User roles

IVLE users can be given roles, giving them additional power in the system. The roles are centered around a typical university teaching structure, with tutors, lecturers and system administrators.

This page lists precisely what is permitted by each role.

Note that the roles are hierarchical. Being a member of a role implies all of the powers of lesser roles.

Most roles are per-offering, which means the user only has the powers of that role when dealing with a specific offering of a subject. (For example, a lecturer of subject “ivle-101” for 2009 semester 1 is just an ordinary user with respect to any other subject, or any other offering of “ivle-101”).

Ordinary users

This is the default role for any user. Note that we do not refer to “ordinary users” as “students”, because “student” implies an enrolment in a particular offering.

All users have the ability to:

• Store and edit files in the file system,
• Execute Python code in the Python console,
• Serve files privately and publicly,
• View and edit some of their own details (e.g., can edit display name, but not full name, which is required to be the user’s formal name).

Students

The role of “student” is offering-specific. Any user enrolled in an offering is a “student” in that offering.

In addition to the abilities of ordinary users, students have the ability to:

• View the “subject page” for the offering,
• View any worksheet in the offering, and its exercises,
• Submit attempts at any exercise in any worksheet in the offering,
• Receive a mark for worksheet completion in the offering,
• Submit a solo project for the offering,
• Submit a group project for the offering, on behalf of any group they are in.

Tutors

The role of “tutor” is offering-specific. Users may be enrolled in an offering as “tutor” by a lecturer or admin.

In addition to the abilities of students, tutors have the ability to:

• Create project groups, and add/remove students from them,
• View submissions to projects in the offering,
• Check out (with an external Subversion client) the part of a student or group’s Subversion repository which was submitted to a project in the offering,
• Enrol a user in the offering as a student, if the system administrator has allowed it (see tutors_can_enrol_students under policy configuration). This is disabled by default,
• Create and edit worksheets for the offering, if the system administrator has allowed it (see tutors_can_edit_worksheets under policy configuration). This is enabled by default,
• View completion statistics for exercises in worksheets for the offering, if the system administrator has allowed it (see tutors_can_edit_worksheets under policy configuration). This is enabled by default.
• Create and edit exercises for any offering (as exercises are not offering-specific), if the system administrator has allowed it (see tutors_can_edit_worksheets under policy configuration). This is enabled by default.

Lecturers

The role of “lecturer” is offering-specific. Users may be enrolled in an offering as “lecturer” by an admin.

In addition to the abilities of tutors (including any of their policy-specific abilities, regardless of the policy setting), lecturers have the ability to:

• Enrol a user in the offering, as a student or tutor,
• Create and edit worksheets for the offering,
• Create and edit exercises for any offering (as exercises are not offering-specific),
• Edit the details of the offering (such as description and URL),
• View individual students’ worksheet marks for the offering,
• Create and edit projects and project sets for the offering.

Admins

The ultimate role is “admin”. This is a site-wide role (it is not specific to any offering).

Admins have the ability to:

• Do anything a lecturer can do in any offering,
• See stack traces when IVLE generates an internal server error (normal users see a generic error page),
• See a list of all users in the system,
• View and edit all details for all users, including “fixed” fields such as full name, and change any user’s password without knowing the old one,
• Create new users,
• Enrol a user as a lecturer in any offering,
• Upgrade any user to admin status, or revoke admin status,
• Disable (ban) any user from accessing the system at all, or enable a user,
• See a list of all subjects and offerings in the system,
• Create new subjects and offerings,
• Edit the details of any subject (nb: not just an offering),
• Create new semesters,
• Change which subject/semester an offering is bound to.