Roles are a label that appear next to a team member’s name if they comment on a course, or if they are selected as the person who is providing feedback within a quiz or test. This is so learners can easily see who is a verified member of the course team.

Please note that roles do not give any access privileges to a user. If your team member needs to edit course content, access the course before it's published, use the Facilitation dashboard, or download data about the course, you will need to assign them permissions as well.

What Roles are there?

There are four main roles that can be assigned to team members:

• Lead Educator or Educator: An academic with a specialist knowledge of the course subject.
  • We would recommend giving Author or Co-creator permissions to course educators, so that they can also edit content and review key data about the course.
• Mentor: An academic with a good understanding of the course subject, who can help guide discussions.
  • We would recommend giving Marker or Facilitator permissions to a Mentor, so that they can easily see and respond to comments via the Facilitation dashboard.
• Host: A facilitator who understands the FutureLearn platform and can act as a guide to learners.
  • We would recommend giving Facilitator and Reviewer permissions to a Host.

You can assign and manage roles using the Team tab in Course Creator. For a full guide, please see How to assign permissions and roles.

Terminology on this page that you aren’t familiar with? Check out our glossary. 

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