Course Admins

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.

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:

Create new courses
Create new instructors
Edit existing courses to which they are assigned as course administrator
View student progress for courses to which they are assigned as course administrator
Export quiz & survey results for their courses
Reply and manage discussions for their courses
Manage assignments
Access Engagement Dashboard insights for their assigned Course (available on Plus plans only)
Upload videos to the course using the Content Uploader or directly in a Video Lesson.
Note that Course Admins are not able to access or upload videos to the Video Library. As Course Admins have course-specific access, this is intentional to prevent access to all videos across all of your courses.

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).

Note that Course Admins cannot edit any of your site landing pages, including course landing pages. Site pages can only be edited by the Site Owner and Site Admins. If you would like to add your vote to this feature request, please let us know!

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.

How to Set Up a Course Admin

Make sure you are logged in as a Site Admin (and/or Site Owner)
Select Users and click All Users
Next, either create a new user account or click the ellipses, then Edit next to an existing user
In the Details tab, select User roles, then select the checkbox for Course Admin
Hit the Save button

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, you can do so through Settings or Users:

Assigning a Course to a Course Admin through Course Settings

Select Courses under Products from your Admin Dashboard
Click into a course you would like to add a Course Admin to
Select Admins, Revenue Partners, & Affiliates from the Settings tab of the course builder
Under Course Admins, select your desired Course Admin from the dropdown list. That user will now see the course as an option under My Courses on their Admin Dashboard

You can access the Settings tab at any point to add/remove Course Admins. Only Site Admins have permission to assign/remove access to edit courses.

Assigning a Course to a Course Admin through User Settings

Select All Users under Users from your Admin Dashboard
Click on a Course Admin's name to access their profile settings
Select the Course Admin tab
Select a course from the Make [User name] an admin for dropdown menu
Click Submit to make the user a Course Admin for the course

You can access All Users to add or revoke access to courses at any time.

How to Add an Additional Course Admin to Your Site

This add-on feature is available on our self-serve plans Grow and Expand.

While each plan includes a set number of course admin positions, we recognize that your business needs change over time as it grows. The course admin add-on feature allows you to have an extra course admin on your site, ensuring that your business is finely tuned to meet the changing needs of your team and students.

Select Account and then Account Management on your Admin Dashboard
Select the Add-Ons tab for available add-ons
Click Subscribe then Subscribe to Add-on
Input your billing information and select Purchase
You can Cancel your subscription at any time by accessing your Add-Ons tab.

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.

A Course Admin will only be able to Request Approval from the Publish tab in the Course Builder 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 Publication requests page (visible under Products > Courses tab, in the top navigation 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 will only be able to manage On-Lesson Discussions within our current Course Player. This is not available within our Legacy Course Player.

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 Users > Notification Emails.

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 Users and clicking Assignments.

Notifications

Course Admins will receive email notifications for Discussions and Assignments on courses they are assigned to. Discussion and assignment notifications must be turned on in your site notification settings.

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

It's not possible to have a user be both Course Admin and Site Admin, please select one or the other, accordingly.
Course Admins can not duplicate courses. Only Site Owners and Site Admins can duplicate courses.

More About User Roles

Site Admin and User Roles

Create a Site Admin

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