User management

Managing Moodle User Accounts

• Goals are to reduce admin involvement to a minimum, while retaining high security
• Supports a range of authentication mechanisms through plug-in authentication modules, allowing easy integration with existing systems.
• Standard email method: students can create their own login accounts. Email addresses are verified by confirmation.
• LDAP method: account logins can be checked against an LDAP server. Admin can specify which fields to use.
• IMAP, POP3, NNTP: account logins are checked against a mail or news server. SSL, certificates and TLS are supported.
• External database: any database containing at least two fields can be used as an external authentication source.
• Each person requires only one account for the whole server - each account can have different access
• An admin account controls the creation of courses and creates teachers by assigning users to courses
• A course creator account is only allowed to create courses and teach in them
• Teachers may have editing privileges removed so that they can't modify the course (eg for part-time tutors)
• Security - teachers can add an "enrolment key" to their courses to keep out non-students. They can give out this key face-to-face or via personal email etc
• Teachers can enrol students manually if desired
• Teachers can unenrol students manually if desired, otherwise they are automatically unenrolled after a certain period of inactivity (set by the admin)
• Students are encouraged to build an online profile including photos, description. Email addresses can be protected from display if required.
• Every user can specify their own timezone, and every date in Moodle is translated to that timezone (eg posting dates, assignment due dates etc)
• Every user can choose the language used for the Moodle interface (English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese etc)
• Teachers can also "force" a particular language for a particular course