Skip to site navigation

Moodle enrolments: for staff and student access to your course

You have four main options for Moodle enrolment - ELE recommend using a combination of the Portico enrolments and the enrolment key methods to grant students access to your course. To allow staff to access your courses manual enrolment is the easiest option.:

Portico enrolments are generally a good way of enrolling students on courses, but
early in term 1 student data in Portico module lists may be incomplete and/or inaccurate as students take time to make and modify module selections, and departments deal with large numbers of requests.  Therefore you may want to use a combination of Portico enrolments and the Enrolment key to ensure that all students who need to can access your course.

IMPORTANT: Before this year's enrolments start, do ensure that you have reset your course to remove last year's students!

Portico enrolments (recommended for student access)

If your course matches a module in Portico then Moodle can read the enrolments from Portico overnight.

Most Moodle courses for UCL taught modules will automatically have Portico enrolments enabled.

How to set up Portico enrolments:

  1. Your course must link to one or more Portico modules (i.e. ELE1001: Beginners Learning Technology).
  2. Click [Settings] from the Administration block of your course and make note of the Portico identifier field to your module code. If it's empty, you must add one, we recommend using the module code (i.e. ELE1001). 
  3. For linking to multiple modules, separate with underscores (i.e. ELE1001_ELE1002_ELEG003)
  4. Request the course to be linked to Portico via the Request Portico Enrolments for your course form. 

Note: it may take 48-72 hours for a request to be processed.

NOTE: Students will only be enrolled in your Moodle course once they have been fully approved in Portico! Because there is often a delay of up to 2 weeks before students are approved in Portico, you may want to use an enrolment key.

Important Dates:

The automatic enrolments will begin on the first week of term.

All Portico module choices will be finalised in week six of term.

After week 6 automatic Portico imports will be turned off and students who should not be enroled on the Moodle course can be removed (students may also unenrol themselves).


Enrolment key (recommended for student access)

The enrolment key in Moodle permits students to enrol themselves onto Moodle courses without needing to wait for their Portico enrolments to be confirmed; this is a simple option for both staff and students. Students can self-enrol onto your course if they know the enrolment key - a password made up of any word, number or their combination. When you are ready to make the course available to students you simply issue them with the enrolment key. You will also need to tell them the course title, so that they can search for it from the Moodle login page. 

  • To set the enrolment key, click on [Settings] (Administration block)
  • Set Course enrollable to [Yes]
  • Set Date range for enrolments if you wish (that the enrolment key will be valid)
  • Set the Enrolment key (any word, number or their combination) (untick the Unmask box to reveal the key)
  • Set Availability to [This course is available to students]
  • Click on [Save changes]
  • Don’t forget to tell your students the course title (or email them the URL to your main Moodle course page) and what the enrolment key is. 

To enrol with the help of an enrolment key, a student will need to:

  • Open up a web browser (e.g. Firefox or IE)
  • In the address field type: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/moodle
  • Login using their UCL ID and password
  • Search for the course and click on the hyperlinked name of the course from the search results
  • On the screen that appears enter the enrolment key given by the tutor
  • Click [OK] to confirm that they want to self-enrol

Manual enrolments  (recommended for staff access)

To manually add users to your course, tutors need to:

  • Log into Moodle and click on your course
  • Click on [Assign roles] (Administration block)
  • Click on the role you would like to add a participant to (.i.e. student). You will see two panels: 'Existing users' and 'Potential users'. Enter the name of the person you would like to add (i.e. John Bloggs) on the search field and click on the [Search] button
  • Select the name on the list of search results, and click on the left-pointing arrow-button between the panels to move the user from the right to the left panel.
  • Make the course available to students (see Why can't students access my course?)
    Note:     If the name contains initials (i.e. John A Bloggs) and you search for it with out the initials (i.e. John Bloggs) your search results will not be successful. In this case search using the surname only (i.e. Bloggs) or use a % sign between names. If you cannot find the user's name in Moodle's database contact E-Learning Environments.

To manually remove users, tutors need to:

  • Log into Moodle and click on your course
  • Click on [Assign roles] (Administration block)
  • Click on the role you would like to add a participant to (.i.e. student). You will see two panels: 'Existing users' and 'Potential users'.
  • Select the name on the list of 'Existing users' and click on the right-arrow-button between the panels to move the user from the left to the right panel.

Bulk enrolments (exceptional circumstances)

If you are not using Portico and have a large number of enrolments to make (~50+) ELE can perform bulk enrolments to your Moodle course(s). Send the following information in an Excel spreadsheet or comma separated text file (csv) to E-Learning Environments:


firstname, lastname, email, username, module code/shortname*

*The shortname is the second link that appears in the Moodle breadcrumb (e.g. UCL Moodle > INST1001)

» Download an excel file template for bulk uploading students into your course

NOTE: If you can not easily provide the usernames, please provide at least the name and email addresses of the users and ELE can do the rest. 

Adding students to groups

Optionally, you can also send us the group the student should be added to and providing this group exists in your moodle course each student will be assigned to a group.

firstname, lastname, email, username, module code/shortname*, groupname


» Download an excel file template for bulk uploading students into groups in your course