This article explains the process for limiting access to your activity to only participants who have paid an access fee, and furthermore providing for those participants to easily self-enrol in your access group.

This is perfect for limiting access to licensed or otherwise valuable content, or for charging and collecting a fee from participants, or both.  You will need to follow these five steps:

1. Create your group (to which membership is on a payment basis);
2. Set this up as a self-enrolling group (This option must be enabled by an Institution Manager);
3. Create a Fee policy (Institution Managers only);
4. Associate the fee policy with your group;
5. Assign your activity to this group, and set the access privilege to "selected group only" (you can do this ahead of time, or you can do it when launching the activity).

Setting up Self-Enrolment into your Groups

Often we work with participants who either are unknown to us at the start of an activity, or who might not already be enrolled in Xorro-Q using a pre-determined ID.  However, we still want these participants to be able to use a unique participant identifier, so that we can analyse their results with confidence.  In other cases, we already know the participant is a member of other Xorro-Q groups, however we might want the participant to self-enrol into a specified group (perhaps even to pay an associated fee).

Here's how you can enable your participants to enroll themselves into your Xorro institution, or into a Xorro group you specify (for example, to gain access to an activity), or both.

Enabling self-enrolment

If your Institution Manager has enabled participant self-enrolment, anyone can become a Xorro-Q participant in your institution by creating a unique ID when asked to do so.  Often this uses a participant's email as the login ID, but it does not have to: This is determined by the Institution Manager through the settings process.

In this case, whenever a "new" participant accesses your activity link, provided that you have launched the activity requiring either "ID access only" or "selected group only" (see below), the participant will self-enroll.

If you want to seperate these participants from the mass of institution participants, you will want them to be enrolled directly into a specified group.  In this case,  create a participant group (or edit one that already exists).   Make sure to put a tick into the check box at the foot of the group edit form, "permit self-enrolment".

 When launching your activity, choose one of the following:

• "Selected Group only" (recommended): The participants will be asked to identify themselves on accessing your activity.  If their ID is not already known to Xorro-Q, then they will be asked to provide a first and last name to complete the enrolment and they will be added as a participant to your group.  If their ID is recognised by Xorro-Q as an existing participant (but not in this group), then it will be added to the group.  
• "ID only" (a variation on the above): The participants will be asked to identify themselves on accessing your activity.  If their ID is not already known to Xorro-Q, then they will be asked to provide a first and last name to complete the enrolment and they will be added as a participant to the institution, but not to your specific group.  This is useful where you want to include guests or non-group members in a discussion, but do not want to incorporate their "results" data into the group data.

Your participants will now be asked to identify themselves on following the link to your activity(-ies). You can use this as a general preference, by always ensuring you ask for an ID access to your activities.   

Self-enrolment Institution Settings 

Whilst the above makes access to your group available to new participants, the way they identify themselves while enrolling (eg using a number, or an email, or a name...) is pre-determined by your Institution Settings.  Your Institution Manager can access these, and set the methods available for participants to use.  For example:

• You might require your self-enrolling participants to use an institution ID (eg a learner ID)
• You might prefer them to use their email
• You might ambivalent about how they identify themselves, just so long as it uniquely identifies them.

The Institution Manager can set these preferences on an institution-wide basis.

Setting up Fee Policies & Group Access Fees

You may want to charge a fee for students to access an activity or a set of activities.  For example, this might any one or combination of the following:

• A fee collected by Xorro from participants, to enable unlimited use of Xorro-Q, instead of your subscribing to a paid Facilitator Plan (Compare Plans);
• A fee collected by Xorro-Q or by a content partner for special content (eg activities or questions), for which participants must pay;
• A fee which your institution needs to collect from every participant in an activity or course: for example a course fee.

In Xorro-Q this is done using a Fee Policy.

A fee policy defines how participants will be asked to pay for membership in a specified group.  Once a fee poloicy is created, it can be assigned to as many groups as required.   There is no limit to how many fee policies your organisation might have.  

A minimum fee applies of US$4.95 per participant.  This amount is recovered by Xorro to compensate for the unlimited use of Xorro-Q.  Fees higher than this amount are shared between Xorro and the Institution.  Tell us your specific requirements.

Every participant who pays any fee under a Fee Policy will automatically receive a Participant Plus account at no added charge (value US$4.95).  If a participant wishes to join several groups with different Fee Policies applied to them, then a fee will apply for each group joined (ie there is no credit on earlier fees paid).  However if several groups have the same fee policy assigned to them, then the Participant will only have to pay that Fee policy one time; activities running for other groups using the same Fee Policy can be accessed by this Participant (if he/she is a member) without paying further fees.

 See Also:  Setting up Fee Policies

To set up a Fee Policy:

• Log in (as an Institution Manager) to http://qf.xorro.com;
• In the Participants tab, select "Manage Fee Policies";
• Any existing Fee Policies will be listed hereand can be edited from here.  Press "Create" to set up a new Fee Policy";
• Give your Fee Policy a name;
• Enter a value to be charged to every student (currency can be changed if need be);
• Enter any text which you want to appear to participants on the page where they are asked to pay this fee.  This text can include hyperlinks to supporting pages and resources - see  Adding a hyperlink to the Fee Policy text;
• Click "Create" when ready....
• Your Fee Policy has been added to the list, and may now be assigned to Groups.

To assign a Fee Policy to groups:

• Select the Fee Policy;
• Click on the "Assign to Groups" button;
• Select the groups to which you want this policy to be applied;
• Click on "Update" at the foot of the page to save the selection.

See also:  

Self-Enrolling Participants; Self-Enrolling Participants to a Fee-Paying Group

The Participant Funded Model to Unlimited Use of Xorro-Q

Participant Plus Accounts

Categories: Xorro-Q, Admin / IT, Facilitators.
Tags: Subscriptions.