Introduction to Users
Introduction
User management is at the core of efficient classrooms, schools and districts. This short article will go through the basics of how users are managed within ClassroomAPP. It is a recommended read.
Simplicity
The underlying core of how ClassroomAPP manages users is the quest for simplicity.
Having a complicated permissions system aimed at cover the most extreme cases takes away from usability.
We have to define two key terms which define access to a given content or feature
Role
A role is permanent and there 3 major ones: Student, Instructor and Parent. You are unlikely to change your role, so it is a permanent setting.
An exception is the Administrator role. A teacher can also be an Administrator, giving that user access to an administration panel. More in the Admin section.
Instructors have key exclusive abilities:
- An Instructor has exclusive ability to create teaching-related content such as courses, tests, plans
- An Instructor has exclusive access to classroom functionality
Parents is a unique role that can only see the content of his / her children and cannot create content
Permissions
Instructors and Students can have one of three permissions to access content
- Read: Allows visibility (e.g. students in a course)
- Edit: Can add or alter content (e.g. a teaching assistant in a course / group)
- Admin: Has full access to the content, including removing content
Permission Inheritance
Courses & Workspaces
At the top of the content hierarchy you can have one of two master container types, courses (teacher-created or system-created) or workspaces (students and instructors). All children (and sub-children) content of a master container will inherit its permissions (except when groups are present, see next section)
Groups
Groups allow instructors to give a subset of the students specific access. For example, for differentiated instruction. All content within a group will inherit its permissions.
You cannot add a new user to a group, only members of the master container (course or workspace) can have access
Conclusion
This was an intro to the basic principles of Users. We recommend you go through the Courses & Workspaces and Groups at some point to better understand permissions within these key containers.
Unless specifically mentioned, the remainder of the documentation relates to teachers and students (i.e. not parents)