CPD.myplace On Boarding

By Michael Hughes
5 min

This page is a work in progress.

This article covers the on-boarding of a module / modules for "loosely" affiliated students at the University.

Typically these are students that may be purchasing a non-accredited (ie. not part of a degree) module or modules, such as for CPD or other training, where establishing a longer term, formal record on central Student Record is not appropriate or relevant.

Pre-requisites, Constraints and Considerations 

The following pre-requisites must be observed:

  1. Modules must not be associated with Degree or similar programmes or where a formal on-going record.

  2. Students cannot require a formal or on-going record held by the University's core student record.

  3. Completion tracking of students on Modules is the responsibility of the module's leader.

    1. Completion tracking of students on Modules must not purely rely on the data held in the CPD instance of Myplace. 

    2. Any verification of student completion of modules must be recorded and held out side of the instance.

  4. Students will be required to self-register a profile against the instance using a personal email address.

Constraints

The following service limitations affect the CPD instance. These are typically due to licensing limitations that exist for non-core users.

Available Content / Tools

  1. eStream video content can be used as teaching resources.

Unavailable Content / tools

  1. Microsoft Stream video content cannot be used as a teaching resource.

  2. All Microsoft based services cannot be used, except where the students may have personal or guest access to them. 

  3. Zoom, except for where students are guest users. 

Staff Registration

The process for "student" users is covered later on.

University of Strathclyde staff who need to access cpd.myplace should click on the "Login via shibboleth" option on the login page. 

This should create a profile automatically, which will then need to be assigned appropriate staff rights by Myplace Support. For staff responsible for the “whole” CPD course or a department offering multiple CPD courses, this would be assigned as “category” role that will cover the relevant area. This is not necessary for staff who’s remit is a single instance of a CPD course (see Staff Enrolment (on courses)).

These category assignments are intended to allow for the overall management of the CPD module (and instances of it) or the overall management of a department’s CPD offering.

Staff Enrolment (on courses)

Once staff have registered on the cpd.myplace service, they can be assigned into any CPD course instance in an appropriate role by existing staff in the course, or by any member of staff with an overarching management role.

Anyone who is in a “staff” role should have a University of Strathclyde set of credentials issued via either:

  1. Supplementary Payroll - if they may be paid regularly

  2. Temporary IT Access - potentially if they are un-paid, paid via a contract

Do not use Limited Access accounts for any staff access to cpd.myplace.

Course Layout

You must contact Myplace Support to initiate the set up of any modules for delivery on cpd.myplace.

In most cases a "standard" layout will be created for staff to create the module being offered.

  1. Each module will be given a "category" area under the relevant faculty or department that is offering module (e.g. Faculty of Engineer > Civil Engineering > E-social Impact Assessment Course).

  2. Within the category staff responsible for the administration of the course will be assigned Course Creator role, allowing them to create courses within the category.

Depending on the nature of the module, staff may choose to:

  1. create a single course for all occurrences (instance) of the module that contains all students that undertake it.

  2. create a "master" course that contains all of the content, and then create further copies (instances) of the master course for each cohort of students.

Option 1 may be suitable where there is only ever exactly one occurrence of the module being offered, and students would not retain access after it ends.

Option 2 is typically recommended for any case where the module may be taken by different, distinct cohorts of students, where each instance of the module may overlap with another offering, or where students may retain access to their specific version of the course after completing it.

Course Building

Most features of Moodle are available for use in the development of courses on the CPD instance of Myplace.

Group Activities

As students self-register and then self-enrol on to modules, it is often not possible to set up activities that require students to be in groups prior to their enrolment. 

If you need students to be in specific groups for activities,  you can use the self-enrolment enrolment method with the Group Enrolment keys option to have students with specific keys to be placed into specific groups. These groups can be created ahead of time and the activities configured with the "empty" groups.

Unavailable Content / Tools

Microsoft Services

  1. All Microsoft based services cannot be used, except where the students may have personal or guest access to them. This includes (non-exhaustive):

    1. Team

    2. Office 365

    3. OneDrive

Zoom

  1. The CPD instance is not integrated with Zoom, but Zoom meetings created by licensed users (i.e. staff) can be added as links with the relevant guest access information.

Student Registration

Registration is the process that an individual gains access to the CPD service in general, and is required prior to them enrolling into a module.

Instructions suitable for adaptation for student information on how to self-register can be found on the Self-Registration (cpd.myplace) page.

Student Enrolment

Enrolment is the process that an individual student gains access to a specific module.

In most cases the list of students for CPD modules is not known in advance. To allow students to gain access the relevant modules, the most common approach is to use self-enrolment.

Instructions suitable for adaptation for student information on self-enrolment can be found on the Self Registration (cpd.myplace) page .

Self-Enrolment

Self enrolment will present students with the option to join a class when they first access it. Normally access to the module would be controlled by an enrolment key that would be made available to a student by an alternate means (e.g. email upon confirmation of payment etc).

The enrolment key is shared so any user can pass it on to gain access. If you require a more sophisticated level of control you may need to consider an alternate route for controlling access, such as the Engineering Faculty's Flexible Learning Centre store front.

Normally a self-enrolment method instance would be created for each cohort of students you wish to give access to, with each instance having a different enrolment key. 

Group Enrolment Keys

You may set the use of Group Enrolment Keys on the self-enrolment method. When this is enabled, you can specify an enrolment key on a course group (this must be unique to each group).

If a student enters a group enrolment key, they will be both enrolled on to the module as as student, and also be added as a member of the group with the corresponding key.

This may be useful in the case of Course Layout Option 1 where you may have a single instance of the module, with students from different organisations.

Store Fronts

A limited number of external store fronts exist to handle the sale and access to a CPD Myplace module or content.

Currently these are:

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