Understanding student access to your course site

CCLE - Understanding Student Access to your Class

This is intended to help instructors understand how students and others can be added to a CCLE course site. 

Topics discussed include: 

  • When and when not to give site access to non-enrolled users 

  • How to assign user roles

  • How to log in as a specific user to test course access

Important Note on Manually Enrolling Users

Students that are registered in a course at UCLA are enrolled in the linked CCLE course site automatically by the Registrar. Instructors are advised not to enroll a student directly into an instructional course under the “Student” role, nor can HumTech enroll a student for them. The “Teaching Assistant” role, like the “Student” role, is also pulled from the registrar, and cannot be assigned manually. This applies to the “Instructor” role as well.

An instructor may, however, grant access to non-enrolled course participants, such as guest faculty, visiting scholars, senior scholars, peer learning facilitators, and auditing participants.

Course Enrollment Methods for Students

Typically, students must enroll in a course via myUCLA in order to gain access to the associated CCLE site. Other methods of student enrollment are possible, provided that the user has a UCLA Logon ID (see below):

  • Manual enrollment: is used primarily when adding students as Participants or Instructional Assistants to a course.

  • Guest Access: allows non-enrolled students the opportunity to view course site content. You can allow for guest access by going to the Admin panel sidebar and clicking “Enrollment methods” under the “Users and Groups” heading. You may also assign a password that the user will need to input before being granted site access.

  • Self-enrollment: gives users the ability to enroll themselves in a site. This is typically used for language placement exams. To set this up, go to Admin Panel, select “Enrollment methods” under the “Users and Groups” heading, and select “Self enrollment” in the Add method drop-down menu.

    • Enrollment Keys (optional): Instructors may want users to have a special “enrollment key.” Users who wish to enroll must first log in with their UCLA Logon ID, then paste the url for the CCLE site given to them by the Instructor or Project Lead. In the screen that appears, they will be prompted to enter the enrollment key and click the Enroll me in this course button. 

Granting Site Access for Non-Enrolled Participants

There may be a case where you want to grant site access to a non-enrolled course participant. In order for these individuals to access CCLE sites, they must first have created a UCLA Logon ID.  Individuals only have to create a Logon ID once to access the CCLE system. Refer to this documentation for how to create a UCLA Logon ID.

Once someone has created a Logon ID, instructors can issue that person a site invitation:

  1. Click on Admin Panel.

  2. Click on Invite Users under “Users & Groups.”

  3. Select the radio button next to the appropriate role (see “Roles” below).

  4. Enter the user’s email address into the Email box.

  5. Click the blue Invite users button at the bottom of the page.

RITCs and others with administrative capabilities can also manually grant site access by clicking on Participants and then clicking the gray Enroll users button at the top right of the screen (instructors do not see this button). Note that the person that you are inviting must have created a UCLA Logon ID already and must have logged into CCLE at least once before they will appear in the system. 

Roles

When a person is granted access to a CCLE site, what they can access and their level of control over site content depends on both the type of CCLE site and the participant’s assigned role. Roles and levels of permission can be granted/edited via the Participants page. 


Changing a User’s Role

Should you need to change the role of someone in the course:

  • In the course website, click on Participants in the left hand navigation column.

  • Under the Roles section for the corresponding student, click the “pencil” icon in the “Roles” column to edit roles for the user.  Click the “X” symbol next to roles they should no longer have. Select from the drop down to select roles they should have.

  • Once the student’s roles have been edited, be sure to save the changes you made by clicking on the “floppy disk” icon. 

Giving Temporary Course Access

In the event that you want to give someone temporary access to a course:

  1. In the course website, click on Admin Panel. 

  2. Click the Invite Users link under “Users & Groups.”

  3. Select the appropriate radio button and change the Role expiration drop-down menu to “Expires after certain days.” Then, select the number of days from the drop-down menu: “Expires ___ days after being accepted.” 

  4. Enter the email address(es) for the participant(s) you wish to invite.

  5. Enter a message for the invitee(s) if desired.

  6. Click the blue Invite Users button at the bottom of the page.

Another way to do this:

  1. In the course website, click on Participants.

  2. Click the gray Invite Users button at the top right of the page

  3. Follow steps 3-6 above.

*NOTE: Temporary Participants are only available via invite; you cannot manually enroll them.*


Giving Senior Scholars Course Access

While most access issues for senior scholars are handled by the Senior Scholars Program at the Longevity Center, there may be instances when you want to enroll them yourself. If you want to enroll a senior scholar in a CCLE course site, you can simply invite them using the instructions found under the “Granting Site Access for Non-Enrolled Participants” section.

Checking Course Access

Finally, you may want to know how to display the CCLE site as it appears to your students. There may be times when a student claims that they do not have access to materials on your course site, and so, you want to check to see what they are seeing.

  • You can log into the site under a generic role, to see what that role has access to:

  1. Find and click the Switch role to… button in the left-hand navigation plane on your CCLE course site.

    1. If your left-hand menu is collapsed, click on the expand icon in the upper left hand corner of the screen to open it. 

  2. In the drop-down menu, you can change your role to the generic status of Student, Instructional Assistant, Grader, Editor, Participant, or Visitor, and be able to see what someone with this role has access to.