What is the Teacher Assistant role?

What is the Teacher Assistant role?


In the Astria LMS, the Teacher Assistant role is most commonly used to enroll individuals who will work with and support a teacher in a course and who do not need to earn course credit. Teachers are also referred to as instructors in the LMS. Teacher assistants may view and moderate a course and direct daily course communications under a Teacher’s supervision. However, these permissions may vary among institutions.


Other course-level user roles with varying course-level access exist in the LMS. Designers may work with Teachers (who oversee teacher assistants) and together they create course content with which Students and Observers engage.

Teacher Assistant Role Use

The main use of the Teacher Assistant role is to support a course instructor. Teacher assistants can create course materials, access and manage  course materials, and engage with others enrolled in the course. For example, instructors sometimes use teacher assistants to grade assignments in courses with large student enrollments.


Teacher assistant access to courses depends on the institution. Teacher assistants may have access to all past, current, and future courses. Alternately, Teacher assistants may only be enrolled in and granted access to individual courses. A teacher assistant may be enrolled in a course automatically by SIS import or manually by an instructor.

Teacher Assistant Access in the Astria LMS

An institution may modify some Teacher assistant course-level permissions. 

Teacher Assistants can:

  • Add and delete external applications (LTI) for a course

  • Create conferences and student collaborations

  • Create and edit rubrics

  • Customize Course Navigation links

  • Delete and lock discussions and edit others’ discussion posts

  • Generate observer pairing codes for students

  • Manage assignments, quizzes, course files and pages, and all other course content

  • Manage items in a course calendar, including Scheduler appointments

  • Manually add students to a course

  • Send messages to other course users and to all members of a course

  • View a list of users in a course

  • View all student group pages for a course

  • View and comment on student submissions

  • View and edit grades

  • View and link to question banks

  • View course analytics

  • View course announcements and discussions

  • View usage reports for a course

Teacher Assistants cannot:

  • Add, edit, and delete learning outcomes associated with course content

  • Create, edit, and delete course sections

  • Create, edit, and delete student groups

  • Publish, conclude, and delete courses

  • Read SIS data

  • View grade audit trail

Teacher Assistant Limitations

  • Teacher assistants can only view content for a course in which they are enrolled.

  • Teacher assistants cannot submit work on behalf of students, nor can they submit final grades for students.


    • Related Articles

    • What is the Teacher role?

      In the Astria LMS, the Teacher role is used to enroll users responsible for course creation, instruction, and management. Teachers are also referred to as instructors in the LMS. In general, users with the Teacher role have permissions that allow ...

    • What is the Admin role?

      In the Astria LMS, the Admin role is the administrator role. Users assigned the Admin role oversee and manage an institution's LMS account or a sub-account within an institution. Admin permissions allow users to manage terms, create courses, view and ...

    • What is the Student role?

      In the Astria LMS, the Student role is most commonly used to enroll users who will participate in a course for course credit. Users enrolled as Students can view course content and participate in course assignments and communications. Students cannot ...

    • What is the Designer role?

      In the Astria LMS, the Designer role is used to enroll users responsible for course creation and management. In general, users with the Designer role have permissions that allow them to create and curate course content and view course usage data. ...

    • What is the Observer role?

      In the Astria LMS, the Observer role can be used to enroll parents, mentors, and guests who would like to participate in a course but do not need to earn course credit. Observers have limited permissions that allow them to see what is going on in a ...