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Student Permissions

Student Permissions that Showbie Admins can apply to their School

Allison Gottlieb avatar
Written by Allison Gottlieb
Updated this week

Restricting Student Class Joins

Showbie allows teachers the flexibility to co-teach and cross-teach within their districts. However, sometimes schools may prefer a more secure and focussed learning environment. We have added Student Permissions to help Admins control the classes their students can join.

Visit the School Settings section in the Admin Dashboard to manage Student Permissions:

As an Admin, you can choose whether to allow or prevent your students from:

  1. Joining classes external to your school

  2. Changing their Profile Photo

🚨This will apply to all students found on your Students list in the Admin Dashboard.

We recommend reviewing these permissions to determine what best fits your school's needs.

Allowing or Preventing Students from Joining External Classes

Allow External Class Joins

  • Toggle ON (green)

  • This is a great option if you share teachers within a district

  • Your students can request to join any class by class code, but will still need to be approved by a teacher

Prevent External Class Joins

  • Toggle OFF (gray, recommended) - more secure

  • Your students can only join classes that include an approved teacher at your school

  • Prevents students from accidentally joining classes led by teachers from other institutions or by unaffiliated teachers

💡 For instances where you would like to use the more secure setting, but also need to accommodate cross-school teaching (e.g., a music teacher shared amongst schools at your district), you can simply add a co-teacher from the relevant school to the class. This will allow students to join the class because it now includes an approved teacher from their school.

Allowing or Preventing Students from Changing their Profile Photo

Allow changes

  • Toggle ON (green)

  • This is a great option to possibly encourage independence, and keep students more engaged with their digital learning tools

Preventing Changes

  • Toggle OFF (gray)

  • This gives you control over keeping student profiles appropriate, which means less oversight and more peace of mind.

✍️ You could decide to allow students to customize their photo for a week at the beginning of the year and then disable to lock that ability for the remainder if you'd like!

💡 Teachers and admins will always be able to update/clear any profile photos

Student Permissions FAQ

Who do "Student Permissions" apply to?

Student Permissions apply to all students found on your Students list in the Admin Dashboard.

What happens when students try to join an external class (and "Allow Students to Join External Classes" is off)?

When a student tries to join a class which does not include at least one approved teacher at your school, they will get the error message "Class Unavailable."

But the class belongs to a legitimate teacher at my school! How do I correct this?

Simply invite the teacher to your school from the Admin Dashboard and have them accept the invitation via email in order for them to be added as an approved member of your school in Showbie. Approved teachers will appear in your Teachers list in the Admin Dashboard.

Does "Allow Students to Join External Classes" affect current class memberships?

No, current class memberships remain as they are. If you toggle this setting off (more secure), it will only affect your students' ability to join classes in the future.

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