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Roles in a Course

TL;DR; Each person enrolled in a course has one of three roles: Student (takes the course, progress tracked), Observer (read-only access, progress not tracked), or Instructor (manages the course). Roles are per-course — someone can be a Student in one course and an Instructor in another.

Roles are how Lupo decides whether someone opening a course sees it as a learner, a watcher, or an administrator.

The three roles

Student is the most common role. A Student:

  • Sees the course in their My Courses list once it's Published.
  • Can open sections and work through activities.
  • Has their progress tracked automatically — completion percentages, activity feed, and all the analytics in the Reports tab reflect their work.
  • Cannot edit the course or see other students' progress.

This is the role you'll assign the vast majority of the time.

Observer is for people who need read-only visibility into a course without being tracked as learners. An Observer:

  • Can open the course and browse its content, exactly like a Student.
  • Does not have their progress tracked. Observers are excluded from all course statistics and the Reports tab.
  • Does not see the "Your progress" panel or "Recent activity" panel inside the course.
  • Cannot edit the course or see other people's progress.

Use this role for stakeholders who want to see what's in the course, managers reviewing content before a rollout, or anyone who should be able to read without affecting completion metrics.

Instructor is the course management role. An Instructor:

  • Can view all enrolled Students' progress and reports.
  • Has full access to the course: content, settings, people, and reports.
  • Can build and edit course content — adding sections, activities, and managing the course structure.
  • Can enroll and remove people, change roles, and change the course's status (Draft / Published / Archived).

Use this role for whoever actually owns and runs the course.

Roles are per-course

A person's role is assigned independently on each course. Alice can be a Student in "Security Awareness," an Observer on "New Hire Onboarding" she's helping QA, and an Instructor on "Manager Training" she built herself.

When you enroll someone, think about what they should be in this specific course. The default at enrollment is Student — that's usually right, but it isn't always.

Changing a role

From a course's People tab, click Change Role next to a person's name, select the new role from the pop-up, and click Change Role to confirm. The change takes effect immediately and the learner keeps their existing enrollment data — progress, completion records, and history are all preserved when a role changes.

Adding Instructors

The Enroll User form on the People tab only offers Student and Observer as role options. Instructors cannot be added through the standard enrollment flow — adding someone as an Instructor requires administrator access. If you need to give someone Instructor access to a course, contact your administrator.

Who can manage roles

Instructors can change roles (between Student and Observer) and remove people from the course. If you're trying to adjust enrollment and don't see the options, check whether you have Instructor access on that course.

Observers and reporting

The most important practical difference between Observer and Student is reporting. Observers are invisible to course analytics — they don't count toward Active Learners, Completion Rate, Average Progress, or any of the metrics in the Reports tab. If you enroll a colleague as an Observer so they can preview the content, their clicks and views don't pollute your cohort's data.

Where to go next