Discussion Boards can serve several different purposes in a course. In many cases, the Instructor does not wish to be actively involved in the Discussion Board and would like to pass off some or all of the administration of the Discussion Board to another responsible user. Discussion Board forums include roles for each user involved in the forum. These roles define privileges within the forum. The forum roles with administrative roles that can be assigned to users in a forum are:
Manager
Moderator
Grader
Managers have full control over the forum. Managers can change the forum settings, moderate posts, and assign grades. The role of Manager should only be assigned to the course Instructor or someone with similar responsibilities. Users with a course role of Instructor or Teaching Assistant are granted this forum role by default.
Moderators review posts before they are made available to all users in the course. Moderators may also delete and modify all posts in any forum, even if the forum does not use the Moderation Queue. Make sure that Moderators are responsible and understand the criteria for appropriate posts. Users with a course role of Course Builder are granted this forum role by default.
Graders review Discussion Board posts and enter grades in the Gradebook. The Grader role has some access to the Gradebook and should only be assigned to users responsible for guiding and evaluating learning such as Instructors and Teaching Assistants. Graders do not have access to the Control Panel as part of their forum privileges. Users with a course role of Grader are granted this forum role by default.
Follow these steps to assign a user a role in a forum.
Open the Discussion Board.
Click Manage for a forum.
The Manage Forum Users page will appear.
Select a role for users from the drop-down list. The default value is Participant. Participants can read and post but have no administrative privileges.
Click OK. The forum roles are now assigned.