Background
At a university with 1,300 Moodle courses and 6,500 students, many students enroll in multiple courses, but the completion rate falls short of the faculties' expectations. To address this, the university wants to re-engage students and remind them to complete courses.
Proposed solution
To re-engage the students, we will use the automation engine to send a reminder to each student two weeks after enrollment if they have not completed the course yet.
Prerequisites
Since this use case doesn’t rely on any course-specific settings or content, there are no prerequisites.
Implementation
Due to the architecture of the automation engine, it is necessary to first create a template. Once the template is created, an associated automation instance can be created within a course to trigger the notification. For this use case, we configure all settings within the template itself to eliminate the need for additional configuration in the individual instances.
Create a template
Create a new template in the templates overview and configure the settings as follows. Generic link to templates overview: yourmoodleinstallation.com/mod/pulse/automation/templates/list.php
Under ‘General’ configure the following settings.
Title: Reminder to complete course
Reference: ReminderCC-
Internal Notes: This automation sends a reminder to students who have not completed the course within a specific time after enrollment, encouraging them to finish it.
Under ‘Condition’ configure the following settings.
User enrollment: Upcoming
Under ‘Notification’ configure the following settings.
Sender: Course teacher
Delay: After
Delay duration: 2 weeks
Suppress notification if course is completed: Yes
Recipient: Student
Subject: Reminder to complete course {Course_Fullname}
Header content:
University
Hauptstraße 56
10115 Berlin
Germany
Static content:
Dear {User_Firstname},
We’re excited that you enrolled in the {Course_Fullname} course on {Enrolment_Startdate}!
Since the course is still open for you, we wanted to kindly remind you to complete it within the next week.
Here’s a brief summary of what you’ll gain by finishing the course:
{Course_Summary}
{Course_Courseurl}
Remember, finishing the course is a valuable step toward achieving your goals. If you encounter any issues or need assistance along the way, feel free to reach out to me at {Sender_Email}. I’m here to help!
Wishing you the best in completing the course!
Best regards,
{Sender_Firstname} {Sender_Lastname}
Footer content:
Our vision is to empower learners to unlock their full potential.
Save changes made to the template.
Deployment over multiple courses
Now that you have created the template with the necessary settings, the next step is to create associated instances in courses within the Moodle installation. To do this, open the template settings and navigate to 'Instance management.'
Select all courses where you want to add an associated instance.
Scroll down and click ‘Add instances +’.
Result
Every student who enrolls in a course with an added instance will receive a personalized email reminder to complete the course if they haven’t done so within two weeks. Students who are already enrolled will not be affected.
Customizing settings for different or extended use cases
Use case #2a: Adapt the automation to specific activity completions in the instance Settings.
Condition:
Activity completion: All
Select activities: Select the first activity of the course.
Notification:
Suppress notification if modules are completed: Select the second activity of the course.
Static content: Compliment students on completing the first activity and prompt them to continue the course.