Within Blackboard, we have three types of roles to assign to users: course/organization roles, system roles, and institutional roles.

• Course roles. These are roles that exist only within a course/organization, such as "instructor," "student," or "teaching assistant."
• System roles. These are roles that exist at the LMS level, such as "course administrator," "guest," or "observer."
• Institutional roles. These are roles that make sense within the institution, such as "librarian," "alumnus," or "physics department."

Blackboard also allows us to create new roles of all types. System and course roles can be created based on other existing roles, assigned to various users, and then their privileges can be adjusted. 

Default system roles

• Community Administrator: Manages organizations, institutional discussion boards, brands, and themes.
• Course Administrator: Manages courses and enrollments.
• Goals Manager: Creates and manages goals.
• Guest: This is the default role for unauthenticated users, and it cannot be edited.
• Learning Environment Manager: Users with this role can create modules and tabs, as well as create, import, export, and edit courses and enrollments.
• None: Default system role for all users. This role does not have access to the Administrator Panel and is generally assigned to all users at the system level unless they require access to administrative functions.
• Observer: Can view materials and interactions of the students they observe. It cannot be renamed.
• Support: This role manages basic course, organization, and user functions and is intended for basic support staff.
• Survey Author: This role provides access to institutional surveys.
• System Administrator: This is the Blackboard administrator role, or super administrator, if you prefer. It has all privileges and cannot be edited.
• System Support: For users who manage most administrative functions.
• User Administrator: Manages most user actions: creating, editing, enrolling, and deleting.

Here is a list of the privileges associated with each default role.