My stupid roles question

My stupid roles question

by Art Lader -
Number of replies: 9

I should be able to figure this out myself, but am having no luck. Soooo...

How would I tweak roles in 1.7 so that teachers and students could participate in activities like choices and forums on the front page. Right now, only admins can do so.

I KNOW the answer must be right here - http://docs.moodle.org/en/Manage_roles - but I am not recognizing it. sad

Thanks,
Art

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Art Lader

Re: My (it isn't) stupid roles question

by Chardelle Busch -
Picture of Core developers
Hey Art!

This was a boo boo in 1.7--you can't, at least not unless you give every student the capability of doing so. This should be fixed in 1.8.

See here for more http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=58497
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Chardelle Busch

Re: My (it isn't) stupid roles question

by Samuli Karevaara -
I think Art didn't mean editing capabilities, just "post to forum" etc. I'm looking for this too. If I give a default role of "Student" to the site, then everybody is a student on every course also (? surprise ), I just want them to be students on the "front page".
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Art Lader

Re: My stupid roles question

by Thomas Robb -
I'm just taking a stab at this. Art's question is far from stupid!

Although I thought that adding students to the top level would make them students in all courses, this doesn't seem to be the case. Nevertheless, this is not a satisfactory solution since one would have to explicitly add students to the front page everytime new users are added to the site.

It is possible to add the students directly to a specific activity using the "roles" tab in the activity set-up, but for the same reason as above, this would not be an optimal method.

What we really need, at least at the top level, is a choice in the set-up that grants permission to anyone who is logged on.

By the way, once a method is discovered to do this, or anything else, please add it to the FAQ at the bottom of http://docs.moodle.org/en/Manage_roles. This might not be the optimal location for this FAQ but it can be moved elsewhere if the management prefers it elsewhere.


Average of ratings: -
In reply to Thomas Robb

Re: My stupid roles question

by Samuli Karevaara -
Under "Administration > Users > Permissions > User policies" there is a setting "Default role for all users" which is described as "All logged in users will be given the capabilities of the role you specify here, at the site level, in ADDITION to any other roles they may have been given. The default is the Guest role. Note that this will not conflict with other roles they have, it just ensures that all users can do something useful at the site level (eg read forum discussions, resources, etc)."

So far setting this to "Student" seems to be what I'm after. But after that the role of a "student" is inherited to every course! Users are not enrolled in courses, but they have student-level access to every course, regardless of course keys, enrolments etc. so this is not what I want!

Adding students on site-level with the "Assign Roles" works as expected, they can post at site level but each course asks for enrollment yes/no or the course key. But as you said, this is not a great option as it has to be done separately for each new user.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Samuli Karevaara

Re: My stupid roles question

by Alan Busher -

The method I have used which seems to work is to assign all users (teachers and students) in our Moodle to the front page forum as 'students' ... but only on that front page forum. As has been said if you make everyone students at the site level everyone sees and can access all courses ... or "Yikes!" as was said recently thoughtful. At the site level all users should be left as Guests

So it goes like this.

  • On the front page forum, click "add a new topic" but don't actually add a new topic for the moment
  • click "update this forum" (top right of screen)
  • click the roles tab, find all your moodle users and assign them to this forum as students
  • Click the overide roles tab and for students 'allow' "view discussions" and "view hidden timed post". Also 'Prevent' "start new discussions" and "reply to posts"
  • Return to the screen where you could see the "update this forum" button and click "show / edit current subscribers"
  • Turn editing on - top right of screen and find all your users again by searching for an 'a' perhaps an 'e' - the vowels will pull up all the users.
  • Make them all subscribers
  • Return to add a topic and really add a topic ... and all your users will get the message by e-mail
  • By leaving this forum in the state of 'allowing subscription' instead of 'forcing subsription' you can then suggest to a person that they unsubscribe if they don't want a site e-mail and also create an extra small unsubscribe link at the bottom of your message which goes direct to the unsubscribe page - It has taken me a few months in between other fascinating upgrade experiences to get this right for me, it is not perfect. If you wish to look here you will see where I have got to so far: http://moodle.sparsholt.ac.uk 
  • I'm afraid you can only look as this site only accepts our network users

Kind regards

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Alan Busher

Re: My stupid roles question

by Samuli Karevaara -
If users are added as Students on the front page (site level) "one by one" with the Assign Roles feature (not via the "Site Level Default Role Policy"), they won't be Students in all of the courses. This has the advantage that if I add a new forum to the front page, they can post in that too, with no extra role assignment hassle. The disadvantage is that new users won't automatically have rights to post in the site level forums until they are added as "Site Students".
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Art Lader

Re: My stupid roles question

by Art Lader -
Thansk, everyone.

This seems to be more complicated than I thought. Still playing with the suggestions made here.

Any other thoughts on this are welcome!

-- Art
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Art Lader

Re: My stupid roles question

by Fred Quay -
Why ?

Think a site in which all users declared are in enrollment courses (portals), all meta-courses enrollment forbidden to anybody but to descendant courses users : it functions perfect.
If among students from a portal course, I declare one as student at site level, from that moment this student is forbidden to access to metacourses he is enrolled by his former affiliation to courses...

At the same time, teachers declared at site level can interact in site level forums, but the one student not.

Hope it could help, but I feel a bit lost.
Average of ratings: -