Stuart: I read the above sentence about ten times and I have no idea what you are talking about! What on earth does a pdf document have to do with assigning the Course creator role to a user? It is an irrelevant detail.
Then you say "It didn't work in there." Where is "THERE?"
You need to slow down and back up and start over. Login as administrator. Do two things using the administration block on the front page of your site:
- Users -> Accounts -> Add a new user named Joe Demo.
- Users -> Permissions -> Assign global roles, click course creator and assign Joe Demo to that role
Then logout and log back in as Joe Demo. Click All courses in the Courses block and you will see a page with an Add a new course button. Press that button to create a course.
The Courses block is not strictly necessary, but it makes it easy to find the Add a new course button.