Configuration Options: Group Permissions
Synopsis
Concourse provides you with the ability to control Group Permissions on a granular level so that your system can be administered in the method that works best for your institution. When it comes to the way end users experience Concourse, you can set Group Permissions to give View, Edit, or None permissions on large syllabus sets, individual syllabi, and even on individual syllabus items. You can choose to restrict permissions on templates but give end users increased access to non-templates, and you can apply these options consistently across your institution or on a domain-by-domain basis. It’s possible to set mixed permissions to allow user groups lots of different access and experience types based on their roles and needs; or you can choose to set consistently high-access or low-access permissions throughout your system. If you have questions about setting Group Permissions after reading through the options below, reach out to Client Services for assistance.
Key Terms
- Group Permissions: a setting that determines how each of seven user groups (Instructors, Students, Managers, Developers, Assistants, Guests, Public) engages with each syllabus item; group permissions function at the syllabus level but can be set in a number of ways.
- Initial Group Permissions: a feature that allows System Administrators to configure group permission settings before a syllabus is ever created in Concourse; this feature essentially allows you to determine your system’s default group permissions.
- Set Group Permissions en Masse: a feature that allows Domain Administrators to configure group settings on a set of syllabi; group settings can be determined for any courses the Domain Administrator selects within their assigned domains.
- Administer System: the System Permission required to set Initial Group Permissions and Group Permissions en Masse.
- Domain Administrator: the Domain Permission required to set Group Permissions on the course level.
- Guest: an authenticated Concourse user who visits a course to which they are not registered. For example, a user who is registered to a syllabus as a student may search for and access a different syllabus as a guest.
- Public: a user who visits your Concourse system without being authenticated (via your LMS, SSO, or Concourse directly). Public users may access a syllabus through a public-facing portal, such as an institution’s website or catalog.
- View: permission for the user group to view the syllabus item selected. If this permission is selected, all content in the item is visible to the applicable user group.
- Edit: permission for the user group to edit the syllabus item selected. If this permission is selected, the user group can edit the item, including adding content, deleting content, or modifying content that was originally cloned from a syllabus template.
- None: if a user group has None permission for an item, the item does not display to the user group at all. If None permission is selected for the Syllabus item, the selected user group is presented with an error message when attempting to access the syllabus.
- Syllabus Item: The top-level item for the syllabus. If the Syllabus item is set to None permission, the selected user group is presented with an error message when attempting to access the syllabus. If the Syllabus Item is set to View permission, the selected user group can view the syllabus and any items that are also set to View or Edit; however, the user group cannot edit any items. If the Syllabus Item is set to Edit permission, the selected user group can view the syllabus and view or edit items with those permissions.
Important to this Decision
Before making decisions about how your institution uses Concourse, you should consider how stakeholders, systems, timelines, and other factors are impacted. Review the important elements below to be better prepared to make changes to your Concourse configuration or implementation.
When making this decision, consult: academic leaders and staff whose work is related to accreditation and compliance; faculty leaders, such as members of the Faculty Senate; any other stakeholder involved in the public dissemination of curriculum.
This decision determines how your institution’s Concourse users, as well as public viewers, are able to view and/or edit syllabi in your system. To make this decision, consider how much syllabus content you would like to make available to different access groups, if any content is considered privileged or sensitive (e.g., instructor contact information, meeting times), or if any content is legislatively required to be visible.
Initial Group Permissions should be determined during the implementation process to ensure that all syllabi in your system have appropriate Group Permissions from the time of their creation. If Initial Group Permissions are not set during the implementation process, they can be set during maintenance to ensure that future syllabi created in the system have appropriate Group Permissions without the need for additional intervention. In the event of access exceptions or to set permissions retroactively, you can set Group Permissions en Masse at any time to increase or restrict viewing access on current, future, and past syllabi.
The group that a user is assigned in a Concourse course is typically based on their role in the associated LMS course shell; this user information is transmitted to Concourse from the LMS and can be used to automatically register the user to the course with the appropriate group permissions. On the other hand, a User Feed and Registration Feed can be processed at regular intervals to create and register users in the appropriate groups for different courses. Public users are those who access your Concourse system without logging in or being authenticated through one of your institutional systems. Public users may navigate directly to your Concourse environment, search for, and view syllabi without logging in. Guests are authenticated users in your Concourse system who search for and access courses to which they are not registered.
Some institutions consider the syllabus to be intellectual property and therefore wish to restrict its access to non-registered users as much as possible; other institutions may be subject to legislation that requires all syllabi to be searchable and visible to all users; and other institutions fall between the two extremes and wish to make some syllabus content visible and/or editable to certain users groups (for example, to help future students make registration decisions). The approach you take to distributing Group Permissions should reflect your institutional philosophies for technology administration, data management, and curriculum transparency.
