Chapter 3. Courses, Users, and Roles

The objective of this chapter is to give an overview of Moodle courses, users, and roles. The three concepts are inherently intertwined and any one of these cannot be used without the other two. We will deal with the basics of the three core elements and show how they work together. Let's see what they are:

• Moodle courses: Courses are central to Moodle as this is where learning takes place. Teachers upload their learning resources, create activities, assist in learning and grade work, monitor progress, and so on. Students, on the other hand, read, listen to or watch learning resources, participate in activities, submit work, collaborate with others, and so on.
• Moodle users: These are inpiduals accessing our Moodle system. Typical users are students and teachers/trainers, but also there are others such as teaching assistants, managers, parents, assessors, examiners, or guests. Oh, and the administrator, of course!
• Moodle roles: Roles are effectively permissions that specify which features users are allowed to access and, also, where and when (in Moodle) they can access them.

Bear in mind that this chapter only covers the basic concepts of these three core elements. The dedicated chapters—Chapter 4, Course Management; Chapter 5, User Management; and Chapter 6, Managing Permissions – Roles and Capabilities—will then deal with the three concepts in greater detail.