1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
Number of replies: 24
I've just upgraded and now seem to have all course creators listed on the front of my courses and several students. Any idea why and how to remove them?
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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Ray Lawrence -
Hi Matt,

I can help you resolve this but can you add any additional info / vote to report [MDL-7544].

Ray
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
Thanks Ray, will do.
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Arek Jaskolski -

In my Moodle 1.7,
I have all course creators listed on the front of my courses and several students.

How can I resolve this problem ??
Jask

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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Jeff Wood -
I have a similar issue.

My course creators from 1.6.3 have been added to the list of course creators in 1.7 HOWEVER they do NOT show on a courses list of creators as viewed from the course assign roles BUT show on EVERY course under participants.

Please tell me there is an easy fix.

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Maik Riecken -
Hi Jeff,

You have to think completly different about roles now. My english is poor, but I'll try. The main help for me was the word "context". There are many contexts in moodle now - here listed hierachical:

  • whole site
  • course categorie
  • course
  • activity
  • ...
Almost everything can be a context. Within an update everything is going fine and as expected except for the course creator role. A course creator is course creator in the context of the whole site after an update.

The problem: He has course creator rights in any context beneath the whole site - even on the main page! So he'll be able to do anything in any course what an "old" (=1.6) course creator could do with his own courses.

If you want to restrict this, do the following:
  1. Create course categorie
  2. move all courses towards there which the course creator should access
  3. delete all course creators from the main site admin menu
  4. go as admin to the new course categorie
  5. click on "assign roles" (at the very top, right)
  6. assign new course creators
They will be restricted with their right to the main categorie. This can be done with sub categories as well. So you can add a subcategorie "chemistry" and assign all chemistry teachers in the role "course creator" there. They won't get into anys course outside this categorie.

You must not assign roles with the main admin menu as you did before.

The idea with context is great: Now you can assign roles to any context and restrict the right with this context. The course creator roles were problematic to handle for the developers but some notes with the release notes would not be bad...

And: Please make the "assign roles"-link a little more briliant... It is important.

The new roles system is a big thing but needs to be explained more to the community in my opinion. Most people are windows users and never were confronted with complex rights systems.

ask me holes in my stomick... (like german say)

Maik
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In reply to Maik Riecken

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
Maik,

Thanks for the explanation, everything makes sense now smile I thought I'd broken it.

I'm not sure quite how to fix it though because if I follow your suggestion I think I can fix it for the courses I have, but the problem I am left with is that I use LDAP authentication to assign course creators automatically. Will new teachers who have not used moodle yet still be placed into a site-course-creaotr role when their account is created?

Matt
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In reply to Maik Riecken

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Jeff Wood -
Maik

Thank you so much for your very detailed explanation.

I was stuck in 1.6 thinking of permissions and user abilities (admin/creator/teacher/student). It sounds like a completely new way of thinking about permission for users.

So, just to clarify, you are suggesting:

  1. At the site level (Site Administration > Users > Permissions > Assign roles) I should remove everyone from all categories (roles) except the site admins?
  2. At the course level (Science, English, Geography) I should use the Assign roles (found under the Turn editing on button - I see what you mean about it being small) and give specific users course creator or teacher rights?
  3. For those that need to edit the main page (secretaries) I should assign them teacher roles at the site level?
In the process of doing these changes only people with course creator roles in a given course area will be able to create courses in that area. However, they will be course creators for ALL course in that category (and can be scene as participants but not listed as members in the specific course role area). Does this mean they will get mail for courses they do not teach?

Jeff

PS Your English is much better than my Germanbig grin
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
I've just tried altering the Course creators role so that the legacy cource creator role is prohibited, but the people are all still showing up in all courses. Removing them from the Course creator role does indeed take them away, but I still want these people to be able to make new courses.

I have made a new role with everything on Inherit except 'Create new courses' and assignin people to that role achieves this. I think the problem is with the 'Course creator' name so I am going to have to hack the LDAP assign course creators function to make it work when people log in for the first time.
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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
By a process of elimination, I've found that the name has nothing to do with it and it's only one capability to blame, not many - update course settings. If you disable this for course creators, then your course list has only the correct teachers displayed. Teachers can still update the settings for the courses they have created.
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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
Actually, it's not quite perfect - I've just made a student wiki with visible groups in one of my courses and it has the names of several other teachers on the dropdown for viewing other wikis. More tinkering needed.
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Maik Riecken -
Hi Jeff,

To answer your questions:

1. Yes
2. Yes
3. Not tested yet. Check it out by pass and fail... They should try to get out of the tracks to decide if everything is as you like.

