Which roles are available in Brightspace?

Updated on Jul 26, 2024

In Brightspace roles determine which permissions are assigned to you as a user of the system. These permissions exist on two levels:

You have a role at the general level ‘Radboud University’.
You have a role at the course level (Course Offering).

General roles in Brightspace

The moment you log in to Brightspace, a general role (Radboud University level) is assigned to you, which determines your access to the different functionalities of Brightspace. This means that teachers have access to different menu items than students do, and functional coordinators have other permissions than teachers do.

Brightspace offers the following roles:

Student: this role is automatically assigned to every student that has a Brightspace account at the Radboud University.
Teacher: this role is automatically assigned to all employees of the Radboud University that have requested access to Brightspace in the Accountportal.
Institution Admin: This role is manually assigned to faculty (institution) Brightspace administrators. This grants them with permissions in Brightspace confined to their corresponding faculty. The institution admin has access to all the courses within the corresponding faculty.
Org Admin: this role is manually assigned to functional administrators of Brightspace.

Course level roles - from OSIRIS

The role per course determines which rights you have as a user within the course. This role can differ per course, but you can only be enroled with one role per course. For courses created in Brightspace via the OSIRIS link, students and teachers are added to a course via the OSIRIS link. These roles cannot be assigned manually in Brightspace.

The table below shows which OSIRIS role leads to which Brightspace role (last column) and what the associated rights are for each role.

Role	Meant for	Activities	Originates from OSIRIS	Comments	Role in course in OSIRIS
Students	Students	view course content; take and submit assignments; collaborate.	Yes	Participate in a course.	Students are assigned their role based on their course subscription in OSIRIS.
Teacher	Teachers	view course content; design a course; place announcements; insert/create content; create groups and enroll students in groups; assess students’ assignments; switch course tools on/off; change course settings; send email to students; add colleagues to the course in subordinate roles.	Yes	Can add colleagues to the course in subordinate roles.	CURSUSCOOR of DOCENT of DOCENT_Z_GR of DOCENT_NZ_R_LMS of DOCENT_NZ_GR_LM

Course level roles - all Brightspace roles

Teachers (with a Teacher role) are added to the course through the link with OSIRIS. If the course needs Graders, Grader-Builders, Builders and/or Observers, the teacher can add these themselves. Read more about how to do this in the article: How do I assign roles in my course to colleagues and how do I delete users?

Role	Meant for	Activities	Originates from OSIRIS	Comments
Observer	Teachers Co-teachers	View course content.	No	Not meant to participate in education activities. Can only be added to the Department on request by the faculty's ICT support staff.
Department Observer	Teachers Co-teachers	View course content.	No	Not meant to participate in education activities. Can only be Department to the course on request by the faculty's ICT support staff.
Auditor	Members of Visitation Committee	Viewing course content and viewing Student contribution and assessments.	No	Not meant to participate in education activities.
Department Auditor	Members of Visitation Committee	Viewing course content and viewing Student contribution and assessments.	No	Not meant to participate in education activities.
Student	Students	view course content; do assignments and hand them in; collaborate.	Yes	Participate in the course. Students are assigned their role based on their course registration in OSIRIS.
Observing Student	Students	View course content.	No	This role is meant for students from other years who should still be able to view the course content of this year. Students with this role cannot hand in anything via Brightspace. Students with this role do not have access to the classlist. A teacher with the teacher role can manually assign this role to students.
Dummy student	Student-assistants Teachers Support staff	view course content; do and hand in assignments; collaborate.	No	Gives teachers, student-assistants and support staff the ability to act as a student (in order to experience the course as a student). Can only be added to the course on request by the faculty's ICT support staff.
Grader	Student-assistants Teachers Supporting staff	view course content; assess students’ assignments.	Yes	To assess, give feedback and grade. A teacher with the teacher role can manually assign this role to other Brightspace users.
Builder	Student-assistants Teachers Supporting staff	view course content; design a course; place announcements; insert/create content; create groups and enroll students in groups.	No	The creation and enrollment of groups only concerns ad-hoc groups, not the groups originating from OSIRIS. A teacher with the teacher role can manually assign this role to other Brightspace users.
Grader-Builder	Student-assistants Teachers Supporting staff	view course content; design a course; post announcements; insert/create content; create groups and enroll students in groups; assess students’ assignments.	No	Combination of Grader- and Builder rights. A teacher with the teacher role can manually assign this role to other Brightspace users.
Department Grader-Builder	Student-assistants Teachers Supporting staff	view course content; design a course; post announcements; insert/create content; create groups and enroll students in groups; assess students’ assignments	No	Combination of Grader- and Builder rights. Can only be added to the Department on request by the faculty's ICT support staff.
Teacher	Teachers	Grader-Builder permissions and: switch course tools on/off; change course settings; send email to students; add colleagues to the course in subordinate roles.	Yes	This role comes from OSIRIS and cannot be assigned manually in Brightspace.
Coordinator	Teachers	Teacher permissions and: add users to a course with coordinator permissions and all subordinate roles.	No	Not meant for courses linked to OSIRIS.
Department Admin	Department administrators	Coordinator permissions and: access to all courses within a certain department.	No
Institution Admin	Faculty administrators	Coordinator permissions and: access to all courses within a certain faculty (institution).	No	n/a
Organisation Admin	System administrators	Unlimited access to system and courses.	No	n/a

When assigned the teacher role, you are able to preview your course as if you were a student. This allows you for example to test out what the course home page looks like and how a quiz is presented to students. There is a difference however between viewing your course as a student (view as student) and try out your course as a student (do as student). Read more about this in the following articles:

View as student
Do as student

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Docent - Teacher

Which roles are available in Brightspace?

General roles in Brightspace

Course level roles - from OSIRIS

Course level roles - all Brightspace roles

Brightspace (EN)

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