Overview
Short courses offered at the University of Plymouth are hosted on the Open Learning Platform. These short courses are available for internal and external users, with the ability to sign up for any course, unless they are password-protected and are aimed at a specific audience.
OLP uses Moodle with similar functionalities to the DLE Moodle, where regular programmes and modules are hosted internally.
System access
To gain system access, you will need to create an account, which you can complete here. During the sign-up process, you need to enter information such as username, password, e-mail address, first and last name and optional fields, such as city/town and country. Once the data is entered, you should receive an automated system e-mail asking you to verify yourself. After this, you can log in.
Useful information to keep in mind:
If you have a UoP account, we recommend using this e-mail address. Please note, you cannot sign up or log in using SSO (Single Sign-On), and so a manual account creation is required. If you do not have a UoP account, you can use your external/personal e-mail address.
If you have already created an account but forgot your password, you will be able to reset it here. For this process, you can either use your e-mail address or username. If you are unaware of this information, please contact our team for further advice.
The automated e-mails sent by the system may land in your ‘Junk’, ‘Spam’ or ‘Other’ inboxes; therefore, please ensure you track them.
System navigation
Once logged in, you will be presented with menus, such as ‘Home’, ‘Dashboard’, ‘My courses’ and more.
Home
The ‘Home’ page is a course catalogue, listing all the available courses that you can sign up for. You can also customise your search preferences based on subject areas/categories.
If you prefer a more detailed search where you can search for course titles and levels (e.g. ‘Beginner’), you can navigate to the ‘Categories’ menu (top-left corner).
Dashboard
On your ‘Dashboard’, you can find personal information regarding courses you are enrolled on (if applicable). This includes the course numbers, course and activity progress, analytics and more. You can also filter this information based on preferences, e.g. if you are specifically curious about a course activity.
My courses
Under ‘My courses’, you can view the courses you are enrolled on and filter the list similarly to our internal DLE. As such, you can access all courses or filter the list based on the time window they run – ‘In progress’, ‘Future’ and ‘Past’. You can also highlight courses via the three-dot button (’Star this course’) and use the ‘Starred’ list to only display the highlighted courses. Lastly, you can track your progress per course, which is based on activity completion (e.g. submission points, quizzes and more).
Profile
Under your account (top-right corner), you can navigate to your:
- ‘Profile’ to access personal information,
- ‘Grades’ to see your achievements based on courses,
- ‘Calendar’ to access upcoming events (e.g. assessments),
- ‘Preferences’ to configure settings (e.g. system language), and more.
Course view
Please note, to sign up and engage with courses, you need to manually create an account. For further information, please see above (’System access’ section).
Course access
You can sign up for a course by self-enrolment. This process can be fully open to everyone or can be restricted, meaning you need to enter an enrolment key/password. As such, staff should share the following information with you:
- Course link
- Enrolment key (if applicable)
Please note, our team cannot share enrolment keys with you without the course team’s authorisation. Therefore, we recommend contacting them for such requests. If you are unsure who to contact, we can do this on your behalf but this may take more time.
When you navigate to the course, you can click on the ‘Enrol now’ blue button under the course header (right-hand side).
On the next page, you need to enter the enrolment key (if applicable) and confirm the process via the ‘Enrol me’ button, which will appear on the next page.
Once that is done, you will be auto-navigated to the main course page where you can access the content as needed. If the enrolment was successful, you will see a confirmation message in a green box, ‘You are enrolled in the course’ – this will appear above the main course page.
Course navigation
A course structure within OLP is similar to our internal DLE. As such, you can find three main areas:
- Course header – Contains information such as course banner (image) and title, and enrolled staff (e.g. ‘Course Leader’, ‘Teachers’). Additionally, you can utilise the menus in the secondary navigation bar (e.g. ‘Participants’ for the list of enrolled users, ‘Grades’ for your achievements).
- Main course page – The course content view is the same as our internal DLE, meaning you can access sections (e.g. ‘Week 3’ in this case) and activities and resources added to the sections (e.g. PPT slides, glossary, choice activity, discussion boards and more). If configured for the course, you can also track your progress based on individual resources and/or activities.
- Course Menu – Displays the course structure for easier navigation, the same way as our internal DLE. This includes listing sections and activities/resources added to them. This is basically a shortcut to the main course page, as it is fed by it.
