We do something similar to this, so I think this is possible.

From your define roles page /admin/roles/manage.php pick the role with permissions closest to the one you want for this observer role (probably the non-editing teacher role if you have it).

Click on the x2 icon next to it to make a duplicate. Give it a new name, shortname, etc.

Make sure you pick a role archetype – this way when new capabilities come along later this role will be granted the permissions of the archetype (learnt this the hard way).

Skim through the permissions and add/remove as suitable for the observers. One you *will* need is “View courses without participation” (moodle/course:view)

Under ‘Context types where this role may be assigned’ make sure system and category are ticked.

Then go to the assign system roles page /admin/roles/assign.php?contextid=1 and give a test user your new role, and test to see if it works.

I am trying to give a colleague (soon to be plural) access to my courses in an “observer role”. Like a superguest, or ofsted inspector, who can walk into your courses and have a look round, maybe leave a comment but otherwise not edit or interfere with the lesson. I want them to see what good things I am doing without being in the gradebook. I thought I could make them a site-wide non-editing teacher and then reduce some of their permissions. No such luck.

No such role exists and if I create a cohort I have this lengthy procedure via “enrolment methods” for each and every course within my various categories, SEPARATELY.

This is crazy, and not for the first time I have wasted so much time re-enabling a legacy solution that would do the job to find it doesn’t work… then google, then moodle docs … no solution. Don’t suppose you have any idea how I do this since google has brought me to you. Sure you’ve got better things to do, but then so have I and I’m getting really frustrated. If you get within kicking range, kick them harder for me, or point them out to me and I’ll help.

Breathe … must … breathe …

I agree with you about cohorts – but we are looking at some development to tweak a 3rd party plugin that will automatically create, populate, and sync cohorts from our LDAP.

We will still have to manually assign cohorts to courses.

The missing functionality IMO in this workflow is then linking cohorts into groups.

e.g. If I had 3 groups in LDAP called Psych-101-A, Psych-1-1-B, and Psych-101-C I’d like each to become a cohort. I’d then pipe all three into a single course called ‘Psych 101′, and then within that course I’d pipe each into a separate group/grouping. That would then let me not only sync enrolments into courses, but also into groups/groupings.

It seems to me that, despite many enhancements and new features which will no doubt benefit teaching staff and students, Moodle 2 is designed to significantly increase the workload of administrative staff. A good example is the new “cohort sync”, which is intended to replace category enrolments. Each cohort is a group of users with no assigned role within the cohort. This means you need a new cohort for each role you wish to assign. Once you’ve created and populated the cohort you then have to add each cohort to each applicable course, choosing the role in the process. There is no option to assign a cohort to a role in all modules within a category, and so without significant development (which, thankfully, we have) it creates a huge administrative burden. Even then, I’m still struggling to get it working properly.

I hadn’t even realised the hidden assignment issue, so thanks for that one. Have you worked out “sticky blocks” yet? I managed to get help from Tim Hunt to set mine up, but teachers can still move or hide the blocks within courses, so a core-code change (or “local plugin”) may be required. See http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=195874 for my initial rant.

It seems this is unset by default for the student role but should be set by default for the authenticated user role – it wasn’t for me (boo) but at least the default isn’t CRAZY like I worried it might be (yay)