University of Northwestern – St. Paul and Northwestern Media (UNW) recognizes the value of instructional technology that facilitates efficient teaching, resource distribution, collaboration, assessment, tracking, and feedback within a secure environment. Northwestern currently uses Moodle as its Learning Management System (LMS).

The purpose of this policy is to provide the UNW community with guidelines for the appropriate assignment of user permissions and access within the LMS. This policy provides information to assist in achieving the following additional goals:

• Ensure that the LMS is used for purposes consistent with UNW mission and goals

• Balance the need for appropriate user access with privacy and security in the LMS

• Ensure that user permissions and capabilities in the LMS comply with and uphold applicable state and federal laws and UNW policies

This policy applies to all users of the LMS, whether the LMS is owned, licensed or managed by UNW. “Users” in this policy includes (but is not limited to) UNW faculty, staff, students, alumni, guests or agents of the administration, contractors, external individuals and others accessing any related network services.

The LMS environment includes plugins, Learning Tools Interoperability (LTI) connectors, and any other software networked and accessed via an account in the LMS. 

This policy applies whether accessed through personally-owned or UNW-owned computers or devices connected by wire or wirelessly to the LMS from on campus or off.

1.1    Description of Roles

1.1.1        Roles are a set of user permissions associated with a context as defined in the LMS. Within the realm of practicality, the scope of each Role should correspond to the responsibilities for each user.

1.1.2        Roles can be broadly divided into three groups, with each group having similar permissions within a Context: LMS administration, instruction, and learning.

1.2    Assignment of Roles

1.2.1        Roles can be assigned automatically through Banner, UNW’s Student Information System (SIS), when a course is created and users are enrolled.

1.2.2        Roles can be assigned manually by LMS users who have those authority and system permissions to do so.

1.3    Automatically Assigned Roles

Enrollment in a course is provided automatically when a student registers for a course and when an instructor is assigned to teach a course. During the LMS enrollment processing, roles for those users are automatically generated and assigned in the appropriate course(s). 

The following are examples of automatically assigned Roles:

1.3.1        A Teacher is assigned in the SIS to teach a course

1.3.2        A Student registers in the SIS for a course

1.3.3        An approved vendor has limited access to a course list via a manually configured LTI

1.4    Manually Assigned Roles

Roles may be manually assigned by LMS administrators in a particular Context such as System (site-wide), Category (semester, department or community), Course, Activity module or Block.

The following are examples of manually assigned Roles:

1.4.1        Instructional Designer—for design, maintenance and technical support

1.4.2        IT Support—for technical support

1.4.3        Department Chair (Program Manager/Director)—for overseeing instruction in an academic area

1.4.4       Course Reviewer—for quality or accreditation review purposes (for a designated duration)

1.4.5        Academic Advisor- support of students in DE and AGS courses

1.5    Manually Assigned Roles in Individual Courses for credit

LMS courses associated with registration in the SIS are protected by FERPA, state/federal regulations, and UNW policies. The student role should not be assigned manually in a course that requires registration in the SIS.

The following examples reflect Roles by only those who require access under certain conditions.

1.5.1        Teaching Assistant—usually enrolled by the Teacher or, upon request, by an LMS Administrator

1.5.2        Course Reviewer—an impartial designated expert tasked to evaluate a course, or a non-assigned faculty member who has received Teacher or department chair permission to access shared intellectual property

1.5.3        Guest—for limited viewing of course resources

1.6    Manually Assigned Roles in Individual Department or Community (non-credit) Courses

Department and Community Courses are generally used to facilitate group-related resource sharing, communication, training and testing. In these cases, “Student” may refer only to a user with that set of permissions, not necessarily one who is active in a course of study.

The following are examples of manually assigned Roles in non-credit courses:

1.6.1        Student—in a Community or Department Course, usually for sharing resources and communication

1.6.2        Teacher, Course Administrator or Teaching Assistant—added as a content expert in a course template to assist in course creation

1.6.3        Teacher or Student—in a course for training, practice or testing

2.1  Compliance Measurement

Academic Technology will verify compliance with this policy through various methods including, but not limited to, SIS integration protocols, role permission management, department access request authorizations, and feedback to the policy owner.

2.2  Exceptions

Any exception to the policy must be approved by UNW's Director of Academic Technology.