Set Up Guide

Adding Users to the System

After installation of Course Director (CD) the system administrator will need to add all users (staff and students) to the system. This is done by selecting the option “People” under the heading “Domain Administration” on the CD tool bar.

On the new screen that appears click the blue text “Sync from Google Apps”. The program will automatically import all user names and email addresses from your Google Apps domain into CD. (This action should be repeated every time new students or teachers are added to the Google Apps domain).

As seen above aside from name and email address there are 2 addition columns, "groups" and "private email". See the sections "Password Reset" and "Granting Access Privileges" for an explanation of these fields.

Password Reset

The private email column is where the user's secondary (private) email address can be entered. Whilst this is not a required field it does make life easier for administrators as whenever a user forgets his or her password CD enables this to be automatically reset and the new password is sent to the users secondary (private) email address. (Meaning there is no work required by the administrator.) If there is no secondary email address in the system then the user must contact the domain administrator and he/she will need to do a manual reset.

Private emails can be bulk uploaded by selecting the blue text “Upload Private Emails”. This gives the administrator the option to upload the emails from a file in CSV format. The CSV file should contain a header row and two columns, “apps_email, private_email” with the users school email and private email listed below these headings.

Private emails can be added and also updated/edited manually by clicking on the students school email address and entering
the private email in the box that appears as shown below.
Once private emails are entered click here for instructions on how to set up the password reset function.

The groups column indicates the access level for each user. Initially this column will be empty as all users are by default set to the lowest access level which is that of a student. The only exception to this is for users who are domain administrators within Google apps. During the synchronisation process CD automatically grants administrative rights to these users. Otherwise the administrator can give increased access to each user by selecting one of the checkboxes and then clicking "Apply Changes" as shown above. When a user is given increased access an icon indicating their new level will appear in the groups column.

Within CD there are 4 access levels:

Domain Admin. Has access to the full menu.

Courses Manager. Can manage/add/edit courses and people but does not have access to the Domain Options.

Teacher. Teacher or faculty member. They have access to and can edit only the courses they teach. (Cannot create new courses)

Student. They can access only the courses for which they are registered. They cannot edit the course site but they can view and download any posted materials.

Now that you have successfully added your users and assigned access privileges you are ready to start creating your own courses.
If for any reason you were unable to load your users into the system please contact us on support@cloudsourcesolutions.com

Managing Features

On installation all CourseDirector features are automatically enabled, however there may be instances where you may want to disable various functionality that you do not wish to use. To do this you simply click on Domain Options on the main menu. If you then scroll down to the bottom of you page you will see a list of features with check boxes that can be either enabled or disabled by clicking the checkbox. Once you have selected the features you want enabled click the Save Settings button to implement your changes.

Creating Student Groups

One additional thing you may want to do to make using CourseDirector even more efficient is to create some student groups. When students are assigned to groups such as those who will share a several common core classes together or all students who are in the same year then teachers and administrators can save time by assigning these groups to courses as a single unit rather than as individuals. To learn how to create student groups please click here.

Subpages (1): Creating Courses