Why would I enable self-enrollment for my project site?
Instructors sometimes set Visibility of their course site to "Institution" in order to share their content broadly with other members of the university. This setting allows users to access the site without being members of the site (listed in "People"). There are reasons, however, for wanting users to be site members.
- Users must be officially enrolled in the course in order to access Kaltura media.
- The instructor wants to keep track of who is using the course site.
- Grading is involved.
Self-enrollment allows users to enroll themselves in the site so the instructor does not have to manually invite them (which may not be feasible if there are large numbers of users). Please note that users must have a CalNet ID in order to self-enroll in a course, even if course Visibility is set to Public.
How to set up self enrollment for your project site
Assess if you can enable self-enrollment on your course site
- Self-enrollment can only be enabled for Project sites or unofficial course sites, not for official course sites.
- Again, please note that users must have a CalNet ID in order to self-enroll in a course, even if course Visibility is set to Public. If you are intending for people outside of the university to enroll in your course, self-enrollment will not serve that purpose.
Enable self-enrollment for your course
- Navigate to the course settings page
- Select "more options"
- Check "Let students self-enroll by sharing with them a secret URL or code"
- (Optional) Check "Add a 'Join this Course' link to the course home page"
- Select "Update Course Details" to save your changes
- The course settings page will now display your enroll URL which can be shared
Add self-enrollment instructions to your course's home page (optional)
The following steps are optional and unnecessary to enable self-enrollment in the course, but it might be helpful to add instructions to your home page to direct users to self-enroll in your course.
- Create a new bCourses Page following the instructions in How do I create a new page in a course? or navigate to your current homepage if you already set a front page for your site.
- On this new page, use the Rich Content Editor to provide instructions on how students can self-enroll in the course. For a reminder of how to use the Rich Content Editor, see the Rich Content Editor (All Users) video tutorial. You can use the following as a template:
To enroll in the course as a student, do one of the following:
- Select the "+ Join Course" button on the far right side of the homepage. If you cannot see the button, you might have to expand your browser window.
- Alternatively, use the self-enrollment link to enroll (You will need to hyperlink the self enrollment link that was sent to you from bcourseshelp@berkeley.edu in step 1 in "self-enrollment link")
- If you created a new page for these instructions, set the page as the course's front page so it will be the first page users see when they access your bCourses site. See How do I set a Front Page in a course? for instructions.