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  1. Teaching
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  3. Educational Technology
  4. Moodle
  5. Build Courses in Moodle
  6. Orientation to Moodle

User Roles and Access rights in Moodle

Overview

UNSW Moodle supports a number of user roles for staff and students, with each role having its own set of permissions that provides users with access to different capabilities.

This page outlines the different user roles, user access rights and advanced functionality available. When you understand the different user roles and access rights available in Moodle, you can, for example:

  • enable your tutors to edit course content
  • preview what your students see
  • switch role to student, or log in as a specific student, to experience your course in that role

How to gain a role in Moodle

This section explores how staff/students gain access to Moodle courses.

All active staff and students can access UNSW Moodle using their zID and zPass. Which courses they see once they login depends on what user roles they have been given via systems such as MyUNSW.

Award Course(s): Staff/student access is setup through the Learning Management tab in MyUNSW, and is typically managed by faculty/school TELT Administrators. Changes made in MyUNSW flow to Moodle overnight.

NCAR Courses like eLISE: User access is setup by the Academic Admin department within MyUNSW, and flow to Moodle overnight.

SCAR Courses like OH&S: User access is setup by the UNSW HR department within PIMS, and flow to Moodle overnight.

Sandpit Courses: The staff member creating the sandpit course either assigns roles at creation, or organises the creation of a self-enrolment key for ongoing access.

For more information on any of these, please our Moodle Course Types page.

Instructor role

This section explores the instructor role, which is the primary role for building course and delivering activities for learning and teaching at UNSW.

Switch role and Log-In-As are also covered in this section.

Instructors have access to most features and functions in a course, allowing them to perform design, development, teaching and maintenance tasks, including course backup and rollover.

Instructor role limitations

The instructor role is not permitted to:

  • Create courses
  • Enrol users (e.g. staff/students/guests) in a course. If they are academic staff they can, however, add staff to a course in myUNSW. Follow these instructions.
    • For permission (in both myUNSW and Moodle) to do this, apply to Academic Administration. Your Head of School or Associate Dean, Education, will have to sign off on your application.
  • Change imported course data that comes from the Student/People Information Management Systems (SIMS/PIMS)
  • Restore a copy of a course with all the staff/student enrolments.

The Student View - Switch Role

Instructors can view their own courses as a generic student would see them using the 'switch role' functionality. This is particularly useful when building a course to ensure it comes out as desired. To do this, please see the following instructions:

  1. Located on the top right, select the drop-down arrow beside your displayed name and click Switch role to. 

    Switch Role
     
  2. On the following page, click Student.

    Change to student
     
  3. View the part of the course you need to view as a student.
  4. When you have completed viewing the course as a student, click Return to my normal role at the top right of the page by selecting the drop-down arrow.

    Return to normal role

Switch role is a very useful tool, but is not always a perfect representation of what students will see. Individual students may see something different due to their personal circumstances, and some tools (typically external tools) may not work well with switch role.

The Student View - Log-In-As

Instructors can view their own courses as a specific student would see it by using the 'log-in-as' functionality. This is particularly useful when helping a student with a query. To do this, please see the following instructions:

  1. Located on the left hand side, in the Settings block, under the Course administration heading and User sub-heading, click Enrolled users.

    Enrolled users
     
  2. On the user listing page, click on the desired students name.

    Dummy Student
     
  3. On the user profile page, under the Administration heading, click on the Log in as button.

    Log in as
     
  4. View the part of the course you need to view as the particular student.
  5. When you have completed viewing the course as a student, click Log Out at the top right of the page by selecting the drop-down arrow.

    Log out
     
  6. Note, you will need to log back into Moodle as yourself.

Reliability of Log-In-As

Due to a security vulnerability identified/patched in April 2019, the Log-In-As view is no longer as reliable as it once was. The security patch hides specific tools / functionality from the log-in-as view, though they continue working perfectly fine for students/staff in their normal view. This includes:

  • Services inserted into a Moodle course via embed code (also known as iframe)
    • Example of services that support embed codes include theBox, H5P and Youtube
  • Stack Quiz Questions
Services like theBox and H5P are already accessible in Moodle through existing integrations. For example, theBox is available as a repository through the HTML editor, while H5P has its own activity. If these methods are used instead of embed codes, the issue does not occur.

