New Course Role!

There is a new course role for members of staff called “Staff – Read-only”. This is a role that you should only assign to members of staff. This is not a replacement of “Guest” and therefore should never be assigned to students.

This role is very restricted in the view of the module, the actions the user can take in the module, and the user’s access to external app tools (such as Turnitin).

View:

In the top tab, they can only see the Course Content, Discussions, Messages, and Analytics tab. Despite the visibility of the Analytics tab, this role cannot actually access it.

In the Details & Actions menu, they can only see the Class Register, Attendance, an empty header for Announcements, and the External Tools.

They can view all of the Blackboard content in the module, including items hidden from students. They can also access files such as PDFs and PowerPoints uploaded to the module; however, this will depend on the upload settings chosen. They can view the file if it has been uploaded with the “view” option and if a “download” option was chosen, they can only download the original file (not an alternative file type via Ally).

They can view videos in the YuJa channel and YuJa videos embedded in the module.

Actions:

Someone with this role cannot add, edit or delete content. They cannot join Collaborate sessions directly through the page, although they can still join with a guest link.

They can view and participate in discussions.

Restrictions:

Someone with this role cannot access some tools added through the External App area such as Turnitin.

Additionally, anyone with this role cannot access any Blackboard Tests or Assignments.