Moodle 2.0

Configuring Your Site
A user can have a role in the site, and a role in a course. The most permissive
role wins.
When you use a flat file to enrol students in a course(s), the file specifies what role
each user will have in the course. Let's return to our example:
add, student, 007, WP102
This line from the file specifies that user ID number 007 will be added as a student
to course ID number WP102.
Notice that the flat file uses "student" with a lowercase "s", whereas the role is called
"Student" with a capital "S". They don't match exactly because the flat file uses the
"short name" of the role. To find out the short name of a role, go to Settings | Site
Administration | Users | Permissions | Define roles.
Flat files: Summary
A flat file provides an effective way to mass enrol a large group of students into one
or more courses at once. Remember that this method requires you to have a student
ID number and a course ID number, both of which are optional by default. You'll
need to populate those fields in your student records and course settings either
manually or automatically, before you can use the flat file to batch enrol students. If
you're authenticating users against an external system that has ID numbers, such as
your school's LDAP server, consider mapping the student ID number field to your
server's ID numbers.
IMS Enterprise File
An IMS Enterprise File is a flat file (text file) that conforms to standards set by the
IMS Global Learning Consortium. Many student information systems and human
resource information systems can both export an IMS-compliant file. For example,
PeopleSoft and Oracle can export IMS files. These standards enable human resources
systems and learning management systems to exchange data. Just like many Word
processors can read and write .rtf files, many human resources and learning
systems can read and write IMS files.
If your organization uses an HR system that can produce IMS files, you can use this
method to enrol and unenrol students. You can also use this method to create new
courses. This would be especially useful for a school that wanted to offer teachers
the option of an online work space for every course. Each semester, the school could
export an IMS file from their enrolment system, read this into Moodle, and use it to
create an online course for every class that the school offers.
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