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What roles can I assign to users in my bCourses site, and what do each of them do?

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6.0 - Updated on 2023-10-26 by Miles Lincoln

5.0 - Updated on 2020-08-24 by Seyon Wind

4.0 - Updated on 2019-09-24 by Seyon Wind

3.0 - Updated on 2019-02-21 by Seyon Wind

2.0 - Updated on 2019-08-08 by Steven Williams

1.0 - Authored on 2015-08-14 by Steven Williams

bCourses includes multiple roles that can be assigned in course and project sites.

Course Sites

Project Sites

Synchronized Roles

The Teacher, Lead TA, TA, and Student roles are automatically granted to users based on their teaching or enrollment status in CalCentral. bCourses synchronizes with CalCentral daily to import new or modified roles.

Teachers and TAs can assign roles to reflect teaching responsibilities for the course that are not officially designated in CalCentral.

For example The Lead TA role allows users to do everything that a Teacher can in a course site, with the exception of creating a site or adding other individuals as Teachers, TAs, or Designers.

The Reader role has some restrictions on the user's ability to edit course materials, but provides them with full access to student assignment and grading information.

The appropriate role for any given user is at the sole discretion of the bCourses site owner/instructor. Multiple individuals can be granted the Lead TA role, and GSIs can even be given the Teacher role if that best supports the instructor's preferred workflow.

Guest Roles

If you wish to provide guests with full access to your course materials (including discussions, announcements, etc.) and/or assign grades to them, we recommend enrolling them in Student role.

The "Observer" role is intended for use in K-12 settings, where a parent is enrolled in a course to track the progress of their child. The default Observer role is "Observing: nobody." This role is suitable for guests if you want to share only the static elements of your course, e.g. pages and files, but not discussions, announcements, etc. Observers do not appear in the gradebook.

Detailed Permission Info

To view a detailed list of all permissions available to each role, see the bCourses Roles and Permissions Matrix.


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