Hello Isaac,
In Moodle 3.1, here is how I achieve that.
From your Moodle home page, navigate to:
"Administration – Front Page Settings – Users – Permissions – and click on the word "Permissions"
This will bring you to your Permissions in Front Page screen:
Then, click the X next to the manager role (or any other global role in which you would like to remove permissions) for these following items:
moodle/course:update
moodle/course:movesections
mod/forum:addnews
moodle/course:manageactivities
moodle/course:activityvisibility
moodle/backup:backupactivity
moodle/filter:manage
repository/coursefiles:view
moodle/role:assign
moodle/role:safeoverride
moodle/role:override
moodle/site:viewreports
basically, any permission with “manage” – change to prevent
then, log in as a test user in the manager role and see if it achieves what you are looking for.