Requirements and prerequisites can be applied to resources and modules to help guide students through their course by controlling the release of course content.
Watch the video, download the guide or follow onscreen instructions below to find out more about requirements and prerequisites and how to apply them.
What are requirements and prerequisites?
Requirements and prerequisites can be used to help guide students through their course by controlling the release of course content
- Requirements are actions applied to resources within modules that indicate what students need to do to complete them
- Prerequisites are applied to modules and indicate which module(s) need to be completed before progressing to the next
Why use prerequisites and requirements?
- They can help improve engagement as students need to engage with specific resources before they can progress to the next
- They can help students track their progress as they can see what they have completed and what they need to do next
- They provide tutors with an overview of student interaction and progress through the course
Requirement types
Depending on the type of resource you can require students to:
- View an item
- Mark an item as ‘done’
- Contribute to a page or discussion
- Submit an assignment or quiz
- Score a certain mark or above in an assignment or quiz
- Note: You will be presented with a choice of requirements to select from for each resource
How to add requirements to resources
- Go to the module that you want to add requirements to
- Click the three-dot icon at the end of the row and select Edit
- Go to the requirements section and click Add requirement:
- Then select whether students need to complete all or one requirement and whether they need to move through requirements sequentially:
Beneath these settings you will see the first resource in the module with a default requirement attached to it. You can leave this as it is or:
- Click the default requirement (e.g., view the item) to see available requirements and select from the options available:
- Click + Add requirement and repeat the process for other resources in the module
Note: When adding requirements to other resources, click the current resource (e.g., Video – Week 5 overview) and select from the list:
- When you have finished adding requirements, click Update module and Re-lock modules to save
- Text will now display beneath each resource that has a requirement attached to indicate what needs to be done to complete it:
How to add a prerequisite to a module
Once requirements have been added to resources, prerequisites can be added to modules.
- Go to the module that you want to add the prerequisite to
- Click the three-dot icon and select Edit
- Then click +Add prerequisite
- Select the module that needs to be completed
- Then click Update module and Re-lock modules
Student View
In the example below, requirements have been applied to each resource in the Week 5 Module and students need to work through them sequentially. Until the first resource ‘Video – Week 5 Overview’ has been viewed the next resource remains unavailable and greyed out.
Resources in the Week 6 module are also unavailable and there is a lock icon and message informing that the Week 5 module is a prerequisite:
How to monitor student progress
When requirements and prerequisites have been applied, tutors can view the progress of each student. To do this:
- From the homepage, click modules in the course navigation menu
- Click the View Progress button (top right)
Student names are displayed in alphabetical order in a list on the right side of the page and Module progress of the first student is displayed by default
- To view the progress of another student, click their name
- In the example below Test Student4 has two items left to complete in the Week 5 module and the Week 6 module will remain locked until they have been completed:
Note: The first three modules need to be accessed at any time, so requirements and prerequisites have not been applied to them and they are marked as complete by default.
Considerations
- Requirements & prerequisites should not be added to modules containing core information – e.g., Module information, Assessment Information, Resit & Deferred work
- For resources that have the ‘view an item’ or ‘mark as done’ requirements applied to them, students have little to do for them to be marked as complete.
How to lock a module until a specified date
Modules can also be locked until a specific date regardless of whether requirements and prerequisites have been set.
This maybe useful if you have added content for the coming weeks but don’t want students to access it yet and removes the risk of forgetting to publish.
To lock a module:
- Go to the module that you want to lock
- Click the three-dot icon and select Edit
- Click to select the ‘Lock until’ checkbox
- Then click the calendar icon and select a date:
