Course administrator, but from where?

Course administrator, but from where?

by Jeff Wood -
Number of replies: 14
Just found another something very odd.

One of the course I teach has listed an administrator (see below)

Grade 10 Academic Science (Wood)
  • Administrator: S Goyer
  • Teacher: Mr. J. Wood
However, they are not listed as an administrator when I view the course users

Administrator Administrators can usually do anything on the site, in all courses. 0
Course creator Course creators can create new courses and teach in them. 0
Teacher Teachers can do anything within a course, including changing the activities and grading students. 1
The one teacher listed is me.

S Goyer shows up in my course participants list.

dead I don't get it.

Jeff

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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Yu Zhang -
Hi Jeff,

Has this user got anything other role assignments in this course, or the course category?

Yu
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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Jeff Wood -
Yu,

The person in question was a site admin from 1.6 and also a course creator (just like me).

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Yu Zhang -
Hi Jeff,

Anyone with course:update capability in a course context will show up (other than users with doanything, these users are ignored). So a course creator would have this capability in site context (and thus all the courses) Since roles are not hard coded, we do not rely on legacy roles and pull out teacher roles. So the list is really a list of users who can manage this course. The good news is we do have hidden assignments, thus students will not be able to see these (course creators etc) if you do a hidden assignment (samething goes with course participants list). The not so good news is that you have to wait a little bit for 1.8 =(.

Cheers,

Yu
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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Jeff Wood -
Yu,

I really appreciate you patience with me.

I guess what I am confused about is (are a lot of things) why this person only is showing as administration for this one course in a category of 5 available course? Why wouldn't this behaviour be site wide?

Maybe you can answer this.

It would seem that the upgrade from 1.6 into 1.7 has meant that old abilities (roles) have been imported into 1.7 but on a site wide basis. Should I then remove ALL site wide users from the creator and teacher roles and create these roles in subject areas?

I guess I really just don't understand roles. I keep thinking of them in the context of admins/ course creators from previous version.

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Yu Zhang -
Hi Jeff,

You are right, this behaviour should be consistent so this should be reflected on all courses. I took a look at the code and I think you found a bug. The users who have not visited these courses are not fetched, that could explain why this user is only listed under 1 course. I have fixed this in CVS, so please upgrade your Moodle. Also, I made some changes so that the "highest" role of a user will be returned. That should stop "students" from showing up on the front page. Thank you for reporting it.

From 1.6->1.7, the roles upgrade is very simple. Admin/Creators are assigned at site level, while teacher/students are assigned at course level, just like it was in 1.6.

Cheers,

Yu




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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Jeff Wood -
Tnx Yu,

I'll upgrade this weekend (after interviews and my week of teaching is finished) and get back to you.

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Martin Huntley -
I'm having a similar puzzle. In just one course (where I have several other courses in the same category, and several other categories), "Admin user" is listed as Administrator along with the course teachers in the listing of courses under that category and in that course's participant list. Assign roles for this course shows no-one in the course as having the Administrator role, and this user does not show up under any of the role assignments for the course. Further, no roles have been assigned at the category level for the category of this course.

More generally, I'm having a hard time trying to figure out how to define and assign roles so that I can have some members of a course be able to function as "editing teachers" without being listed as such when courses are listed under their categories with course name, description, and lists of teachers/facilitators. Is it that anyone with an editing role in the course is always shown in the course listing - whether or not you want that?

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In reply to Martin Huntley

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Jeff Wood -
Martin,

Seems we are both in the same boat.

I have tried adding roles for specific resources, but they don't seem to override any previous roles.

Jeff
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In reply to Martin Huntley

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Artem Andreev -
Another problem: if you assign role student at site level (if you have some activities on site level) - these peoples become students in all courses...

IMHO, these problems block using Moodle 1.7 on production sites...

Roles - big work but.....

May be developing tab "Roles carried down" from context to context may solve some problems?.. And visibility roles to participiants on different contexts may solve other problems...

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In reply to Artem Andreev

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Artem Andreev -
I saw message Martin Dougiamas in MDL-7519: "Yes, we merged the "site course" with the site level in Moodle 1.7 to reduce confusion. In retrospect this was probably a bad idea, and Yu is working on separating the two again."

It may help...
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In reply to Artem Andreev

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by Jeff Wood -
Artem,

I experienced this also. I needed the ability to use a "choice" on the main page so I added ALL users as students at the site level so they could take the choice.. bad move.

I was getting emails from everyone saying they were getting forum postings from a course they took (or were not even enrolled in). Seems this added everyone as a student in every course...OOPS

Had to quickly undo my mistake.

Live and learnblack eye

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Course administrator, but from where?

by David Jackson -
You might want to check whether or not S. Goyer has been assigned the admin role in a wider context.

I have just found that assigning a user the role of teacher at the category level, cascades down to the courses in that category, but they do not appear in the list of assigned teachers for those individual courses. Also, when viewing the category, their name appears in the list of teachers for each course only after you have viewed the assigned teachers for those courses.

Regards


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