Overview
This article describes the several roles in Moodle and their permissions. Some roles are customized for and specific to Carleton.
⚠️Do not give a participant more than 1 role. This will create an error in the participants' capabilities within the course.⚠️
Roles types
Teacher
Teachers can do almost anything within a course, including adding or changing the activities and grading students. By default, teachers can also assign a Non-editing teacher role and a Student role to other users.
TA Teacher
TA Teachers will be a teacher in the course, so they have the same capabilities. However, this role will NOT sync to meta-courses.
Student TA
Student TAs cannot create activities, but they can create and manage time slots within a Scheduler created by the teacher. Student TAs can also post and reply to the Announcements forum or use the Attendance module to take attendance. Otherwise, Student TAs have the same privileges as students and CANNOT see the gradebook.
Non-editing Teacher
Non-editing teachers can teach in the course and grade students, but may not alter activities and resources. This role might typically be given to a classroom assistant for example.
Course Editor
Course Editors can make changes to the courses, but do not have access to the gradebook.
Grader
Graders have student privileges, but can also grade assignments, quizzes, LTI activities, and workshops. Graders CANNOT view the gradebook.
Librarian
Librarians can see all assignments that are available to students. They can also post to the Announcements forum, and add pages or blocks for sharing library information.
Student
A user with the Student role in Moodle can participate in course activities and view resources but not alter them or see the class gradebook. They can see their own grades if the teacher has allowed this.
Change roles of participants
You must have the role "Teacher" in the course to change the roles of participants.
- From Course page, Click Participants
- For each participant, you may change their role under the Roles column by clicking the ✐ pencil icon.
- You may assign multiple roles to a participant
- Click the 💾 save icon to save changes on the participant
Checking permissions
The check permissions feature provides a method to view all roles both in the current context and higher contexts and capabilities for a selected user based on their role assignments. These capabilities determine whether or not the selected user is allowed to perform associated tasks within the system or course.
To check the permissions:
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From the course page, click the Participants tab
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Click the drop-down menu in the top left and select Check permissions
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From the list of users, select a user and click show this user’s permissions from the bottom of the page
Switching temporarily to another role
Sometimes it is convenient for a teacher to check whether a certain role has access to certain activities by temporarily switching their "Teacher" role to another role (for example, to "Student").
To switch roles:
- On the course page, click on the avatar/account icon on the upper right corner
- Click Switch role to... and select the role to change to
Permissions in a block
To change role permissions for a block
- Turn editing on for your course
- On Fordson (Do not force), this is the icon next to the icon in the top-left.
- On Moove and Carleton Boost, this is in the top right.
- In the actions menu in the header of the block, click Permissions.
- Now we can change the permission of the block (e.g., who can see the block)
Questions?
If you need further assistance or have specific questions that aren't covered in this article, please don't hesitate to reach out for personalized support by submitting a Moodle Support ticket.
Acknowledgement
Created by Walt Li '23, Tue 10/19/21. Last updated by Fiona Ibrahim '25, Mon 10/7/24