Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Jade Tippett -
Number of replies: 10

I am totally new to Moodle, so this may be a "newbie" question. I have some experience in data modeling and SQL and set up a webserver for my high school classroom using the XAMP package. Installing Moodle 1.7 was not difficult, and I set up a test course called CCI.

I am confused about the relationship between the Roles Module and the Participants Module.

I was able to add our IT specialist, Andrea, as a second administrator using Assign Roles, initially, in my confusion, in the context of my CCI course, and later from my Administrator tool block on the Moodle Home Page. She wasn't able to see the Administrator Tool block until I added her the second time.

Both myself and Andrea, the IT tech, showed up as administrators for my CCI course on the Moodle home page. If I go through Assign Roles on the CCI page, neither one of us show up on the Assign Roles page as existing administrators. So how do I remove her name? Accessing the Assign Roles module from the CCI page, I added myself as a teacher in the CCI course. Now I am no longer shown as an administrator for that course, but I am still listed as a teacher.

We enabled another teacher as a course creator. He created a course, and Andrea uploaded a list of students for him. They showed up on the Participants page for his course, but not in the Assign Roles page for students in his class as Existing Users. We added them that way, too, and now the Participants list for that course has doubled!

All of his students show up as Participants in my Test Course even though I did not enroll them in my test course.

Both Andrea and I show up as Administrators for his course on the Moodle Home Page.

It appears that if an administrator opens the Assign Roles page for a course, they become listed on the Front Page as an administrator for that course even if they do not assign themselves as an administrator. Curious...

It seems to me that either:

The SQL statement for Participants is not correct,

The SQL statement for the Existing Users side of the Assign Role boxes is not correct

There is a data normalization error that has users entered twice in a table from two different places

Unfortunately I won't have time to dig any deeper for a while.

Maybe I am missing something, being new. Anyone have any clues?

Finally a big shoutout and thank you from a couple of excited teachers for an exceptionally well done team effort.

--j

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In reply to Jade Tippett

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Yu Zhang -
Hi,

The roles model is based on hierarchy, that means anything assign at the system level is inherited at the course level. If the students show up in your course, and you have not made those assignments, then perhaps the students were assigned at a higher level, e.g. the course category level or the system level. That is probably not the intended behaviour. To assign students in a course, you can follow the link on the course administration block where it says "Assign Roles".

The participants list and the role assign page can be different because of this inheritance relationship. Participants assigned at higher context will show up as course participants within a course, but not on the role assign page.

The function as an administrator and perform site level actions you need to assign the course administrator role at the system level, as you did the second time.

Cheers,

Yu
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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Jeff Wood -
Hi Yu,

I'm a little confused (still). You mention:

The participants list and the role assign page can be different because of this inheritance relationship. Participants assigned at higher context will show up as course participants within a course, but not on the role assign page.

To me this just seems odd. By definition a participant (as in participant list) is a person involved in the course. But, since they have not been assigned the role of a "student" at the course level should not be there (my thinking).

I can understand the idea of hierarchy and its function, but don't feel that it is really applicable in the way it is being used.

I guess what I really don't understand is why users can be assigned as participants at a higher level and then become members of a course they are not enrolled in. Something inherently wrong with this (IMHO).

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Yu Zhang -
Hi Jeff,

There could be many reasons for this design. IMO it makes sense because it offers flexibility. Say if I want a teacher teaching Physics courses to be teachers in all courses in the Physics category, then I can simply assign him to the course category of that. Similarly if I want a group of students to be enrolled in all foundation courses I can do the same, without enrolling them to each individual course. It also has performance advantage as there's only 1 entry in the database, compared to having 1 record for each course. In the 2 above examples, I think you will agree that you want them to show up in the course participants lists.

We know there is a problem with "unwanted" roles showing up in the participants list can be fixed by using hidden assignments in 1.8.

Cheers,

Yu
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In reply to Yu Zhang

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Jeff Wood -
Hi Yu,

The teaching example you give makes perfect sense (if you have a category called physics). In our configuration we have our physics courses in a category called science. This means all physics teachers teach (or are participants in) all science courses. Not ideal for us.

As for the students... I can see your point, but much preferred the old method.

I guess I'll have to wait for 1.8.

How exactly will the hidden assignments work?

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Jenny Toller -
Jeff,

Maybe you could consider creating a physics sub-category under science - I think that this would do the trick for your physics teachers.

Cheers,
Jenny
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In reply to Jenny Toller

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Jeff Wood -
Hi Jenny,

Thanks for your suggestion. This would certainly allow only people teaching physics to be listed as physics teachers. The downside would be that students would have to "mine" down to get to their course the first time or when coming in as a guest. Plus anyone teaching a physics course would still be a participant even if they didn't teach that particular course.

I have been doing some thinking about roles and there use. Unfortunately I am not a programmer so I have no idea how difficult or even possible my ideas are. Here is what I have come up with:

  1. People are assigned roles as currently done (all new registrations are students, admins set all other roles).
  2. The role a user has allows them to do certain things (as currently done); however, the role a person is assigned doesn't automatically allow them access to courses it merely gives them the "ability" to do certain things.
  3. The user, once given a role, can choose to activate it in a suitable way.
Here is what I envision:

The role of course creator gives people the ability to make a course, BUT doesn't automatically make them creators for ALL course in any category. When someone needs to create a course they choose the where (category) and then by creating it they now inherit ALL course creator permissions given to someone in that role for that course only.

The same could be said as a teacher. Once a course is created and a user 'assigns" themselves to it as a teacher they are given "teacher" permission.

This is very similar to the old method; however, because ALL activities can now have there own roles assigned, people with the permission to do so can add users to certain activities with certain permissions. E.g. give a particular student "teacher" rights to a particular forum.

I see this as a blending of the old and new role system and think it will alleviate some of the issues we (me especially) are seeing with the new role system.

This would clear up the participant list and make it match the actual course roles (only teachers assigned in that course at the course level are teachers and not everyone with teacher rights in a higher category).

Thoughts?!

Jeff
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In reply to Jeff Wood

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Robert Brenstein -
Jeff, I am with you on this. What you suggest is a more elaborate and complete of what I suggested elsewhere

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=59503&parent=270372

The old system had clear delineation of functions but lacked fine tuning of the capabilities. The new system has extreme flexibility in tuning but delineation of functions is diluted since capabilities form basically a continuity. So we swang from one extreme to another so do speak and we need something more in the middle.
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In reply to Jenny Toller

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Robert Brenstein -
I wonder how this logic will work when we have same course/courses listed in multiple categories (yes, this is still not possible in the official Moodle but is promised and I am doing this already as a hack).
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In reply to Robert Brenstein

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Paula Johnson -

Hello,

I think I'm following the conversation and it pertains to a current problem I have... my question is despite suggestions to change the current structure/integrity of the software, I just want to know how to fix my problem - how do you unassign a role that enables someone to be listed as that role in a particular course?

I have several courses that should only list the one person maintaining him/herself as the course creator (and teacher) in the Teacher role. Because myself and one other person listed was added at the higher level, she and I are also showing up as Teacher on the front page.

Help!

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In reply to Paula Johnson

Re: Discrepencies between Assign Roles lists and Participants list

by Ger Tielemans -
When you add the person in his role, just check the box in the middle to make him hidden for students in that role. (not hidden for the other teachers)
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