Managing Users, Cohorts, and Authentication

This chapter will teach you how to manage users in your Moodle system. We will first look at what information is stored for each user and how we can extend their profiles. We will then perform several standard user actions before dealing with cohorts. Finally, we will deal with a wide range of user authentication mechanisms. We will cover the following topics:

• Understanding user profiles
• Performing standard user actions (manual and bulk)
• Creating user accounts manually (including batch upload)
• Managing cohorts (including batch upload)
• Configuring user authentication (internal, external, service providers, and system)

The following diagram shows a high-level overview of the aforementioned topics (users, cohorts, and authentication) and how they are connected:

Figure 5.1 – Users, courses, and authentication – a high-level overview

By the end of this chapter, you will be able...