Overview

The Default Role for Teacher Accounts setting controls which portal access role is automatically given to a new Teacher (Instructor, Lecturer) the moment their online account is created in Classter.

A role in Classter defines what a user sees and can do after logging in to the portal: the menus available, the modules they can access, the dashboard content shown to them, and the actions they are allowed to take.

By configuring this setting, an institution ensures that every new Teacher account starts with a consistent and appropriate portal experience, without staff having to manually assign a role to each new account one by one.

This setting belongs to a family of five similar settings, one for each account type in Classter: Student, Teacher, Employee (Secretary), Parent (Guardian), and Partner. All five settings work in the same way for their respective account type.

 

 

What This Setting Does

• It is a single-select dropdown list. The available options are all the portal roles that the institution has created and marked as Teacher-type roles.
• When a new Teacher online account is created, Classter automatically assigns the role selected in this setting to that new account.
• This setting only affects the role assigned at the moment of account creation. It does not change the role of teachers who already have an account, and it has no ongoing effect afterward.
• Administrators can always change an individual Teacher account role afterward, using the Change Role (also called Manage Role) option available from the actions menu on the corresponding Teacher user account. Doing so only affects that one account and does not change the institution-wide default defined by this setting.
• If this setting is left empty, new Teacher accounts are created without any role assigned. Since a role controls what a user can see and do, an account with no role effectively has little or no usable portal access until an administrator manually assigns one. Configuring this setting is strongly recommended.

Important distinction: this setting is about portal access rights, not about a teacher job or teaching assignment. Being assigned as a class teacher, or teaching a particular subject, is completely separate from the portal role that this setting assigns. Two teachers with very different subjects, classes, or job titles can perfectly well share the same portal role, because a portal role only defines what they can see and do inside Classter, not what or who they teach.

 

 

Where It Is Used

This setting is applied automatically in the following situations:

• New Teacher account creation. Whenever an administrator creates a new online account for a Teacher in Classter, individually or as part of a bulk operation, the system reads this setting and assigns the selected role to the new account.
• Copying settings to a new academic period or another institution. When settings are copied forward to a new school year, or to another institution in a multi-institution setup, Classter attempts to carry this setting forward automatically, pointing to the equivalent role in the destination, provided a matching role exists there. If no equivalent role exists, the setting should be reviewed and reselected after the copy.
• Deleting the role currently selected here. If the role that is currently set as the default for Teacher accounts is deleted from Role Management, Classter automatically clears this setting, since it can no longer point to a role that no longer exists. New Teacher accounts created after that point will have no default role until the setting is updated again.

This setting is not applied to Teacher accounts that already exist. It only determines the starting role for brand-new accounts; moving an existing account to a new academic period does not reassign its role based on this setting.

 

 

Business Logic / Behavior

• The list of available roles for this setting is not a fixed list built into Classter. It always reflects the Teacher-type roles that the institution itself has created and configured under Role Management, in the order they have been arranged there.
• Only one role can be selected as the default at any time, for a given academic period.
• This setting is defined per academic period. Each academic period can therefore have its own default Teacher role, and the setting can be reconfigured, or carried forward automatically, from one period to the next.
• Changing the value of this setting only affects Teacher accounts created after the change. It is never applied retroactively to accounts that already exist.
• This setting can also be copied between different institutions in a multi-institution (multi-company) setup, in the same way it can be copied between periods.

 

K-12 Mode and Higher Education Mode

The behavior of this setting is the same whether the institution is running in K-12 mode or in Higher Education mode (controlled by the Enable Configuration for Higher Education setting – see Related Settings below). Enabling or disabling Higher Education mode does not change how or when a default role is assigned by this setting; it only changes which features and menus are available inside the role itself.

• In K-12 mode, Teacher roles are typically built around classroom-level features, such as Timetable, Gradebook, Attendance, and communication with parents.
• In Higher Education mode, Teacher roles (commonly labelled Instructor or Lecturer in this mode) typically also include course-section management, curriculum-related views, and other features relevant to tertiary education.

