Setting Up Restrict Access

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Example scenario [edit]

You would like students to complete four tasks in order:

• View a page explaining the course
• Post an introductory message in a forum
• Take a quiz
• Access a resources/activity tailored to their quiz performance

How to Access Restrict Access Settings [edit]

To get to this, click “Edit” alongside the activity you want to restrict and then choose 'Edit Settings', or add a new activity, which will bring you to the settings page. Here is the example of the quiz activity. The second tab under the activity page is “Settings”.

Scroll down the page, find the 'Restrict Access' section of the activity settings page, click the 'Add restriction' button.

A choice of conditions appears below. 

You may initially see only a limited number of options. In new QMplus modules, the default restriction types available are:

• Date
• Grade
• User profile
• Restriction set

However, these are not the only restriction types available in QMplus. There are some additional options such as:

• Activity completion
• Group
• Grouping
• Level

These options will only appear after certain settings have been configured in the course. If you have not enabled or set up these features yet, the corresponding restriction type will not be available to select.

Each restriction type, including those that only appear after specific course settings have been enabled, is explained in the following sections. 

After you set up all the restriction, scroll down to the bottom of the settings, click the button “Save and return to course” or "Save and display" to save your restriction.

Different Restriction Set up  [edit]

Date

Books allow teachers to create multi-page resources with a book-like format and table of contents (as seen in the below image). Multimedia may be embedded and books may be printed entirely or by chapter.

You can restrict access from or until a specific date and time. When adding a Date restriction, you can choose:

• Students must meet this condition
• Students must not meet this condition

For example:

• “Students must be after 10 October 2026, 09:00” → The activity becomes available at that date and time.
• “Students must be before 15 October 2026, 17:00” → The activity closes after that date and time.

This is commonly used for:

• Releasing weekly materials
• Opening and closing formative tasks
• Time-limited revision content

Grade

You can restrict access based on a grade within the course. This can be:

• The overall course grade
• The grade for a specific activity (e.g., a quiz)
• A custom grade item created in the Gradebook

When setting up a grade restriction, you can specify:

• A minimum grade (e.g., at least 50%)
• A maximum grade (e.g., less than 70%)
• Both minimum and maximum
• Or require only that a grade exists

The activity will only become available if:

• The student has received a grade, and
• The grade falls within the specified range

Important points

• Grade values can include decimals (up to five decimal places).
• The maximum value is exclusive. For example, if the maximum is set to 70, a student who scores exactly 70 will not meet the condition. If you need to include 70, you could set the maximum to 70.01.

Creating multiple grade ranges

Requiring a grade (including excluding blank grades)

• If you want to ensure students have attempted an activity before progressing:
• Add a Grade restriction
• Select the relevant activity
• Do not tick minimum or maximum

This means:

• The student must have a grade recorded
• Students with blank grades will not meet the condition
  To remove a grade condition, set the assessment name to “None” and clear any range values.

User Profile

Access can be restricted based on information in a student’s QMplus profile. This is useful if you want to make an activity available only to specific students.

For example:

• Restrict by email address
• Restrict by department-related profile field

When using this option, ensure the profile field matches exactly the information stored in QMplus. At QMUL, this method is typically used for:

• Releasing reassessment materials
• Providing alternative tasks to specific students

Activity completion

The Activity completion restriction allows you to release an activity only after a student has completed a previous activity.

For example, you may require students to complete Activity A (e.g. view a resource, submit an assignment, or attempt a quiz) before Activity B becomes available.

Before this option appears in the Restrict access list, Completion tracking must be enabled in the module settings, To enable this feature:

1. Go to your module Settings.
2. Scroll down to the Completion tracking section.
3. For Enable completion tracking, select Yes.
4. Scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save and display.

Detailed instructions on setting up course and activity completion can be found in the Course and activity completion guide.

Once enabled, you can go back to the settings of the activity to add the activity completion to your restriction, see example below:

Group and Grouping

The Group and Grouping restriction options will only appear after groups have been created in the module. Before using these options, you must:

• Go to your module homepage.
• Open Participants → Groups.
• Create the required groups and (if needed) groupings.

Detailed step-by-step instructions are available in the Add Students to Groups Guide.

The Group restriction allows you to release an activity only to a specific group. This is particularly useful for:

• Group-based coursework
• Seminar groups
• Separate assessment tasks
• Different submission points for different cohorts

For example, you may create Group A, Group B, Group C and Group D. You can then restrict an activity so that only students in Group A can access it, while students in the other groups are directed to a different activity. An example of the group setup is shown below.

A Grouping is a collection of groups. The Grouping restriction allows you to restrict access to multiple groups at once, based on how they have been organised. This is useful when:

• Several groups share the same activity
• You are managing larger modules with multiple parallel teaching groups

An example of the group setup is shown below.

Level

The Level restriction option is linked to the Level Up XP gamification plugin in QMplus.

Level Up XP allows you to award experience points (XP) for student activity, such as completing quizzes, participating in forums, or accessing course materials. As students accumulate points, they progress through defined levels.

Detailed instructions on configuring levels, XP rules, and progression settings can be found in the Level Up (gamification) Guide.

If Level Up XP has been configured in your module, you can use the Level restriction to control access based on a student’s level.

For example (see the example sceenshot below), students earn XP by completing activities. Once they reach Level 2, a new activity or resource becomes available.Higher-level content can be unlocked progressively as students gain more XP.

Restriction set

It allows make the combination of different kinds of restrictions that mentioned above. For example, you can set the students finished the previous activity A then unlock the next activity B. To do the completion tracking, please make sure you turn on the whole site’s completion tracking. How to set this please refer to Course and activity completion guide.

Manage the restriction [edit]

Once you have added restrictions, you can edit, hide, or remove them at any time.

Delete the Restriction

If you no longer need a restriction, click the “delete (bin)” icon on the right-hand side of each restriction, then it will be deleted.

Restriction Visibility Settings

Next to each restriction condition, you will see an eye icon. This controls whether students can see the restricted activity before they meet the condition.

• Eye icon enabled (visible but restricted): Students can see the activity, but it will appear greyed out. They will also see information explaining why it is unavailable (e.g. “Available from 10 October at 09:00”).
• Eye disabled (completely hidden): The activity is hidden from students until they meet the condition. They will not see it listed in the course.

This is particularly useful when:

• You want students to know content is coming soon (keep the eye icon enabled)
• You want to avoid confusion or premature access (close the eye icon disabled)

Restricting access to a course section

Restrictions can also be applied to an entire section (topic/week block), not just individual activities. Do this by editing the section settings from the three dots action menu > Edit settings.

The available restriction types (Date, Grade, Activity completion, Group, etc.) work in the same way as they do for individual activities.

This is useful if you want to:

• Release weekly content gradually
• Unlock the next teaching block after completion of previous work
• Hide future weeks entirely until a specific date

Good Practice [edit]

• Test your restrictions using Switch role to Student to confirm they behave as expected.
• If using activity-based progression, check that Completion tracking is enabled and configured correctly. You can refer to the Course and activity completion Guide for more details.
• Keep restriction logic as simple as possible to avoid unintended access issues.

Useful Resources [edit]

• Add Students to Groups Guide 
• Quiz Guide
• Course and activity completion Guide
• Level Up (gamification) Guide