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This article is meant to help staff members who are assisting with troubleshooting issues accessing Moodle courses.
Moodle Access Issues
Issue: Users get an error "Authentication attempt has failed" when trying to log into moodle.pacificu.edu.
Possible Cause: User entered an incorrect password.
Verifying the Cause: Have the user try to log into another system that also uses Single-Sign On, such as account.pacificu.edu or pacificu.box.com. If they get the same message there, they are probably mis-entering their password.
Resolving the Issue: Have user use the eye icon to the right of the password field to see their password. If they are not remembering their password correctly, you can have them click the "Forgot your password?" link at the bottom of the single-sign on page to do a self-service password reset.
Issue: Users get an error "Your account is not authorized to use this service" when trying to log into moodle.pacificu.edu.
Possible Cause: This indicates that the user's account is of a type that does not get access to Moodle, such as the Admitted Student or Alumni type. All currently enrolled students and currently employed faculty and staff shoudl have access to Moodle.
Verifying the Cause: Helpdesk staff can check the type of an account and whether or not the Moodle entitlement has been granted.
Resolving the Issue: If an account is of the wrong type (e.g. the user is listed as Alumni when they are a new employee) then troubleshoot the sequence of events that causes the account type to change (with employment, talk to HR, with student admission talk to Admissions, with student graduation talk to the Registrar). In the meantime, a program can request sponsorship of an account to give the user Moodle access.
Issue: Faculty don't see the courses they are teaching in Moodle.
Possible Cause: Faculty have not linked their courses. Many new faculty have come from institutions where Moodle courses are created automatically without user intervention, and don't know they have to do it manually at Pacific.
Verifying the Cause: Ask the faculty member if they went to the Moodle Site Link site to specifically requested their courses.
Resolving the Issue: Refer the faculty member to these instructions to create their courses using the Moodle Site Link page.
Issue: Faculty can't see a course they are teaching on the Moodle Site Link page to create it.
Possible Cause: The faculty member is not yet listed as the instructor of record of the course.
Verifying the Cause: Have the faculty member check BoxerOnline. If they are not listed as the instructor there, they will not be able to create the Moodle site on the Moodle Site Link page.
Resolving the Issue: Faculty can work with the Registrar's Office or their program to get listed as the instructor of record for the class. In the meantime, if another faculty member is listed as the instructor of record, that faculty member can create the Moodle site and manually grant access to the other faculty member.
Issue: Faculty and students don't see the (crosslisted) course they are expecting to in Moodle, but are instead seeing a different course.
Possible Cause: If a course is crosslisted, the Moodle Site Link system will choose one course name and call number for the name of the Moodle course, which may not be the name students or faculty are expecting to see.
Verifying the Cause: Ask the student or faculty member to check BoxerOnline to see if the course is crosslisted with other courses.
Resolving the Issue: If the course was marked as crosslisted in BoxerOnline incorrectly, contact the Registrar's Office. Faculty members can manually change the long name (although not the short name) of a course to make it less confusing.
Issue: Students don't see a course they are expecting to see in Moodle.
Possible Cause 1: The instructor has not chosen, or has not yet, created a Moodle site for that course.
Verifying the Cause and Resolving the Issue: Ask the student to ask their instructor whether Moodle is being used for the course and whether the site has been created yet.
Possible Cause 2: The course is hidden, either on purpose or because the instructor had it hidden while working on the course and forgot to un-hide it.
Verifying the Cause and Resolving the Issue: Ask the student to check with their instructor on whether the course is Hidden (see step 5 "Make sure your course site is not hidden" on this page).
Possible Cause 3: The student is filtering courses on their main page such that they aren't seeing that course.
Verifying the Cause and Resolving the Issue: Ask the student to log into Moodle and, under Course Overview, try the pull down menu options for "In progress" "Future" and "Past." Please note that whether Moodle considers a course to be current, future or past is based on the start date and end dates in Moodle for the course, which may not match the start and end dates as the student understands them.
Possible Cause 4: The student has not yet been enrolled to the course in BoxerOnline.
Verifying the Cause: Ask the student to check BoxerOnline and see if they are officially registered for that class.
Resolving the Issue: If a student is not showing as registered for a class they think they should be, they should contact the Registrar's Office. In the meantime, their instructor can manually add them to the course.
Further Help & Troubleshooting
The CETCI team helps faculty and students with issues involving the use of Moodle, or errors encountered inside the Moodle platform. They can be reached at edtech@pacificu.edu.
UIS helps with troubleshooting any issues involving single-sign on access to Moodle, courses being made available to faculty via the Moodle Site Link site, or automatic enrollments of students into Moodle sites once they are created. Create a help ticket for troubleshooting on these connector systems.
The Registrar's Office can help with issues involving incorrect or missing assignments of instructors to courses or registration of students in courses (as seen in BoxerOnline).
Questions?
Contact Support