Recommendation: whenever an institution is set up for the first time, or switches between K-12 and Higher Education mode, review the Teacher role selected in this setting to make sure it still provides the correct set of features for that mode. A role designed for K-12 use may be missing features expected in Higher Education mode, and vice versa.

 

 

Examples

 

Example 1 – Standard School Setup

Riverside High School has a single Teacher portal role named “Standard Teacher,” which grants access to Timetable, Gradebook, Attendance, and Messaging. The administrator sets the Default Role for Teacher Accounts to “Standard Teacher.” From that point on, every new teacher account, whether created individually or in bulk at the start of the school year, automatically receives the “Standard Teacher” role, and no extra manual steps are required.

 

Example 2 – Multiple Roles at a Larger Institution

Bright Path University has two Instructor portal roles:

• “Course Instructor”: standard access to course sections, gradebook, and attendance.
• “Senior Faculty”: includes everything in “Course Instructor,” plus curriculum planning tools and research supervision features.

The registrar sets the Default Role for Teacher Accounts to “Course Instructor,” since most newly hired instructors start in that capacity. When a senior faculty member joins, their account is first created with the “Course Instructor” role like everyone else. A staff member then opens that account and uses Change Role to switch it to “Senior Faculty.” This individual change does not affect the university-wide default, so future new instructor accounts continue to receive “Course Instructor” automatically.

 

Example 3 – Effect of Deleting the Selected Role

At Fairview Academy, the Default Role for Teacher Accounts is set to “Teacher Access – Basic.” An administrator later deletes that role while reorganizing the school roles. Because the role no longer exists, Classter automatically clears the Default Role for Teacher Accounts setting. Until an administrator selects a new value, new teacher accounts will be created with no default role assigned. It is therefore important to update this setting immediately after removing or renaming a role that was being used here.

 

 

When to Use

 

When to Configure or Update This Setting

• During initial setup of a new institution in Classter, before the first Teacher accounts are created.
• When the institution reorganizes its Teacher roles, for example renaming, merging, or replacing the role currently used as the default.
• When switching between K-12 and Higher Education mode, to confirm the assigned role still offers the right features for the new mode.
• After settings have been copied to a new academic period or another institution, to confirm the role that was carried over is still correct.

 

When Not to Change It

• If the institution has only one Teacher role and it already suits everyone, there is no need to revisit this setting regularly.
• This setting should not be used to manage exceptions for individual teachers, for example a department head who needs broader access. Exceptions like this should be handled with the Change Role option on that specific account, not by changing the institution-wide default.

Note: because this is a single-select setting rather than an on/off switch, “enabling” and “disabling” do not directly apply to it in the usual sense. The closest equivalent to disabling it is leaving it empty, which is not recommended, since new Teacher accounts would then start with no role and effectively no usable portal access until one is assigned manually.

 

 

Notes

 

Prerequisites

• At least one role of type Teacher must already exist and be fully configured, with its menus, modules, and access rights set up, in Role Management. If no Teacher-type role has been created yet, the dropdown for this setting will be empty.
• It is recommended to decide on the overall Teacher role structure wanted for the institution, whether a single general role or several tiers, before configuring this setting, so the correct role is chosen from the start.

 

Related Settings

• Default Role for Student accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Student_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Default Role for Parent (Guardian) accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Parent_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Default Role for Employee (Secretary) accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Secretary_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Default Role for Partner accounts (“Main Settings > General Settings > Security Settings > Accounts & Roles – Partner_Dashboard_Default_Role”)
• Enable Configuration for Higher Education (“Main Settings > General Settings > Higher Education Customization – Xrisi_parametropoihshs_kolegiou”)

 

Terminology Note

Depending on how an institution has customized the terminology used in Classter, “Teacher” may appear on screen under a different label, such as Instructor, Lecturer, Educator, Tutor, or Professor. This does not change how the setting works, only its on-screen name.