go - all our schools should have a .sch.uk email option, or similar. I can find out which are using different address forms. All this is handled in schools here, not at the LA, which adds to my problems - I don't have access to a LA-wide user base.

Anyway, thanks a million, folks - wish I could buy you all a beer! :drinkers:

[Ric_]

@lindylou: You only need the password on any courses that you want to keep 'secret' IIRC the default for any new course that is created is to allow access to all.

As for the beer... make sure you attend the next conference