Self-enroll into CUSTOM ROLE - NOT as "student"

[LEASUSAN]

Context: We have a Writing Center Resource Course that students can self-enroll into. We want students to be able to communicate with people with the Instructor role, but not any other roles, i.e. we don't want students to talk to each other in just THIS course.

Problem: You can't adjust communication settings at the course level. I haven't found a way to tie a custom roll to a self-enrollment link.

Potential Solution: There is a Community post where someone created a custom role called "Private Student" that we're considering. It's just a student-based role with some communication features turned off.

BUT IS THERE AN EASIER WAY?

Is there an automated way to either attach the Private Student role to the self-enrollment link OR some script or SOMETHING that could self enroll them as student and then update it to Private Student?

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @LEASUSAN,

I think the easiest way would be to place the course in a new subaccount, and adjust the student permissions for that specific subaccount to your liking.  You should be able to do that fairly quickly to take care of this issue.  A custom role would work permissions-wise, but as you noted you can't use self-enroll for that and you'd therefore need to figure out other solutions which would likely add a lot of time and complexity to your project.

I hope this helps!

-Chris

[LEASUSAN]

Oh my gosh. That makes sense. I don't know why I was making it so complicated. Thanks!

[LEASUSAN]

Ok, I'm thinking this through more. Adjust the student role permissions in that subaccount. So isn't that still just creating a new role? And if it's not called "student" then will people be able to use the self-enroll link?

[chriscas]

Hi @LEASUSAN,

No you won't be creating a new role, you'll just be changing the permissions of the built-in student role in that subaccount.  If you did create a new role, you're right that the self-enroll would not use that role and you'd be back at square one again.  Adjusting the built-in student role in the subaccount is really the key to making this work as you'd like it to.

-Chris

[LEASUSAN]

Ok, cool. I don't think I've ever changed a default role's permissions at the subaccount level, so I'll be looking into that today to make sure I'm doing everything correctly. Thank you so much!

[LEASUSAN]

And even that part was simple! I was completely overthinking it. Thanks, Chris!