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Consequences of deleting auto-added instructor accounts to Admin Course?

Consequences of deleting auto-added instructor accounts to Admin Course?

by Keith Jones -
Number of replies: 1
Hello,

Yesterday, in a fit of stupidity, I deleted a number of auto-added instructor accounts (those of the form "instructorid_courseid") from the Admin Course without realizing exactly what I was doing. I've been searching through the forums, and as far as I can tell, these accounts can be used to grant the instructors of courses "admin" status by raising the permissions of these accounts to "professor" in the Admin Course. Additionally, they could be used as a way of conveniently emailing anyone who has used webwork as an instructor.  We've never used this functionality, so I'm not worried about that; and the admin user is still intact.

I'd like to know how else these accounts are used. Are there underlying links back to the courses from which they stemmed, that will lead to consequences for the professors of these courses?  I seem to still be able to log into those I had as a professor.  

If there are other consequences of any sort, can anyone tell me? A couple of faculty have just created courses for the upcoming semester, and I'm really hoping I haven't ruined any work that they've already put into it.
In reply to Keith Jones

Re: Consequences of deleting auto-added instructor accounts to Admin Course?

by Arnold Pizer -
Hi Keith,

You can relax, you haven't done any damage to other courses.  As you have realized this is a mechanism for tracking courses that have been set up and especially for conveniently emailing people who were added as instructors when the courses were set up.  Note that anyone added as an instructor after the course was set up will not be added as students to the admin course.

Arnie