Configuration Options
Your institution’s approach to distributing Group Permissions will be informed by a number of factors, including legislative and/or institutional requirements for syllabus visibility, your institution’s approach to role-based access, and your institution’s perception of intellectual property. You have a lot of control over Group Permissions in Concourse; for example, you can apply different Group Permissions to Guests and Instructors on the same syllabus set; you can make just templates or just non-templates unavailable to selected user groups; and you can apply different Group Permissions at the item level on an individual syllabus. The options explained below represent a continuum of ways that Group Permissions can be set in your Concourse system to support your unique needs. Your institution may choose:
- Option A: Mixed-Access Permissions
- Option B: High-Access Permissions
- Option C: Low-Access Permissions
Note that the amount of effort required to set and maintain Group Permissions is the same no matter the option you choose. During the implementation process,
Initial Group Permissions are set to create default permissions assigned to each group per each new syllabus that is created. If you need to adjust Group Permissions after setting Initial Group Permissions, you can do so with the
Set Group Permissions en Masse tool. We suggest
generating a Group Permissions Report after updating Group Permissions in your system to ensure that all settings were applied as expected; all together, updating group permissions in your Concourse system only takes a few minutes. After making any changes to Group Permissions, you should notify any users whose experience will be impacted and update any relevant training materials. Depending on the extent of messaging and training materials impacted, the amount of time and effort required to socialize the change varies.
If the choices below don’t fit your needs, reach out to Client Services for assistance.
- Approach: Mixed-access permissions result in a variety of Group Permissions assigned throughout your system. For example, you may opt to set template Group Permissions to None at the Syllabus level for most user groups to ensure that only designated users can edit template syllabi. Additionally, you may be legislatively required to set public Group Permissions to View for syllabus templates. When it comes to current and future non-templates, you may set Instructors’ Group Permissions to Edit for items that are not copied from templates and View for items that are copied from templates; if Instructors’ Group Permissions are set to Edit for items copied from templates, they are able to change content that perhaps should not be changed. Similarly, your institution may opt to restrict Group Permissions for Instructors, Managers, Developers, and Assistants on previous courses to prevent additional editing and effectively create a digital archive of those syllabi. Typically, Student, Guest, and Public Group Permissions are set to either View or None to prevent inappropriate or unauthorized editing. Reviewing Group Permissions regularly by generating a Group Permissions Report and setting Group Permissions en Masse to adjust as needed is a best practice for maintaining mixed-access permissions in your Concourse system.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that:
- Prioritize curriculum transparency for purposes such as supporting current students and attracting prospective students.
- Consider portions of the syllabus to be confidential or otherwise not subject to public access.
- Curate rigorous requirements for syllabus content through a complex system of templates.
Advantages of Mixed Permissions | Disadvantages of Mixed Permissions |
No matter how complicated your group permissions scheme is, managing these permissions is easy with the set group permissions en masse tool. System admins can narrow their search based on domain, subject, session/year, templates/non-templates, and other criteria and then set each group’s permissions on each syllabus item in the selected group. The process takes only a few minutes. | While your institution can create a complex scheme of group permissions, complex mixed permissions systems require clear documentation, change logs, and processes to ensure that group permissions are updated in a timely manner for the appropriate set of courses in your Concourse system. Maintaining rigorous documentation and implementing group permission checks and updates every term could be considered a big lift for some institutions. |
With a granular mixed permissions approach, your institution can control users’ permission with precision to do things like restrict editing on past syllabi to create archival copies of syllabi for accreditation purposes. | End users must receive regular communication about access changes in Concourse, for example, when instructors’ permission on past courses is about to shift from Edit to View. Maintaining clear and timely messaging is a not overly time consuming, but it is one more task to manage and execute. |
Your institution can use group permissions to limit most users’ access to pilot, template, or other courses in development so that syllabus content isn’t visible while it is being developed. | If Guests and Public users have differentiated access for templates and non-templates, they might not understand why some syllabi appear to be complete while others do not display; the discrepancy could be perceived as an error. |
Group permissions on non-template (live) syllabi can be restricted so that only registered users are able to view and/or edit syllabus items; this setting prevents unwanted access or copying by Guests and Public users. |
|
- Approach: In high-access permission systems, all users (including non-registered Public users) can view all courses and syllabus items throughout your system, and Instructors, Managers, and Developers are able to edit all items in the non-template courses to which they are registered. These choices are established through Initial Group Permissions during implementation. If you opt to change to a high-access permission scheme after implementation, you can change access on past and current syllabi by setting group permissions en masse.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that prioritize full transparency about curriculum or syllabus content (allowing all user groups to view all syllabi). Are subject to legislation about curriculum and syllabus transparency are an example of an institution that could find this option most appropriate.