Some problems I ran into:
coursecreators in context of a category seem to get no "create new course"-button - this looks strange to me. My workaround: There is a dummy categorie all coursecreators can access. There are empty dummy-courses inside which I any coursecreator can move via course administration to his home categorie. But this behaviour can't be right...

regards,

Maik

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In reply to Maik Riecken

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Patrik Nilsson -
I get the same fenomena when I set course creator under a category they don't have the add course button but if i set them at site level then they have it but gets it ofcourse under all categories. I even tried to make them administrator under a category but still no add course button.. so this must be a bug.
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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Yu Zhang -
Hi Guys,

In 1.7, anyone with moodle/course:update capability would show up on the course description area. To help with this problem we added 2 extra features in 1.8.

1) Assignment could be hidden. This prevents users with this hidden assignment showing up at the course participants page and on the course description area for users without the capability to view hidden assignments.

2) There is now a new global setting under appearance to determine what roles is displayed on the course description area. The order of the roles displayed is the same as the sort order of your roles (customizable). This setting is default to "Teacher".

Cheers,

Yu
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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
Thanks Yu,

I was just about to ask why my newly assigned teachers are not showing up on the front page on all courses. Seems to be only the course creators.

Matt
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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Ray Lawrence -
I've found this too. It seems there is a hierachy where course creators rank above teachers.
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In reply to Ray Lawrence

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
I've also found (using gradebook v2) that some of the creators are appearing in my 'All participants' view. Is this a similar issue or just down to the gradebook mod?
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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Matt Gibson -
I've still got this issue, which is a big problem as my course creators are assigned automatically using LDAP authentication. Hidden assignments wonn't solve the problem of all teachers who are course creators (i.e. everyone) having the ability to alter other people's courses.

I've filed this bug report. Please vote for it, I need this fixed!

MDL-7796
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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Jose' Coelho -

I am testing the version 1.7+ for upgrading the production site from 1.6, and I found a problem, close to these ones:

Since a course creator can do more things than a teacher, any course creator cannot be a student inside a course.

I create a course for all teachers, just to have a forum with all teachers in my institution, but in that course the teachers must have a "student" role. Since they are course creators, they all can edit and change the course.

One possibility is to give to a course creator only:
LEGACY ROLE: Course Creator;
Create courses.

Inherit everything else.

I do not found any problem with this solution, but if the course creator came with more permissions than this one, I don't know if I will loose something. 

Best regards,
José Coelho 

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In reply to Matt Gibson

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Thomas Robb -
One simple way to remove the course creators until version 1.8 becomes available for general use is to tweak the code -- if you have access to it. The file that needs modification is moodle/course/lib.php. Around line 1558 you will find the following code. (You don't have to count lines -- just search for it)

$role = array_shift($roles); // First one
$fullname = fullname($teacher, has_capability('moodle/site:viewfullnames', $context));
$namesarray[] = format_string($role->name).': <a href="'.$CFG->wwwroot.'/user/view.php?id='. teacher->id.'&amp;course='.SITEID.'">'.$fullname.'</a>';

Put an "if" statement around these lines like this:

$role = array_shift($roles); // First one
if ($role->roleid > 2){
$fullname = fullname($teacher, has_capability('moodle/site:viewfullnames', $context));
$namesarray[] = format_string($role->name).': <a href="'.$CFG->wwwroot.'/user/view.php?id='.
$teacher->id.'&amp;course='.SITEID.'">'.$fullname.'</a>';
}

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In reply to Thomas Robb

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Thomas Robb -
While I understand that version 1.8 has addressed the problem of creators being displayed in course listings, the fact that they are normally displayed in course listings is a major problem for sites using version 1.7.

There is absolutely no need to display creators because this is NOT a PEDAGOGICAL role but an ADMINISTRATIVE one. I have therefore suggested in the Tracker that the 1.7 code be patched to prevent creators from being displayed.

(Even for version 1.8, the default behavior should be set so that creators are not displayed...)

If you agree that this is behavior is a nuisance, please vote for MDL-8222!
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In reply to Thomas Robb

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Jeff Herman -
Thomas,

I'm not clear. What's is this tweak to the code supposed to do? I expected to see changes to the Participants screen with this change, but nothing happened.
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In reply to Jeff Herman

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Russell Myers -
I agree jeff, I tried the mod and nothing changed in my participants list. Is the mod used to remove all course creators from the course list?

Does anyone have a fix for all course creators showing up in the participants list?
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In reply to Russell Myers

Re: 1.7 upgrade - courses now show list of all course creators

by Thomas Robb -
There are actually TWO places in Moodle where creators are undesirably listed. One is in the display of categories and the courses within them. It is this display that my suggested tweak of moodle/course/lib.php will (temporarily) fix in version 1.7. It is mentioned in this posting:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=58606#283886

The other location is at the top of the participants' listing inside each course. The patch suggested in this posting will take care of that:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=63569

To reiterate what I have said elsewhere, the "creator" role is an administrative, not pedagogical role, and IMHO should thus not appear anywhere on the site when logged in as a student.


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