TELT Administrator role

This section explores the TELT Administrator role, a powerful role which faculty/school staff are provided with to help manage the course life-cycle and/or provide staff support.

Switch role and Log-In-As are also covered in this section.

The TELT Administrator role functionality is quite extensive, which in Moodle consists of an equivalent or higher level of access a Instructor has at the course level, plus category (eg. faculty/school) level access that allows them to work across courses. TELT Administrators also work heavily in MyUNSW within the Learning Management tab, where they create courses and assign staff enrolments.

One useful support page for staff is listed here.

The Student / Instructor View - Switch Role

TELT Administrators can view courses within their category as a generic student/instructor would see them by using the 'switch role' functionality. This is particularly useful when helping Instructors to build a course to ensure it comes out as desired. To do this, please see the following instructions:

  1. Located on the top right, select the drop-down arrow beside your displayed name and click Switch role to. 

    Switch Role to
     
  2. On the following page, click the appropriate role.

    Change to student
     
  3. View the part of the course you need to view as a student.
  4. When you have completed viewing the course as a student, click Return to my normal role at the top right of the page by selecting the drop-down arrow.

    Return to normal role
     

Switch role is a very useful tool, but is not always a perfect representation of what students will see. Individual students may see something different due to their personal circumstances, and some tools (typically external tools) may not work well with switch role.

The Student / Instructor View - Log-In-As

TELT Administrators can view their own courses as a specific student/instructor would see it by using the 'log-in-as' functionality. This is particularly useful when helping a student or instructor with a query. To do this, please see the following instructions:

  1. Located on the left hand side, in the Settings block, under the Course administration heading and User sub-heading, click Enrolled users.

    Enrolled users
     
  2. On the user listing page, click on the desired students name.

    Dummy student
     
  3. On the user profile page, under the Administration heading, click on the Log in as button.

    Log in as
     
  4. View the part of the course you need to view as the particular student.
  5. When you have completed viewing the course as a student, click Log Out at the top right of the page by selecting the drop-down arrow.

    Log out
     
  6. Note, you will need to log back into Moodle as yourself.

Reliability of Log-In-As

Due to a security vulnerability identified/patched in April 2019, the Log-In-As view is no longer as reliable as it once was. The security patch hides specific tools / functionality from the log-in-as view, though they continue working perfectly fine for students/staff in their normal view. This includes:

  • Services inserted into a Moodle course via embed code (also known as iframe)
    • Example of services that support embed codes include theBox, H5P and Youtube
  • Stack Quiz Questions
Services like theBox and H5P are already accessible in Moodle through existing integrations. For example, theBox is available as a repository through the HTML editor, while H5P has its own activity. If these methods are used instead of embed codes, the issue does not occur.
 
For additional information, please visit our Log-in-as Reliability page.

How a TELT Administrator can assign the Question Sharer role

TELT Administrators can now assign the Question Sharer role to users. 

Steps to assign Question Sharer role:

  1. Log in to Moodle as the TELT Administrator. 
  2. Access the course categories list by clicking Navigation > My Courses > UNSWA - University of New South Wales.

    Categories
     
  3. Select the appropriate Faculty or School level to which the instructor needs Question Sharer access.

    Faculty Selection
     
  4. Click on Settings and select Assign Roles

    Assign Roles
     
  5. Then click on the Question Sharer under the roles list. 
  6. On the next page search for the user's zID on the bottom right and select the correct user from the list. Then click Add. 

    Potential Users
     
  7. The users with the Question Sharer role should show up in the list on the left hand side of the page.

    Assigned Users

Teaching Assistant, Grading Tutor and Non-Grading Tutor roles

This section explores the three staff roles that support instructors in delivering a course.

