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Moodle Conversations - Assigning Teacher Roles

EdTech

With the publication of Moodle Habitudes (TechEdge) and Engaging Online Learners (MassCUE), I’ve received a few questions. I like these questions because they make me apply what I’ve learned to new situations, often situations that haven’t arisen in my own online learning environment.

Here’s one exchange:

I am just getting started with Moodle, but have a quick question I’m hoping you can help me with. When I assign the role of “teacher” to a user, it allows the user to assume the “teacher” roll for ALL courses that have been created. How do you make a user a “teacher” to a specific course so they can only edit only a specific course assigned to them?

My response, typed a bit quickly since I was running from one meeting to another:

When you assign teachers at the Site or Top level of the Moodle, then they are assigned that status Moodle-wide. When you go INTO a specific course, and assign them a user the teacher role. That will limit the teacher role for that user to that specific course. But you have to login to a course before you start assigning roles.

I felt a bit bad about that response, it was so quickly composed. Nevertheless, the person wrote me back:

We are going to set it up with Active Directory to authenticate users, but in the meantime, I am manually creating a couple of accounts for teachers who are going to start putting content on our Moodle. When I create their account, then, should I set them up of the top level of Moodle perhaps as a “non-editing teacher” and then go into their specific course and make them the teacher at that level?

So, I wrote back one last time:

With AD/LDAP authentication, they will first have to login. Once they have logged in for the first time, then you can go into a particular course and assign them the role you choose (e.g. Teacher).

I wouldn’t assign system-wide roles for teachers, or non-editing, unless you’re going to use them to help you supervise/administer other courses…in which case, I’d just give them Course Creator rights.

And, received this nice response:

Thanks.

PS: Great article in this month’s issue of TechEdge!

Now, if we could only have a few hundred more of those learning conversations!

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