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become_student => "professor",

become_student => "professor",

by Thomas Shemanske -
Number of replies: 1
It is the memory of others in our department that TA permissions allowed TAs to look at student's answers and evaluate what issues they were having.

Today, it seems to look at their answers, one needs to act as the student user.

This privilege seems restricted to professors (the subject of this note).

Two questions:

Is this a change?

Presuming we allow TA's this access, are there pitfalls?  I assume like professors, someone can enter an answer to ascertain the validity of the problem without impacting the student record itself.  This seems covered by 
record_answers_when_acting_as_student => undef


Our inclination is to allow this action for TAs.

Problems???

Thanks,

Tom
In reply to Thomas Shemanske

Re: become_student => "professor",

by Michael Gage -
we let TA's  "become_student" so that they can help diagnose problems.

We also give them many other privileges including being able to see problem sets while they are still hidden so that they can help with checking homework sets.  

We also keep

record_answers_when_acting_as_student => undef

which means that no-one (including professors) can record answers for the student -- even when
"acting as" the student.
While this occasionally surprises instructors trying to give a student credit for a problem
I think it is wise to keep the student record "pure".


Hope this helps.


-- Mike