Private tutor access to student assignments, assessments, etc.

Lauren Marcus Eisenberg

Have you enabled a private tutor to access student assignments, assessments, and the like? A family has asked us to enable their math tutor to see the student's math class - assignments, posts, assessments, etc.

If you've thought through how to securely do this, please share. Many thanks for the wisdom of this community!

Scott Chrysler

@Lauren Marcus Eisenberg - an interesting question. We have not considered doing this as the student could provide access to all of that information by signing on to their account and showing it directly to the tutor.

That being said, I do believe there is a secure way to set this up; however, it would mean the tutor needs to a user in your system and assigned a role. If you add the tutor to your system with the role of “Friend", “Educational Consultant” or create a new one such as “Timmy's Tutor” you could then give that Role access to the specific course in which the student is enrolled via Group Page Access. The last option of creating a very specific role for this tutor give you the greatest control and prevents potential inadvertent access for those who may have or be assigned the generic roles.

I stumbled across this a few years ago. In the Access Types, you will notice the +Add Access button. If you click it, there is another button: More Roles. This lists all of the different Roles you have in your system. Give whichever role you assigned the tutor access to the information (Bulletin Board, Topics, Assignments, Roster, Mastery Overview) in that individual class you deem it appropriate for the individual to view.

Hope that helps.

Scott

Tina Pappas

@Lauren Marcus Eisenberg We have a couple outside tutors who work on campus with students. We set them up with the role of Educational Consultant and created advisory groups with the students they work with. This is our third year and it has worked out well so far.

Jess Moxsky

@Tina Pappas
Do you do anything specific to pare down the access these consultants have? Our school is really struggling because of unclear use-cases for the Advisor role and are now trying to figure out how to essentially demote our faculty “advisor” users and recreate some advisory groups as activities.

Tina Pappas

@Jess Moxley We've scaled their access down to these tasks. Once logged in they can only access basics like the calendar and resource board, plus their group of “advisees”. I'm happy to talk more if you'd like.

Jennifer Welch

@Jess Moxley I am looking at Advisory vs Activity roles for some advisors as well. Would you mind elaborating on your issues with Advisories? Thank you!

Oona McKnight

@Tina Pappas Do you employ them? We have our tutors employed as Advisors and I would love to limit their access. But it looks like if they are only an Educational Consultant, they can't see Groups - only News, Calendar and Directories. And I can't add them in the Advisor role if they are not employed.

Tina Pappas

@Oona McKnight Yes, we do have to employ them in order to assign the advisor role. We tried giving them limited parental access at first, but that was too messy. This was the best compromise to give the tutors the information they need without being able to access too many places in the system.

Jess Moxsky

@Jennifer Welch Mostly, in my opinion, it is a misuse of the Advisory groups. We have groups called “advisories” but which are lead by faculty that, according to admin, should not have Advisor-level access to student information. We also have Grade-Level Deans who do need the advisor access, and are also using Advisory groups. I think most of it could be alleviated with better Policies & Procedures around group types and group creation but trying to problem-solve mid-year is a little crazymaking.