Site Availability

Summary

Prevent or allow students to access your Ultra VLE sites.

Overview

You can set your site availabilty to control student access:

• Closed: students can see the site in their Course list, but can't enter it.
• Open: students can see and enter the site.

Warning

Sites are not automatically made available each semester, so you must make the site 'Open' when it is ready for students.

You can view and change availability status in two locations:

View & change site availability: Course list

In the Course list entry, site availability is shown under the site name as Open or Closed.

For Closed sites, a padlock icon is also shown next to the status (List view) or over the thumbnail image (Grid view).

To change availability status:

1. Click the three dots icon (in Grid view, hover over the course to show the icon)
2. Click Course Settings
3. Change the Close Course toggle to off (it will go from green with a tick when closed, to grey with a cross when open)
4. Close the page, the changes will save automatically.

View & change site availability: within a site

Within an Ultra site, site availability used to be shown in the "Details & Actions" pane on the right of the screen as either, but this has changed in January 2025. Whether your site is Open or Closed is displayed in the top right hand corner of your site.

1. Enter your VLE site
2. Click Course Settings in the top right hand corner of your screen
3. Change the Close Course toggle to off (it will go from green with a tick when closed, to grey with a cross when open)
4. Close the page, the changes will save automatically.

More Details and Troubleshooting

Who can access closed sites?

Users with the following roles can access closed VLE sites:

• Instructors
• Markers (aka Graders)
• Course Builders
• Teaching Assistants

What do students see?

Closed sites appear on an students' Course list, but they are labelled as "Closed" and cannot be entered.

This means that students will see their upcoming sites as soon as they’re enrolled, but can't enter them until they are changed to "Open".

Are students notified when a site is made available?

If students have chosen to recieve Ultra notifications, they will receive a message in their Activity Stream and also by email when a site is made available.

However, note that students can:

• opt out of receiving Ultra notifications
• choose to receive immediate emails or a daily digest (sent around 09:15)

What is "Completing" a site?

Also with your Course Settings page you can see options to "Complete" your site.

Marking a course as Complete means that students can enter the course and view resources, but can't make contributions (to Discussions, submission points etc.). This is not a feature that we use at UoY, so you do not have to set this status after the semester end.