Moodle Tips – Restrict course activities and sections access based on a relative date

In continuation to our last post, Moodle core includes Course Relative Dates which is an experimental feature introduced in Moodle 3.8. The course relative dates feature can be used to restrict course activities based on course start date but with limited application. Renaat Debleu, founder of eWallah developed a Moodle plugin – Restriction by relative date which allows you to extend the relative dates in other parts of a course.

This plugin can be very handy in case you are looking to restrict course activities for students based on their enrollment date. It is very well maintained plugin over the last few years and is available for all Major Moodle versions.

The plugin is a availability condition Moodle plugin which makes it easier to show all modules or sections based on the following criteria X days/weeks/months :

• Before/after course start date
• Before/After course end date
• After user enrollment date
• After enrollment method end date
• After completion of activity

The plugin uses the most recent course enrollment as a starting point to calculate the availability of course resources to the students. You can also use set of availability conditions to make the course resource available only during a certain time.

The plugin doesn’t have any special settings as you can start using it immediately after installation. You need to understand the Restrict access settings in Moodle before you can use the Restriction by relative date Moodle plugin.

Check out a quick video introduction about how to use this plugin in your Moodle course:

You can download the latest version of the Restriction by relative date plugin from the official Moodle plugins directory here.

Which are the other tips to have the content dripping feature in Moodle course? Do share with us in the comments section below.