Using Conditional Availability to release content in Minerva - Staff Guide

The Conditional Availability function allows you to stipulate rules that must be satisfied before students can access content. These rules can include:

• dates (Access from ... and/or Access until ...)
• group membership
• individual identity (ie, specifically selected students)
• grades

More than one of these conditions can be combined within a single rule.  For example, you could create a rule that specifies (i) an Access from ... date, (ii) membership of a specific group, and (iii) a grade lower than 50 for a specific assignment.  In this case, students will be able to access the content if, and only if, all of the required conditions are satisfied (ie, they belong to the specified group, their grade was lower than 50 in the relevant assignment, and the Access from ... date has passed.)

Note also that multiple different rules can be applied to the same content item.  In a case where multiple rules are applied, students will be able to access the content as long as they satisfy (in full) the conditions of at least one rule.  Importantly, they would not need to satisfy the conditions of all the rules.  Satisfying the conditions of just one of the rules would be sufficient.

When content is restricted by date or grade, you have the option to let students see the content item even though they cannot yet access or open it. These are known as Visibility Settings, and will be described below.

In this guide

• Setting up a Conditional Availability rule
• Creating a rule based on dates
• Creating a rule based on grades
• Creating a rule based on individuals or group membership
• Saving a rule and adding additional rules
• Releasing content in a sequence
• Fixing broken rules / troubleshooting

Setting up a Conditional Availability rule

1. Go to the relevant content within your module: a folder, learning module or individual content item (e.g. a Document). Be careful not to set conflicting conditions within a learning module. Consider the order of items in the learning module before you set other availability conditions based on date and performance.

2. Click the small arrow next to 'Hidden from Students' or 'Visible to students' to reveal the settings, and choose Conditional availability.

3. On the Release conditions page, you will see a rule which has All members selected by default. (Note that, if you wish, you can change the name of this rule by clicking on the pencil icon.)  You can now start to edit this rule by adding other conditions.  See the sections below for more information on each type of condition.

Creating a rule based on dates

You might want to release an item either from a certain date, or until a certain date, or between 2 specific dates.

Tick the Date/time box, and then tick the box for each type of restriction you want to apply: Access from and/or Access until. Then use the date and time selectors to set the desired dates/times.

Creating a rule based on grades

You might want to release an item or folder when a student achieves a certain score (or a score falling within a defined range) on one or more assessments in Gradebook in your module. For example, you might want students to progress to the next item only after they score a 70 or above (out of 100) in a test to demonstrate their understanding of the previous item.

1. Tick the Performance box, and then click on Choose a graded item and select the relevant assessment from the list that appears.

2. Now click on Grade requirement. Here you can select one of the preset options from the listed options (10 points or higher, 20 points or higher, etc), or you can click on Custom range to define your own.

3. If you select Custom range, then you can use the Minimum / Maximum points boxes to define your own range. You can also switch between Points and Percent using the dropdown box on the left.

4. Note that performance on multiple graded items can be added as criteria within the same rule, with different custom grade ranges defined for each. To add further graded items, click on Add performance criteria. (To remove a previously added graded item, click on the bin icon that appears on the right-hand side.)

The image below shows an example of a single rule containing performance criteria relating to 2 different assignments, with grade ranges defined differently in each case:

Creating a rule based on individuals or group membership

You may have content you only want individual users/groups to access. To avoid confusion among the whole module cohort and to prevent others from accessing the content, a condition based on module members can be used.  (You may also find this type of condition useful for making content available for students who need to resit assessments, as it will prevent other students receiving notifications about assessments which do not apply to them.)

1. Select the radio button next to Specific members or groups.  Here you can use the Individual members search box to find individual students and click on their names to add them.

After selecting a student, their name will appear in the box.

2. To add further students, click on the downward arrow to bring up the search box again. Any students you've already added will appear in the list with a dark background and a tick to the left.

Important: If the names of several students have been added to the box, clicking on the circled x icon at the right-hand side of the box will remove all of the names and clear the box entirely.

Therefore, if you just want to remove a subset of students from the list, click on the downward arrow to bring up the search again, find their names in the list (with the dark background and tick), and click on them there.

3. To add groups to the rule, click on Search by group.  Here you can search for any groups that exist within the module.  The process of searching for, adding and removing groups works in the same way as for individual members, as described above.

For more information on groups, see our guide on creating and managing groups in Minerva.

Saving a rule and adding additional rules

1. Once you have added the required conditions to a rule (as described in the three sections above), click Save at the bottom right of the page to save the rule.

2. After saving, you will see the newly created rule listed on the left-hand side of the page.  Here you will also see the Add new rule button. Click on this if you wish to create an additional rule for the same content item. (Remember that when multiple rules exist for a single content item, students will have access as long as a minimum of one rule is satisfied.)

3. If more than 1 rule is created, you can switch between them by clicking on them in this left-hand panel.  The dark background indicates which rule you are currently viewing/editing in the central part of the page.

4. You will also see Visibility Settings on left-hand side of the page.  Here you can choose whether the content item will be visible (but remain inaccessible) to students outside of the specified dates, or whether it will be completely hidden outside of those dates.  The radio buttons can be used to switch between these two options.

5. To delete a rule, click on the 3 dots icon next to its name and then click on Delete.

Releasing content in a sequence

If you want students to access content in a particular sequence, you could use Conditional Availability and base the rules on specific dates - however, you may find that Learning Modules are more suitable.

Learning Modules let students navigate from one content item to the next, without distractions or extra clicks. You can force students to access content in a Learning Module in a sequential manner to make sure they know which content to access and in what order.

See, Learning Modules, to learn more about the forced sequence settings and how to use them.

Fixing broken rules / troubleshooting

Conditional availability rules break if you delete the content the rule is based on. An alert appears in the Module Content area warning you that students are unable to access content due to broken rules. Open the Release Conditions page to set up a different rule.

If you base a rule on a content item that is hidden from students, then they won't have the opportunity to satisfy the Conditional Availability rule. However, the item with Conditional Availability may still appear in the Module Content area based on its Visibility Settings. In this case, students see a message advising them that they cannot access the content and that they should contact their instructor.

Related Guides

• Remove Conditional Availability rules applied to content in Minerva
• Make a module available/unavailable