Roles in Pearson Connexus represent a predetermined set of permissions. You must assign users a role when enrolling them in a course, giving them that role's permissions within the scope of that enrollment. All roles are automatically inherited by subdomains.
There are four standard roles. The permissions for these roles are defined at the domain root and cannot be edited. If you want to give a user a set of permissions that is different from those given to the predefined roles, you can:
- Grant individual users specific permissions.
- Create custom roles with custom permission sets.
Common Domain Level Role Descriptions:
- Administrator: A domain role that gives a user all available permissions within all levels (Domains, Users, Courses, Enrollments, and Objectives).
- Registrars work with users and have access to the Admin app, but do not have all of the permissions associated with an Administrator role.
- Teachers do not have course create or edit rights as they work with student enrollment and Gradebook-related tasks.
- Teacher-Authors have course edit capabilities. They can customize courses, assign specific due dates, create groups, change passing thresholds and assign personalized learning.
Course Level Roles/Assignments:
- Students can read course content and participate in course activities.
- Personalized Learning Teacher- Assigned at the course level only. Hybrid role of Teacher and Teacher-Author. Users with this role have no access to the course editor but they have full access to Clipboard tools to add activities. They can also add/edit course landing page information.
- Observers can view a student’s specified course content, view student activity, and the associated Gradebook, but cannot participate or perform any actions on behalf of the student being observed. Observers are aligned with students or enrollments. This is not a predefined/assignable role in the system since observers have no domain permissions.
Granting domain and course permissions
You can assign roles and permissions in various places within Pearson Connexus.
- When you grant them from the Permissions screen in the Domain tool, they are attached to the user and apply throughout the domain, regardless of the user's specific enrollments.
- When you grant them from the Enrollments screens of either the Users or Courses tool, they apply only to that enrollment in the specified course.

Pearson Connexus permissions
The available permissions fall under five different categories. These categories represent the component for which the permission grants privilege. The five categories are:
- Domains
- Users
- Courses
- Enrollments
- Objectives
Creating custom roles requires granting a combination of these permissions; you can edit these permissions sets after creation, but be aware that doing so changes permissions for all users assigned that role.
Domain permissions
Domain Permission | Role Type | Allows users to ... |
---|---|---|
Owner | Domain | Grant, revoke, modify domain permissions for a user. |
Create | Domain | Create domains and subdomains. |
Read | Domain | Access the Admin app (this is the only permission that grants this access). Access (read) domain and subdomain information including subscriptions, roles, and settings. |
Edit | Domain | Make changes to domains and subdomains, including subscriptions, roles, and settings |
Delete | Domain | Delete domains and subdomains (including the domain they exist in). |
Post Announcements | Domain | Post announcements to the domain. |
Report | Domain | Run reports using domain data. |
Users permissions
For a user to employ domain role permissions, they must be granted from the Permissions screen in the Domain tool.
Courses permissions
For a user to employ domain role permissions, they must be granted from the Permissions screen in the Domain tool.
Enrollments permissions
For a user to employ domain role permissions, they must be granted from the Permissions screen in the Domain tool.
Objectives permissions
For a user to employ domain role permissions, they must be granted from the Permissions screen in the Domain tool.
Objectives Permission | Role Type | Allows users to ... |
---|---|---|
Read | Domain | Access objectives and objective maps from specified objective sets. |
Edit | Domain | Make changes (add, update, or delete) to objectives and objective maps from specified objective sets. |