Who can do what: owners, teachers and college admins

Account types and module roles

An account is one of four types: a site administrator (that is us), a member of staff, a student, or a customer, which is somebody who only booked a call. A customer holds no module and is not part of a college’s teaching.

A module has its own three roles: owner, teacher and student. Owner and teacher are both staff, and a student on a module is a student. The type says what somebody is at the college and the role says what they are on one module.

Being staff grants nothing on its own. What opens the teaching pages is running a college, owning a module or teaching one.

You own what you make

Whoever creates a module owns it, and whoever creates a task owns that. Nothing is inherited downhill: owning a module gives no claim on a task somebody else wrote in it, and running the college gives no claim on anything in it. A teacher who writes an exercise keeps it, even if somebody else runs the module.

Any member of staff may add a module or a course, so starting a new unit never waits on somebody else. Making a module makes them its owner, and gains them that module and nothing else. Renaming a course, removing one and putting people on one stay with the college admin.

What each role can do

An owner can rename or delete the module, make another owner, and turn an owner back into a teacher. A teacher runs the module day to day: they see every task in it, hand tasks out, mark, and put teachers and students on it. They cannot rename or delete the module or make an owner. Handing work out is open to the module’s staff whoever wrote it, because giving somebody work is teaching and rewriting the work is not.

A task has owners of its own, and nothing else: only a task’s owner changes or deletes it or makes another owner of it. A student is handed a task, never made an owner of it.

A college admin sees every module and every task in their college and changes none of it unless they own it. They look after the college itself: its people, its courses and its settings. They can make a colleague a college admin, but cannot take their own away. A site administrator can.

On a module’s People tab

Any teacher may take a student or another teacher off. Only an owner may take another owner off, make a teacher an owner, or turn an owner back into a teacher. Nobody takes themselves off, and a module is never left without an owner: the last one is refused and told to make somebody else an owner first.

Picking a new role from the list saves it straight away, and a banner says whether it took.

When somebody leaves

Removing a member of staff hands what they owned to whoever removed them, so a class never loses the tasks set for it. The account and its files go to the bin, and putting the account back gives the ownership straight back.

Questions people ask

Can a teacher delete a module?

No. Only an owner can rename or delete it. A teacher runs it day to day.

Is a college admin the owner of every module?

No. They can see every module and task in their college and change none of it unless they own it. Owning is earned by making something.

Who can make a module or a course?

Any member of staff at the college. Whoever makes a module owns it.

What if a module’s only owner leaves?

What they owned passes to whoever removed them. A module’s own People tab also refuses to remove or demote its last owner.