It's always nice to have a little help, and we know that the course creation process is often a joint effort! Our Course Admins feature makes it easy to collaborate on projects.
In this article:
Managing Quiz and Survey Exports
Overview
Unlike Site Admins who have full admin privileges, Course Admins have restricted access in terms of what they can see and do in your Thinkific admin dashboard.
Course Admins can:
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Create new courses.
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Create new instructors.
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Edit existing courses to which they are assigned as course administrator.
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View student progress for courses to which they are assigned as course administrator.
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Export quiz & survey results for their courses.
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Reply and manage discussions for their courses.
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Manage assignments
Because Course Admins only have these specific permissions, it's a great way to share your workload without giving somebody access to make general changes to your site, or to view private information (e.g. student data, revenue).
Course Admin Dashboard
Unlike Site Admins, who can see your full dashboard, Course Admins only have access to a reduced version of the admin dashboard, from which they can manage their courses and instructors.
You’ll notice on the reduced version above that the only access they have is Manage Learning Content and Support Your Students.
How to Set Up a Course Admin
Make sure you are logged in as a Site Admin. Then, from the Users page of your admin dashboard, either create a new user account, or select to edit an existing one.
Next, select the checkbox for Course Admin, hit the Save Changes button, and that's it!
How to Assign a Course Admin
A user will automatically be assigned as the course admin of any new courses that they create on your site, but if you'd like to give somebody access to edit an existing course, here's how:
From the Settings tab of the course builder, select Admins & Payees. Then, under Course Administrators, select your chosen course admin from the dropdown list.
Click Add and save your changes. That user will now see the course as an option under My Courses on their admin dashboard.
You can come back to the Settings tab at any point to add/remove course admins, and only site admins have permission to assign/remove access to edit courses.
Approving Content
Site Admins will have to approve any edits made to their course by a Course Admin prior to publishing or whenever in the "unpublished" or draft state. When a course is in published mode (either for the first time or has been unpublished/published again), the approval step will be bypassed.
This is what a Course Admin will see when trying to publish a course in draft state:
As the Site Admin, you will then be able to see any requests for approval on the Publications Approval page (visible in your lefthand dashboard menu once you have added at least one Course Admin to your site):
Managing Discussions
Course Admins can manage discussions from their courses and easily approve/hide discussions or reply to their students.
Course admins can only manage On-Lesson Discussions available with the New and Improved Student Experience.
When the Course Admin posts in the discussion, an "Instructor" label will display beside their name. This can be customized in your site modify text section.
Course Admins will receive Discussion notifications if a Site Admin has enabled "Someone adds a reply to a discussion" under Support Your Students Notifications.
Managing Quiz and Survey Exports
Course Admins can export the results for any quizzes and surveys in their course to see their students' responses.
Managing Assignments
Much like Site Admins, Course Admins can view assignments for the courses they manage. They can access them by selecting Support Your Students Assignments:
Notifications
Course Admins will receive email notifications for Discussions and Assignments on courses they are assigned to.
If you would like your Course Admin to be notified of emails that are sent to the Site Owner, some emails like the Course Welcome Email include a CC field where you can add your Course Admin. If this field is not available for any Site Owner related notifications, we recommend setting up a forwarding rule within your email provider.
Important Considerations
- On our Pro plan, you can have up to 5 Course Admins, so upgrade now to take full advantage of this feature! Or if you need more than 5, check out our Premier plan, which gives you the ability to have up to 50 Course Admins!
- It's not possible to have a user be both Course Admin and Site Admin, please select one or the other, accordingly.
More About User Roles