What is Restrict Access?

The Restrict Access feature in Moodle allows faculty to set conditions that control when and how students access specific course materials. This can be incredibly useful for managing course pacing, ensuring students meet prerequisite requirements, and tailoring learning experiences to different groups of students.

Why use Restrict Access?

Prerequisites: Ensure that students achieve certain criteria before accessing new materials, reinforcing learning milestones, and reducing overwhelm early in your course.
Pacing Students: Control the pace of your course by gradually releasing content over time in alignment with your course schedule, keeping students from moving through content too quickly by allowing time for refection/review.
Scaffolding Activities: Keep students from moving on to a large project or summative quiz if they have not complete formative activities about a concept. For example you can keep a student from moving on to high stakes quiz about application concepts if they have not yet complete the low-stakes vocabulary activity for that section.
Group Activities: Tailor resources and activities to specific groups within your course, offering differentiated instruction or projects. However, you can also do this using the Group mode features in Moodle as some of those features may be more beneficial for you use-case.

How to Add Restrict Access Criteria

Turn on Edit Mode by using the toggle button in the top right corner of your screen.
Go to your Moodle course and find the topic, resource, or activity you want to apply restrictions to.
Click on the Edit button next to the desired item and select Edit settings.
Scroll down to the Restrict Access section and click it to expand and view options.
Click on the Add restriction button and choose the type of restriction you want to apply (e.g., date, group, activity completion.
Fill in the required details for the selected restriction. You can combine multiple restrictions for more complex criteria.
They eyeball icon beside the restriction, controls whether that restriction can be viewed by a student. In most cases you want the eyeball open so student can see the reason the activity is unavailable. However if you are restricting access by a student name for an extension/accommodation, please select the closed or not-visible icon so you do not accidentally share the student's identity with others.
Once you’ve set up the restrictions, click Save and return to course.

Restrict Access criteria is visible to student (recommended in most cases)

Open eyeball icon indicating student can see the criteria needed

Restrict Access criteria not visible to student

Explaining the Restriction Criteria

Restriction Type	Description	Options (Student must match OR not match ALL OR ANY of the following)	Notes
Activity completion	Require students to complete (or not complete) another activity.	Activity chosen must be: Marked complete Not marked complete Complete with a passing grade Complete with a failing grade	Must be used in concert with Completion Conditions
Date	Prevent access until (or from) a specified date and time.	Date from [select date and time] Date until [select date and time]	Ensure that dates match details in your shared syllabus or course schedule. Use the dates report to update these dates efficiently.
Grade	Require students to achieve a specified grade.	Grade [choose activity, gradebook category or total] must be: must be ≥ [grade] % must be < [grade] %	Great for use with formative/unlimited attempt quizzes to keep students from moving on unprepared to summative/single attempt activities.
Group	Allow only students who belong to a specified group, or all groups.	Choose a group.	Must be used in concert with course Group settings.
Grouping	Allow only students who belong to a group within a specified grouping.	Choose a grouping.	Must be used in concert with Grouping settings.
User Profile	Control access based on fields within the student's profile.	User profile field chosen must match your text filter.	Not Recommended! We discourage use of restrict access by profile criteria, instead consider using an override.
Release code	This course item will not be available to students until the student acquires a specific release code.	Release code [text - choose a password]	For Quizzes you can already do this without Restrict Access, but this is helpful for activities that do not have a password option.
Restriction set	Add a set of nested restrictions to apply complex logic.	Use any combination of the criteria above.	Used to create complex combinations of matching ANY and ALL criteria for very specific use cases.

Example: Restrict Access with Completion Conditions

One great way to use Restrict Access is early in the semester. As students settle into new classes, you can prevent overwhelm and help them focus on completing their Entry Quiz. You can do this by adding completion criteria to your Entry Quiz and restricting access to other areas of the course until it is completed or until after the entry quiz due date. This will allow students who completed the entry quiz to move on and see new content, but keep students who have not focused on their first course requirement.

Instructor view:

Week 1 topic showing restrict access settings by activity completion OR date. There is an open eyeball indicating that students can see the criteria