Course Ownership and Authorization

Course Ownership 

Ownership defines the course's editing rights. 

By default, the user who creates the course also becomes its owner. Ownership decides the editing permission for the course. Only the owner is allowed to edit the course and make any changes.

In situations where a team of authors needs to have authoring rights for common courses, you can change the owner of the course to a group. Only the current owner can change the course's ownership. When the course is owned by a group, then any user who is a member of the owner-group and has an admin or instructor role in that group can edit the course. It's advised that one user should edit the course at a time to avoid accidentally overwriting others' changes. You can always check the Author property of the course which shows the user who last edited the course.

Default owner group

When a new microsite is created, the system automatically creates an 'Authors' group and that group is assigned as the default owner group. Users who will be creating content should be added as an admin in the 'Authors' group. 

The default owner group capability for a microsite is set by adding the DEFAULT_OWNER_GROUP_ID property to the site's customization.

Making a Group the Owner of a Course

To change the course ownership, edit the course (as current owner), and open the Authorization tab. Then click on the Owner Group button. [Please note a group owned course's ownership can be changed only by group's owner.]

Select a group from the dialog. Note that you will see only the groups in which you are an admin or instructor in the list for selection.

 

Authorizing a Course to Groups

Authorization defines a course's usage rights including which groups can take this course.

Click on the Authorization tab on the course editor; you can then select the level of authorization for the course.

  • Site Level - all users will have access to the course without even getting enrolled in a course session. This option is not recommended. Use this option only for Previewable courses.
  • Private - only selected groups can have access to the course
    • Once you select the Private level, you will be able to add/remove groups from the course's authorized groups list by using buttons on the toolbar

 

Authorization for Lessons and Quizzes 

You can configure each lesson and quiz in the course with several options to restrict access by learners.

 

  • Access By Group Members - Make a lesson or quiz accessible to anyone (without even becoming enrolled in a course session), who has access to the course. This means if you create a course at the site level, all users of the site will be able to access the lesson. To enable or disable this option for a lesson, edit the lesson properties and change the "
    • All site users, if the course's authorization setting is Site
    • All group members of authorized groups for the course, if the course's authorization setting is Private 

By default, this option is checked.

For quizzes, you can achieve the same thing by using "Users can take the test without course session" option from the properties tab of the quiz.

  • Access By Enrolled Members - This makes a lesson or quiz accessible only to users who are enrolled in a course session. This means the lesson is visible only to the valid learners who are enrolled in a course session which is linked to this course. Also, if the course session ends, learners will no longer have access to it. To enable this setting, edit the lesson properties and enable the "Viewable anytime by members of course session" option.

By default, this option is checked.

For quizzes, you can achieve the same thing by using "Enrolled members in a course session can take the test anytimeoption from the properties tab of the quiz.

  • Date based Access By Enrolled Members - This is for allowing access to lessons or quizzes only after a specified date. To do this, you will have to enable the option in the lesson or quiz to make them available to enrolled members. Also, after creating a course session, edit the Course Session and change the Start Date for the module or topic which contains this lesson or quiz. If you set the start date of a module or topic to a future date, learners will not be able to access the lesson until that date. 
  • Access only after a pre-requisite - If you want to enable access to a lesson or quiz only after a learner has opened any previous lesson (say A) , or successfully passed a quiz (say B), you can make A or B mandatory by enabling the "Mandatory to read" or "Mandatory to pass" options respectively. If this is enabled, lessons which come after A or B will be shown as locked in the course player to the learner. As soon as A and B are read and passed, the lessons and quizzes which were dependent on them will become unlocked. 

If any of the above options results in a lesson or quiz as inaccessible, then the course player will show that lesson as locked.

 

 


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