Adding a new cohort or editing an existing cohort

Why use cohorts?

A Cohorts is site-wide or course category-wide groups, its main function is to provide all the members of a cohort to be easily and effortlessly enrolled in a course, or numerous courses.

How do I do this?

To do this you will need to set up a Cohort and add a Cohort sync to the courses you want to associate with the Cohort. Below we will cover adding a Cohort and setting up a Cohort sync

Adding/Editing a Cohort - Summary of steps

Below is a series of steps you can follow to add a new cohort to your Moodle platform.

1. Go to the site admin section of your Moodle site
2. Select the users tab from the panel
3. Under the Accounts category, select the label called ‘Cohorts’
4. This page shows all the cohorts that exist on the system, paired with their Cohort ID, size and name. When adding users to a cohort you must ensure you use the Cohort ID correctly (it is case and special character sensitive)
   1. To edit a cohort select the editing gear option under the edit category in the System Cohorts table (found under the tab ‘System cohorts’)
   2. To add a new cohort select the ‘Add new cohort’ tab from the menu
      1. Fill or edit the name tab to change design the name of the cohort, this is used for categorising the cohort
      2. The context tab determines where your cohort will be applicable, by default this is set to System meaning it will be applicable throughout the entire website
      3. Cohort ID determines what the system will use when communicating information about this cohort
      4. Visible determines whether this cohort is active or inactive on the platform, ensure this is set to visible if you want this cohort to have any impact on the platform
5. Select save to complete your changes, this will update the System Cohorts table

Adding/Editing a Cohort Sync - Summary of steps

Below is a series of steps you can follow to add a new cohort sync to your Moodle platform.

1. Go to the course you would like to enrol your cohort into
2. Select the gear menu for editing that course, this can usually be found either in the top left or top right corner of your page
3. From the course editing menu/dropdown select the label Enrolement methods under the category Users/user Links. If this option is not visible from the menu/dropdown select the option ‘More’ and repeat this step.
4. The enrolment methods page shows all the different processes that add your users to your course. Each process is named and will identify to you the number of users currently using that enrolment method.
   1. To edit an enrolment method select the editing gear option under the edit category in the Enrolment methods table
   2. To add a new enrolment method scroll down to the bottom of the table to the dropdown menu titled ‘Add method’
      1. For this tutorial we want to add a cohort sync, select this option from the dropdown menu, This will take you to the editing screen for our new Enrolment method
      2. Custom instance name will define the identifier for your enrolment method, this will be the name that appears in the menu
      3. Active determines if the enrolment method will have an impact, ensure this is set to Active if you want this method to function
      4. Select the Cohorts you would like to automatically enrol into the course from the dropdown under the Cohort label
      5. Assign role dropdown defines what system role your enrolled users will have when in this course. By default this will be set to student which will allow then to view and interact with the course but not make edits to its structure.
5. Select Add method/save to complete your changes, this will update the Enrolment methods table
6. Congratulations! All users you now assign to your Cohort will automatically be enrolled into this course, repeat the process to apply this to other course pages or cohorts

Advanced Features Note: Under the ‘add to group’ label, select from the dropdown an existing group or select ‘create new group’ when building your cohort sync to automatically add your cohort members into a page specific group. This will allow you to create restrictions on the page tailored around that group. Use this to create and manage your tailored user experiences!