The Teaching Assistant and Tutor roles are given to staff who assist Instructors with delivering a course, but do not need the full permissions to a course that Instructor(s) need. The roles are roughly intended for these purposes:

  • Teaching Assistant - A high powered role, which shares most permissions of the Instructor and can grade students at the gradebook level.
  • Grading Tutor - A role provided to staff who assist student learning and who grade students at the activity level
  • Non-Grading Tutor - A role provided to staff who assist student learning but does not grade students

Summary Table of Teaching Assistant and Tutor permissions

Role Turn Editing On View Gradebook Edit Gradebook Re-grade Quizzes Grade Moodle Assignments Grade Turnitin Assignments Rate Forums
Teaching Assistant Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes Yes
Grading Tutor No Yes No Yes Yes Yes Yes
Non-Grading Tutor No No No No No No No
  • To grade an assignment, a Grading Tutor clicks the assignment's heading link in the Gradebook, or accesses the assignment’s Grading summary page using the assignment link on the course home page. A Non-Grading Tutor can only access the assignment’s Grading summary page from the link on the course main page. From the Grading summary page, both a Grading and a Non-Grading Tutor click View/grade all submissions. The marks they enter on the assignment's Grading page will display in the Gradebook.
     
  • A Grading Tutor can override quiz grades in exactly the same way as Instructor or Teaching Assistant can - the only difference is that, because a Grading Tutor cannot edit the Gradebook, they cannot change the quiz grade just by changing the total in the gradebook. To re-grade a quiz, an Instructor, a Teaching Assistant or a Grading Tutor must click the quiz link from inside the Grader report. A Non-Grading tutor cannot view the Grader report, so they cannot re-grade a quiz.

Teaching Assistant Role

Teaching Assistants have similar privileges to Instructors, but they cannot:

  • control course availability
  • perform course rollover tasks

They have full access to all functions within the course files area, including deletion of files. They also have access to the Moodle Gradebook.

Grading Tutors Role

Grading Tutors have permissions within Moodle as follows:

  • No Turn editing on button displays to them, so they may not edit resources, activities etc.
  • In the Gradebook, they can use the Separate Groups filter to view the grades for the entire class or for individual groups. That is, they are not restricted to viewing only the student records in the group they have been added to themselves, but can see all student records in all groups.
  • They can access to all student submissions, not just those of their own group. They can filter the view by selecting a group from the Separate Groups drop-down list and see submissions by all students in that group.
  • They can grade assignments for all groups. However, if you set up students in groups and make the assignments group assignments,  Grading Tutors can filter the list of submissions by their group and grade only the assignment submissions for their group.
  • They cannot edit the Gradebook. Grading Tutors can only grade assignments using the View/grade all submissions link on the assignment grading page - they cannot perform any grade administration.
  • They cannot log in as any another user.
  • Can see the full list of students and staff in the Participants list.

Non-Grading Tutors Role

Non-Grading Tutors can access all content and use most tools in the same way as students.

They cannot edit course content, however, and they have no grading capabilities.

Student, Auditor and Guest role(s)

This section explores the student role, auditor role, and guest role(s).

Student Role

Students have access to all the features and functions they need to complete their learning activities in a course.

Auditor role

An Auditor has access to Moodle content and most tools, but can only do so in read-only mode. Auditor typically does not gain access to plugin services, like UNSW Lecture Recordings+, Turnitin or theBox.

The student auditor role can be provisioned upon request to the PVCESE LMS&I team, by a TELT Administrator contacting the [email protected] mailbox.

Access is commonly approved in the following two scenarios:

  • Where a higher degree by research student requires access to a course that is directly linked to their current research and such access has been approved by the student’s supervisor and the course convenor.
  • Where a student requires access to a course they have already attempted in order to prepare for a supplementary exam. Such access would normally only be granted if the student originally attempted the course no longer than a year prior and failed to meet the minimum requirement due to illness or misadventure.

A in-depth comparison of the Auditor and Guest roles can be found here.

Guest role

Guest access can now be enabled for non-award courses.

Enabling guest access allows users external to UNSW to view your course materials within Moodle. These users will access content anonymously but will not be able to participate in activities that require an identity within Moodle. For example: Assignment submissions and Forum posts.

Guest access for courses require approval from the Head of Organisational Unit.

You can request guest access to be added to new or existing courses by completing the online Moodle Guest Access Course Request form. Requests will be processed within 48 business hours.

A comparison of the Auditor and Guest roles can be found here.

 

Question Sharer role

The Question Sharer role allows user to access and share questions in school or faculty level categories.

TELT Administrators have access to assign the Question Sharer role to users. 

To access the Question Categories, 

  1. From the course page go to settings and in the Course Administration list select Question Bank.

    Question Bank
     
  2. From here you can access the available question category based on the access level.

    Question Bank Categories
  • Educational Technology
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Page last updated: Monday 27 September 2021