ARCHIVED: Using Oncourse Forums, how do I control access?

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Important:

Oncourse is retired. For details, see ARCHIVED: About the Oncourse retirement.

View feature demonstrations relevant to this topic.

Note:

To complete these procedures, you must be assigned a role having the necessary permissions. If you're not sure what your role is, see the "Role" column in the Roster tool. For permissions, see ARCHIVED: What can I do in read-only Oncourse?

On this page:

General information
Custom permission levels
Limiting access to a specific student group
Feature demonstrations

General information

When you create a new forum or topic, the default permission settings assign each role in the site (e.g., student) to a predefined permission level (e.g., Contributor). You can change the permissions from the default settings either while you're creating a new forum or topic (see ARCHIVED: Creating new forums and topics), or when you're editing an existing forum or topic (see ARCHIVED: Revising or deleting a forum or topic).

Under "Permissions", you can modify permission levels for participant roles (and groups, if you've created them; see ARCHIVED: Managing groups). Click the right arrow next to "Permissions" to expand the options available. Next to the role of the participant, use the Permission Level drop-down list to select from several predefined permission levels. Additionally, you can create custom permission levels by clicking the right arrow next to "Customize" to enable or disable specific functions.

Note: Forum permission settings will apply to all subsequently created topics in that forum, but if you modify forum permission settings after topics have been created, you must change the topic permission settings separately.

Custom permission levels

When creating custom permission levels, the functions you can allow participants to perform are:

New Forum: Create a new forum. You can modify this option only via Template Settings.
New Topic: Create a new topic. You can modify this option only via Template Settings or Forum Settings.
New Conversation: Create a new conversation in the topic.
Reply: Respond to an existing conversation.
Post to Gradebook: Grade responses and add comments. Send grades and comments to Gradebook.
Change Settings: Change the forum or topic settings.
Read: Read forum or topic responses.
Mark as Read: Mark messages as read.
Moderate Messages: Moderate messages posted to the forum/topic (available if you've chosen to moderate your forum or topic).
Edit Messages: Use the radio buttons to indicate which messages participants with the permission level can revise (none, their own, or all messages).
Delete Messages: Use the radio buttons to indicate which messages participants with the permission level can delete (none, their own, or all messages).

Limiting access to a specific group

To limit access to a specific group, you must consider role-based permissions also. For example, if the student role has permission to view a given forum or topic, then all students will be able to see it, regardless of group settings. To limit a forum or topic so that only one group can see it, remove permissions from the role to which those group members belong, and then grant permissions to the group only, as follows:

In Forums, click New Forum or New Topic, or click Forum Settings or Topic Settings to modify an existing forum or topic.
On the Forum Settings or Topic Settings page, under "Permissions", next to the relevant role (e.g., "student"), from the Permission Level drop-down list, select None.
In the Permission Level drop-down list next to the group name, choose a permission level (e.g., Contributor), or click the right arrow next to "Customize" and check the boxes below the drop-down list to enable or disable specific functions.
At the bottom of the page, click Save.

Feature demonstrations

Changing Permission Settings