Course Ownership

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

Default owner group

If there is only one team of authors, you can specify the default owner group for microsite by setting DEFAULT_OWNER_GROUP_ID property in site's customization.

• Create a group e.g. Authors
• Note the id of the group
• Open the site details from Site Admin->Site Details, open the Customization tab, and add following on a new line

DEFAULT_OWNER_GROUP_ID=xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Authorizing Course to Groups

Click on the Authorization tab on the course editor, you can select the level of authorization for the course first.

• 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 Provate 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 site level all users of your site will be able to access the lesson. To enable or disable this option for a lesson, edit the lesson properties and change " Viewable without course session (for non members) " option. If this option is checked, then lesson will be visible to 
  • 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 - Making 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 "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 anytime" option from the properties tab of the quiz

• Date based Access By Enrolled Members - Allowing access to lessons or quizzes, only after a specific date. To do this, you will have to enable the option in lesson or quiz to enable them for enrolled members. Also after creating a course session, edit the Course Session, and change Start Date for the module or topic which contains this lesson or quiz. If you set the start date of module or topic to a future date, learners will not be able to access the lesson till that date. 

• Access only after a pre-requisite - If you want to enable access to a lesson or quiz only after learner has opened any previous lesson (say A) , or successfully passed a quiz (say B), you can make A or B mandatory by enabling "Mandatory to read" or "Mandatory to pass" options respectively. If this is done, 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 option, results in lesson or quiz not allowed to access, then the course player will show that lesson as locked.