Access and roles¶
Gradebird combines an approved account with course-specific ownership and memberships. A role name alone is not enough to determine access: course relationship, the course grader policy, and any per-question permissions also matter.
Course roles¶
| Relationship | Normal capabilities |
|---|---|
| Owner | Owner of one course. Has the full instructor workspace, manages instructors and graders, and can permanently delete the course. |
| Instructor | Uses the teaching workspace and can invite or revoke graders. Ownership and some collaborator-management actions remain restricted. |
| Grader | Sees the cross-course Grading assignments workspace and published questions allowed by the course grader policy. Cannot create courses. |
There is exactly one course owner. Ownership cannot be changed through an ordinary role action.
Manage course access¶
Open the course-name menu and select Access. Invite course member accepts an email and role. A course owner may invite instructors or graders. An ordinary instructor may invite graders only.
Pending invitations are tied to the invited email. A recipient who is logged out is routed to sign in or create an account. Acceptance requires the matching verified email. Accepting an old grader invitation does not change an existing instructor or owner role.
Owners may promote a grader to instructor or demote an instructor to grader. Promotion removes question-grader assignments because instructor access supersedes them. Demotion retains course membership and follows the course grader policy: all published questions in course-wide mode, or saved question assignments in assignment mode. Ordinary instructors cannot change or revoke another instructor.
Course-wide grader permissions¶
In Access → Grader permissions, Graders can grade all questions and exams is selected by default. Accepted graders can immediately grade every published, gradeable question, including newly published questions. The three course-wide permissions initially allow rubric editing, read-only AI solution viewing, and student names. Rubric viewing is always part of grading access.
A yellow Changes not saved pill appears while your edits differ from the saved settings. Use Save changes to open a confirmation popup showing how many current eligible graders gain or lose question access and each permission, then confirm or cancel. Changes that do not affect any current grader’s access or permissions save immediately without a popup. While the popup is open, the card still shows your proposed settings and the Changes not saved pill. Confirm changes saves them. Cancel, Escape, or × only closes the popup: nothing is saved, and your proposed edits remain on the card so you can adjust them. Reload the page to discard unsaved edits. The preview distinguishes losing all question access from losing some questions. Pending invitations are excluded from these counts; accepted invitations will follow the saved policy.
While all-question access is enabled, the exam’s Setup → Graders card lists all course graders and their permissions. Change them back in Access. Graders still cannot administer exams, manage rosters or scans, release reports, or generate AI solutions.
Select Graders must be explicitly assigned to questions and exams to use per-question assignments. Existing assignments and permissions are preserved while course-wide access is on and apply again when it is turned off. Course-wide permission switches are inactive in assignment mode. Existing courses that already had assignments retain assignment mode when this feature is introduced; existing courses without assignments start with course-wide access and all three optional permissions enabled.
Assign graders to questions¶
With all-question access turned off, open the exam's Grade workspace. Choose Setup in the grading dropdown. The Graders panel assigns one course grader to one or more gradeable questions. Each assignment has independent permissions:
- Can edit rubric permits editing, publishing, and eligible AI rubric assistance for that question.
- Can see student names permits the identity toggle; otherwise the grader sees packet or bird aliases.
- Can view AI solution provides read-only access to an existing instructor-generated solution for the assigned question. It does not permit solution generation or changes to course AI settings.
A grader without a published rubric or rubric-edit permission sees the appropriate waiting state. A grader can save assessments as approved or provisional and approve provisional assessments only for accessible questions. Within accessible questions, graders can use Bulk review in every assessment state, edit saved assessments, and apply selected-page or all-results approval/revocation actions. Needs review also supports provisional approval of eligible saved assessments. Saving an approved assessment as provisional removes its final approval. These grading actions do not grant rubric-edit or student-identity permissions; saving still requires a published rubric, and unavailable work is identified with a warning. Instructors retain responsibility for assignment design, grades, and release. See grading states and transitions.
Transfer ownership and remove access¶
Course ownership cannot be transferred from the instructor-facing Access page. Contact Gradebird support when ownership must change. The prior owner may be retained as an instructor after the transfer.
Use revocation when a collaborator no longer needs the course.
Course access¶
The course access page lists the owner, instructors, graders, pending invitations, and course-wide grader permissions. Authorized instructors can invite collaborators, change eligible roles or permissions, revoke access, and manage pending invitations. Removing access does not transfer ownership and may be blocked when the requested change would violate course constraints.
Instructor invitation¶
This page shows the course and inviter for a pending instructor invitation. The invited account can accept or decline, and may be asked to complete its name first. Acceptance grants the documented instructor access; expired, revoked, already-used, or email-mismatched invitations cannot be accepted.
Grader invitation¶
This page shows the course and inviter for a pending grader invitation. Accepting grants grader access and routes the user to grading assignments; declining leaves the course unchanged. The same expiration, status, and verified-email checks used for instructor invitations apply.
Organization¶
An ordinary instructor’s organization page identifies the organization connected to the account and provides only the instructor-visible organization information. Organization-administration work areas and controls require an organization administrator and are outside the instructor workflow documented here.