Do students need an account to view a course?

Not necessarily. If all of your course content is visible by the public, students will not need an account to view the course. However, if some or all of the course content is hidden in the public view, students will need an account to see all the materials.

If you are a domain administrator or course manager, you can visit the Settings > Group area to see how the Student and Public groups differ in terms of access to a course and make any adjustments. You may also compare views simply by visiting the course publically, a link which is found on the Course > Info page.

Should you come to the conclusion that students will need to be logged in and registered for the course in order to see everything they should you can ask them to sign up for Concourse and subsequently add them by clicking Users. Alternatively IT can help get registrations in place automatically.