How to assign a teacher to a course

How to assign a teacher to a course

by Stephen Winters -
Number of replies: 11

Hi,    (re: Moodle 2.6.2 (Build: 20140310))

I am a relatively new user. Am setting up Moodle to experiment with using it to homeschool my 15 year old son through high school.

As I've been setting up some courses, after searching through all the various administration, Course Administration, and Site Administration I could find no place to assign to assign a teacher to the course. I searched through the forums and the documentation with still no success. I've literally spent some hours trying to search this out.

Since I've had this problem, I imagine there may be a few other new users who may also have the same problem: how to assign a teacher (or for that matter, some of the other roles) to a course or a category.  I found the documentation on "Managing Roles" and "Assign Roles". On the Assign Roles page there was a paragraph about "Enabling teachers to assign the role of teacher", but not about how to assign a teacher to a course. 

Under "Hidden roles" there was a clue though, that said, "Note: By default, the only role which can be assigned to other users is the manager role. To enable other roles, such as teacher to be assigned, the capability moodle/course:view should be allowed for the role."  However, even using the link, I could find nothing that said how to enable the "capability moodle/course:view".

 

After some more searching and experimenting I think I found what was my problem. Since I was still working on the course I had no students "participating" in the course. This is what I did. I went to Administration>Site administration > Users > Permissions > Define roles.  From the list of roles, click on the edit Teacher role icon at the left. On the Editing Role page 'Teacher' page, search for "View courses without participation" click Allow. Also, since I wanted my "teachers" (my wife and myself) to be able to be assigned under categories as well as courses, there was another thing to do. Near the top, under Role archetype, I also clicke on the "Category" checkbox. Now you can click Save.

Then either navigate to:

  • under course category, go to the Administration menu>Assign Roles. From the list of roles, click on "Teacher" and assign the desired user(s) to the role.
  • OR, in your course, go to the Course Administration menu>Users>Other Users. From the list of users in the right pane, click on the Assign Roles button. Role of Teacher will be available.

Hope this saves someone else the trouble I went through to assign a teacher to a course.

Note: after writing this, I decided to just add something in the documentation. So I added a section called Assigning Teachers to the Assign Roles page.

Best Wishes

Stephen

 

 

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In reply to Stephen Winters

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Floyd Saner -

Stephen,

Teacher and student roles are usually assigned at the course level.  When you are in a course, go to Course administration ... Users ... Enrolled users.  You should see an 'Enroll Users' button on that page.  Click the button, select the role you want to assign (drop box), then select the person(s) to assign to that role.

Floyd

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In reply to Floyd Saner

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Mary Cooch (personal account) -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Testers

Stephen - welcome to Moodle and thanks for adding to the documentation. I added a message to the docs talk page in reply to your commentsmile

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In reply to Mary Cooch (personal account)

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Stephen Winters -

Floyd wrote: "Teacher and student roles are usually assigned at the course level.  When you are in a course, go to Course administration ... Users ... Enrolled users.  You should see an 'Enroll Users' button on that page.  Click the button, select the role you want to assign (drop box), then select the person(s) to assign to that role."

Hi Floyd,

Thanks for explaining that. I wish that was in the documentation. I had seen and used that "enroll users" window before, but had not noticed the "assign roles" drop down menu.

 

Hi Mary,

Thanks for the welcome. I realize that I probably don't understand Moodle well enough to add documentation, so I can "kind of" understand your deleting what I wrote. Even if what I wrote was wrong, it seems to me that there is an absence of simple clear instructions (such as what Floyd wrote above) about how to assign teachers to a course. (and also, an explanation of what the differences and reasons between "assigning" and "enrolling" teachers)

Just a note: I've been using computers since the mid 80's and and for the last 8 to 10 years have manually installed and created and written my own websites (Winters Sewing, and Upholstery Resource, and  Live-anew) and also post many comments on (Drupal forum, and the Professional Upholstery and Soft Furnishings forum). When I write messages I take a great amount of time to think out what I want to say, to search through documentation and forum messages to get the details right (as far as I know them), to post links (as in this message) and the like. I also know how to research using Google and I did a lot of searching trying to find how to assign teachers to a class.

Since what I spent so much time writing presumably was just deleted, I'm a little hesitant to add anything else to the documentation. Could someone else write something, like Floyd wrote about assigning teachers, to the Assign Roles page.

Under Hidden Roles there is also a lack of enough documentation. There is this sentence "To enable other roles, such as teacher to be assigned, the capability moodle/course:view should be allowed for the role." that doesn't tell how the "moodle/course:view should be allowed for the role". Even when I followed the link to the "Capabilities/moodle/course:view" I still don't see any instructions of how to enable that.

This brings up another issue. What is the proper procedure to add to the documentation? Should the suggested addition/changes be first written in page comments section (which hopefully won't be deleted)? It is quite discouraging to spend a lot of time writing something just to have it be deleted. And maybe a large part of it was in my fault in not understanding how to correctly initiate change or additions to the documentation.

