Teaching Assistant Role: LMS Recognition, Rights within FeedbackFruits, and FAQ
The Teaching Assistant (TA) role is a recognized user role within FeedbackFruits. This role provides specific rights and responsibilities to staff members who assist teachers within an educational institution.
The Teaching Assistant role offers the following benefits:
Accuracy and consistency: Provides more accurate and consistent role rights and workflows for staff members who serve as TAs within their institution's LMS.
Role alignment: Aligns FeedbackFruits permissions with the responsibilities Teaching Assistants have within their institution.
Enhanced user experience: Gives Teaching Assistants access to the functionality they need while maintaining the distinction between TA and teacher permissions.
Teaching Assistant Role Rights and Limitations
Rights of Teaching Assistants (TAs) within FeedbackFruits
Monitoring activities
TAs can monitor FeedbackFruits activities across all tools and track student progress within them.
Rating and commenting
TAs can rate and comment on student submissions, skills, and feedback within Assignment Tools, including:
Peer Review
Group Member Evaluation
Assignment Review
Skill Review
Self-Assessment of Skills
Self-Assessment of Work
Participation in student discussions
TAs can view and participate in student discussions in Interactive and Discussion Tools, including:
Interactive Study Materials
Discussion of Work
Discussion of Topic
Comprehension
Interactive Presentation
Team Based Learning
Grade adjustments
TAs can make grade adjustments in the Grading module.
Personal deadline extensions
TAs can grant personal deadline extensions to students.
Access to student submissions
TAs can download student submissions and feedback reports.
Limitations of Teaching Assistants (TAs) within FeedbackFruits
Activity creation and editing
TAs cannot create or edit activities and do not have access to Edit mode.
Publishing feedback and grades
TAs cannot publish feedback or grades. These actions are reserved for teachers, including Learning Designers.
Editing groups, deadlines, and time windows
TAs cannot edit groups, deadlines, or time windows for activities.
Availability and How the Teaching Assistant Role Is Recognized within the LMS
The Teaching Assistant role is enabled at the institution level. If the role is not currently enabled for your institution, contact your FeedbackFruits contact person for more information.
To use the TA role:
Contact your FeedbackFruits contact person for more information about enabling the role.
Make sure the role mapping within your institution's LMS is configured correctly so users receive the appropriate role in FeedbackFruits:
Blackboard: LTI Admins can decide which LMS role translates to which LTI role.
Brightspace: LTI Admins can decide which LMS role translates to which LTI role.
Canvas: Role recognition depends on the role and enrollment type provided by Canvas. Canvas Observer roles are not automatically mapped to the Teaching Assistant role in FeedbackFruits. When rosters are synchronized through the Canvas API, users with the Observer role may be recognized as students.
Moodle: Moodle does not support the Teaching Assistant role in LTI. This means that TAs may be classified as students rather than teachers.
Contact your FeedbackFruits contact person so the functionality can be enabled for your institution from the FeedbackFruits Admin side.
Once enabled, users whose LMS role is recognized as a Teaching Assistant will receive Teaching Assistant rights within FeedbackFruits.
Role recognition is based on the role a user has within a specific course.
Example: Maria works and studies at Sample University
Maria has different roles across three courses:
Maria is a Teacher for a Communications course.
Maria is a Student in a Spanish course.
Maria is a Teaching Assistant for a Mass Media Ethics course.
Sample University has the FeedbackFruits Teaching Assistant role functionality enabled institution-wide.
In FeedbackFruits:
Maria is recognized as a Teacher in the Communications course.
Maria is recognized as a Student in the Spanish course.
Maria is recognized as a Teaching Assistant in the Mass Media Ethics course.
LMS Role Recognition
These are the most frequent LMS roles and how they are generally recognized in FeedbackFruits. Exact role recognition may depend on the LMS and the integration used.
| General LMS role | Currently recognized as | If TA role is enabled, recognized as |
|---|---|---|
| Administrator | Teacher | Teacher |
| Content developer / Learning Designer | Teacher | Teacher |
| Instructor / Teacher | Teacher | Teacher |
| Teaching Assistant | Teacher | Teaching Assistant |
| Learner / Student | Student | Student |
| Observer / Mentor | Depends on LMS and integration | Depends on LMS and integration |
Note for Canvas: Observer roles are not automatically mapped to the Teaching Assistant role. When roster synchronization takes place through the Canvas API, users with the Observer enrollment type may be recognized as students. Enabling the Teaching Assistant role does not automatically change this mapping.
Rights Customization and Roles Roadmap
Currently, there are no customization options for Teaching Assistant rights. TA functionality is the same for all institutions across the different LMSs.
FeedbackFruits currently supports the Teacher, Student, and Teaching Assistant roles.
FAQ: Role Recognition
Can TAs sync groups and assignments?
Yes. TAs can trigger the sync when entering the assignment.
Can TAs switch the activity author?
No. Switching the activity author is currently not available for any role.
What happens when a person is a TA in one course but a student or has a different role in another course?
Roles are recognized per course. A user can therefore be a Teaching Assistant in one course, a Student in another, and a Teacher in another.
Our institution uses an Observer or read-only role. What happens with these users?
FeedbackFruits does not currently support a dedicated view-only staff role.
Observer and Mentor roles are not automatically recognized as Teaching Assistants across all LMS integrations. For example, when Canvas rosters are synchronized through the Canvas API, users with the Observer role may be recognized as students rather than Teaching Assistants.
The Teaching Assistant role also includes permissions to actively interact with students, such as providing feedback and making grade adjustments. Therefore, users who require strictly read-only access should not automatically be mapped to the Teaching Assistant role.
Please work with your LMS administrator or FeedbackFruits contact person to determine the appropriate role configuration for these users.
We have TAs who actually have a Learning Designer role and build activities rather than review student work. What happens with these users?
These users should be mapped as Teachers within the LMS course so FeedbackFruits continues to grant them activity creation and editing rights.
What happens when a TA leaves the activity?
Their existing activity within the assignment, such as ratings and comments, remains intact. This is the same behaviour as when a teacher leaves an assignment.