Understanding Roles and Adding users to Moodle courses

Moodle roles facilitate controlling what a user can and cannot do within a course.

Course-specific Roles

The default course roles are Teacher and Student. A librarian role and two types of assistant roles also are available to allow for the addition of a reference librarian and course assistants such as Writing Associates and lab assistants.

  • Teacher – Teachers can do anything within a course, including changing the activities and grading students. Teachers are the only role with the ability to enroll new users in the course.
  • Student – Students generally have fewer privileges within a course. They can submit assignments for grading, make posts to forums, send email through Quickmail, and generally participate in a course. Students cannot edit any of the course settings. Students see only their grades.
  • Audit – Very similar to the student role, but will not show up in the gradebook.
  • Librarian – Librarians can assist with content creation including adding, modifying, and deleting resources, activities, and blocks. Librarians also can access assignments for download and grading, but cannot view the full gradebook.
  • Assistant: Limited Grade Access – For Writing Assistants, lab assistants, and teaching assistants who need editing rights to a course site as well as access to assignments for download and grading. This role does not allow access to the full view of the gradebook, meaning this role cannot grade manual grade items.
  • Assistant: No Grade Access – For Writing Assistants, lab assistants, and teaching assistants who need editing rights in a course, but who do not need access to student grades, submitted assignments, or assessments.
  • Non-editing Teacher – Non-editing teachers can teach in courses and grade students, but may not alter activities.

Roles in Spaces

Office and Organizational Moodle sites have two primary roles: Leader and Member.

  • Leader/Teacher – Leader/Teachers can do anything within a course, including changing the activities, enrolling new users, and grading students.
  • Member/Student – They can submit assignments for grading, make posts to forums, send email through Quickmail, and generally participate in a course. Members cannot edit any of the course settings.

Manually enrolling users

Course enrollments in Moodle are updated nightly from Banner, so it’s unlikely Teachers will need to add students. However, to add users to a Spaces site, or if a student in a Moodle course needs to be added before Moodle enrollments are automatically updated, perform the following:

IMPORTANT: To enable manual enrollment for your Spring 2025 course(s), please contact the Help Desk.

When submitting your request, kindly include:

  • The course name(s)
  • A brief explanation of why manual enrollment is needed.

Adding a Student Manually to your Moodle Course

  1. Select the “Participants” tab within the course.
  2. On the next screen, click the [Enroll users] button at the top.
  3. Enter all or part of the name of the person you wish to add in the Select users field and select the user once they appear.
  4. Select the role you wish to assign (e.g., Teacher, Student) from the Assign role drop-down box .
    • If enrolling a student that will be enrolled later via Banner, be sure to select Show more… to set an Enrollment Duration. Typically, setting this duration to 14 days should be sufficient to allow Banner time to manage the student’s enrollment in Moodle automatically.
  5. Once you have completed all the enrollments, click the [Enroll selected users and cohorts] button.

Changing a user’s role

  1. Select the “Participants” tab within the course.
  2. Click the role of the user, click the pencil icon, and then X next to the user’s role to remove it.
  3. Click the down arrow to select the new role to add it.
  4. Click the floppy disk icon to save these selections.

Adding students who are auditing your course

Because students auditing a course are not automatically added to your Moodle course site, you will need to manually add auditing students needing access to your course site.

  1. Repeat the steps for manually enrolling a student (above), except assign the Audit role to the student.

If a user is already enrolled as a student, and then becomes an auditor, you must still go through the steps to manually enroll them and not just change their role.

Deleting a manually added user

  1. Select the “Participants” tab within the course.
  2. In the row of the user, click the trash can icon under the Status column.

Note: Only manually added users can be deleted.

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