Best Wishes,

Stephen

 

 

 

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In reply to Stephen Winters

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Mary Cooch (personal account) -
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Stephen - I am extremely (and I mean extremely) sorry about the deleted documentation and please don't let my hasty actions put you off continuing to add to it where you think it is unclear. You did the right thing by making a comment in the talk page about it and it's actually really good to have someone keen to contribute, especially when they want to improve the experience for others. talk/comments page too  -which you did  As for protocol,anyone is free to add docs and in fact if there is any uncertainty you can always edit the talk/comments page too  -which you did. My mistakeblush 

I think what would be good, based on your discoveries, is if you could add a  bit to the http://docs.moodle.org/en/Assign_roles in the  Course context section and explain how to add teachers to the course there. 

If there is still anything unclear about how to add teachers, please say! 

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In reply to Mary Cooch (personal account)

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Stephen Winters -

Hi Mary,

Thanks for the apology, the encouragement. and the explanation. It's all good now.

As you might guess from looking at the links in my previous message, I LOVE to write (but I have a very limited amount  of time and a lot of things on my plate). One of my motivations for writing is that I get confused easily. Among other things, writing helps me to better understand things myself. For me, writing is part of the process of bringing clearness to confusion, of bringing order to disorder. Whenever I write out something, I take the time to walk the process through at the same time that I'm writing something. Based on my current level of understanding, I like to make things as accurate and as understandable as possible.

Just a note: I don't regard what I write as sacred or as gospel. My first thought is, what is the best way to write something to make it more understandable. I have no problem of someone editing, correcting or improving what I write. As I did on my first message on this thread, I often rewrite my text over and over until it sounds good to me. I don't mind if someone improves what I write. Oh, one thing I forgot to mention, some years back I took a number of writing classes. My teacher said something like, "Good writing doesn't' happen in a vacuum." Having input from other authors generally improves the quality of the writing.

Here is my thought about my adding to the documentation. Since I'm a relative new user, I may not understand everything accurately enough to write it all correctly. It would be great if someone could check what I write for accuracy.

Best Wishes,

Stephen

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In reply to Stephen Winters

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Floyd Saner -

Stephen,

Since you are a "relative new user" I don't know how familiar you are with Mary.  I can assure you that Mary's apology is sincere, and that her forehead is likely black and blue from smashing it against the wall in anguish over deleting your documentation notes!  black eye  Mary does a wonderful job working with Moodle documentation.  She is a delightful person with a great sense of humor.

I'm glad my explanation helped you.  It is always good to have others read documentation and point out missing or unclear aspects.  Continue to Moodle with us!

Floyd

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In reply to Stephen Winters

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Mary Cooch (personal account) -
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You sound just like me Stephen, regarding writing, loving to write and writing for the benefit of better understanding something. Happy to check anything you add and happy to have found a fellow lover of explanatory writingsmile

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In reply to Mary Cooch (personal account)

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Stephen Winters -

Hi Mary,

Just for the record, I fully accept your apology. It's all done and all good.

Now, to the reason for writing this message. Here it is in the middle of the night and I couldn't sleep. So I decided to take another try of writing about Teachers. This time I took some time to see how the Moodle Documentation menus were laid out. I discovered that I had put my first attempt in the wrong section. In looking about I found the Doc page that had been started about Teachers. It only had two sentences on the page, but it looked like the right place to get started (and it certainly needed some help.) Could you have a look at it and see if everything is technically correct? I will probably add some more later, but am finished for tonight. Need to get back to bed.

Mary, thank you for you helpful attitude and your desire to help others. That is rare in this day and age.


Best Wishes,
Stephen

Note: Mary, after writing this message I went back over to the Teachers page and did some more correcting and editing. While there I happened click on the history tab and saw that there have been a lot of previous revisions (which is surprising, when I saw there were only two sentences there when I first saw it.) I then compared revisions showing , as shown here. I also looked through some of the other revisions. Some of it sounded pretty good, and I wonder why it was almost all deleted.

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In reply to Stephen Winters

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by dawn alderson -

Hi there,

interesting thread, thank you. For those of us relatively new here. Might it be possible to know exactly how to contribute to the documentation. Are there rules? I am thinking I might just have a go at that. smile

thanks

Dawn

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In reply to dawn alderson

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Stephen Winters -

Hi Dawn,

As a new user and a new contributor to the Documentation I can't speak for the Moodle community. All I can do is direct you to this page: MoodleDocs:Guidelines for contributors.Hopefully this should answer at least some of your questions.

I would also suggest that you go to the Documentation menu structure and click on various menus to see how it is laid out and get familiar with it. The more familiar you are with how everything is organized the higher probability you find areas where you can share and know where to add it.

Best Wishes,

Stephen

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In reply to Stephen Winters

Re: How to assign a teacher to a course

by Mary Cooch (personal account) -
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Hi again Stephen and thanks for your help in promoting the documentation. Sorry for the late reply - I have been away at the UK Moodle Moot (conference) in Edinburgh and just catching up with all forum posts now. I will go and take a look at your teacher page documentation and make any comments necessary on the the page comments/talk page as you have done.

I don't know for sure but I suspect there was a lot of stuff in previous years but it was moved to other pages of the docs (with links to those pages) perhaps to avoid cluttering the page and just keep it as a description of the role, but I see the Manager role page has a lot of information too actually.

One thing worth noting is that if you add square brackets around words which don't have pages already made, they appear red and don't go anywhere - like your "Course" or "Category" so it might be worth checking first the correct  name of the page before linking to it. Then it will be blue and people will go somewheresmile

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