enrolling students

[TimothyCarey]

I want to be able to add students to my course before the course starts but I don't want them to have access to the course materials until the course starts. Can someone explain how to do that please? If I don't publish the course or have the dates set for the start of the course, the students don't get the email to access the course when I enrol them. The only way they get the email is if I publish the course and change the dates so they include the date I'm enrolling them. I can't figure out how to change this. 

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hi @TimothyCarey ...

Another way you could possibly go about this is to publish the course, set the course start/end dates in your course "Settings", and restrict access (there are check-boxes next to these dates).  Or, you could even build all of your course content via your "Modules" page (and hide many of the other course navigation buttons like "Assignments", "Discussions", "Quizzes", "Pages", etc.).  That way, you build all of your module content with those items and only send your students to the "Modules" page to view the course content ... module by module.  But, if you don't want your students to see that content yet, just unpublish each module until you are ready for students to view them.  So, if you enroll your students now, publish the course, and keep your modules unpublished, there really won't be a lot for students to look at...until you are ready to publish the modules that you've built for your course.  What do you think of that idea?

[TimothyCarey]

This is super helpful Chris. Thanks loads. Publishing the course but unpublishing the modules is perfect. That's exactly the result I was after. I really appreciate you taking the time to reply. I can't tell you how much time I've spent trying to figure out a solution! 🙂

[Chris_Hofer]

@TimothyCarey ...

Happy to help out...and glad that you'll be able to use my suggestions in your course!