Advantages of High-Access Permissions | Disadvantages of High-Access Permissions |
If all end users are able to at least view all syllabus items in your system, that means that users can copy visible content from any course into courses where they have editing permission. Such access makes it easier for instructors to develop syllabus content to meet expectations. | Your institution might consider the syllabus to be the instructor’s intellectual property and be opposed to allowing instructors to copy each other’s syllabus content; in that case, a more restrictive approach for instructor access may be the right choice. |
Setting all end users’ permissions to View throughout your system supports curriculum transparency and legislative compliance for syllabus publication, if applicable. | If all users can view pilot, template, and other course in development, then curriculum information that has not yet been finalized or approved can be accessed in its draft state, therefore creating confusion. |
If instructors and other users are given editing permissions for all items in non-template (live) courses, then they can edit the full syllabus as needed to reflect their course curriculum. | If instructors and other users are given editing permissions for items in non-template (live) courses, then they can edit items regardless of whether the item was originally populated via feed or by a course manager. In other words, approved content may be edited in a high-access permission scheme, which may result in altered rather than uniform data.
|
- Approach: In low-access permission systems, all users are assigned None permission for all courses and syllabus items throughout your system, except for Instructors, Managers, and Developers, who are able to edit selected items in the non-template courses to which they are registered. These choices are established through Initial Group Permissions during implementation. If you opt to change to a low-access permission scheme after implementation, you can change access on past and current syllabi by setting group permissions en masse.
- Better For: This option is used most often by institutions that:
- Consider the syllabus to be the intellectual property of the instructor or institution and wish to keep its content confidential except for individuals immediately involved in the course (teachers and students).
- Prefer to keep the syllabus template development process secure and privileged by limiting its access to a designated group of domain users.
Advantages of Low-Access Permissions | Disadvantages of Low-Access Permissions |
If instructors and other editing users are given limited editing permissions for items in non-template (live) courses, then few modifications can be made to items originally populated via feed or by a domain user. In other words, there is high fidelity of approved content in a low-access permission scheme, which results in consistent, uniform data. | If instructors have limited editing permissions on non-template (live) syllabi, then the approved content cannot be tailored to reflect unique course elements that may not be represented by the catalog. |
If template group permissions are set to None for all groups, then only domain users can view and/or edit templates. As a result, the editing process is confidential, and end users cannot access template content before it is approved or intentionally released. | If instructors have limited viewing and editing permissions throughout Concourse, they may feel excised from the syllabus and curriculum development process. It’s important to communicate with instructors about why this choice was made and how it ultimately results in the most accurate syllabus experience for students. |
Post-Decision Changes
Your institution’s needs may change over time and you may need to make changes to your configuration settings. In other words, the configuration decisions you make during the implementation phase might not be as efficient five or ten years afterward. Review the guidance below to better understand how changing this particular decision may affect your Concourse system or deployment in the future.
If your institution opts to decrease syllabus access in any way (removing Edit or View permissions on syllabi or items), we strongly recommend that you:
- Socialize the change to end users so they don’t perceive the changes experienced as a system bug; socializing this change prepares end users on what to expect and limits the number of erroneous help tickets your institution receives post-change.
- If any Group Permissions will be set to None, end users in that group will no longer be able to view the syllabus or selected item. In addition to socializing this change to end users, you may want to advise end users to download syllabi for their records prior to restricting access. We also recommend that you update associated training materials because restricting group permissions can limit Concourse’s copy functionality.
If your institution opts to increase access in any way (adding Edit or View permissions), we strongly recommend that you:
- Create a bulk download of syllabi in their current state. Increased editing access means an increased likelihood of changes to existing content.
- Update training materials so users are prepared to edit items they could not edit before.
- Add comments to templates (if deemed necessary) to provide guidance during the editing process.
- Socialize changes to end users so they understand the expectations, timeline, and review process (if applicable).
Before making a decision about configuring Group Permissions in Concourse, you should be familiar with some related issues and contexts. See the following articles for more information:
- The risks and benefits of Sharing Syllabi with Non-registered Users.
- Group Permissions can be set in many ways to support your needs. Learn how to Set Initial Group Permissions, Set Group Permissions en Masse, and Set Group Permissions on a Course.
Tell Us About Your Experience
Did this article answer your question? If you made a decision like this for your Concourse instance, let us know how it turned out. If we missed something in this article or if you have a question that isn’t addressed in our Knowledge Base, let us know how we can help by reaching out to
support@campusconcourse.com.
Related Articles
Configuration Options: System/User Permissions
Synopsis Concourse provides many permission types so that your system can be administered in the method that works best for your institution. You can set permissions from the syllabus level to the domain level to the system level. Individuals ...
Configuration Options: Sharing Syllabi with Non-registered Users
Synopsis Users are registered to courses in Concourse based on their roles in the associated Learning Management System course (e.g., instructor, student, assistant); those users can then view and/or edit each syllabus item based on their group’s ...
Configuration Options: Authentication
Synopsis In Concourse terminology, authentication refers to the way in which your users’ accounts and access to Concourse are verified. Authentication can occur in your institution’s other systems or within Concourse, and the option you choose, ...
Configuration Options: Template Administration
Synopsis Templates are an integral component of structured Concourse systems. They allow institutions to standardize syllabus language, such as institutional policies and course descriptions. The content that appears on templates can have ...
Configuration Options: Deployment
Synopsis Deployment refers to the way Concourse is introduced to and adopted by end users at an institution. It is not a specific point in time or exact set of steps; rather, deployment is a process that is informed by your data provisioning choices, ...