Roles

A role is a collection of permissions defined for the whole system that you can assign to specific users in specific contexts.

For example, you may have a Role called "Teacher" that is set up to allow teachers to do certain things (and not others). Once this role exists, you can assign it to someone in a course to make them a "Teacher" for that course. You could also assign the role to a user in the course category to make them a "Teacher" for all the courses under that category, or assign the role to a user just in a single forum, giving that user those capabilities just in that forum.

A role must have a name. If you need to name the role for multiple languages you can use multilang syntax if you wish, such as

  <span lang="en">Teacher</span> 
  <span lang="es_es">Profesor</span> 
  

The shortname is necessary for other plugins in Moodle that may need to refer to your Roles (eg when uploading users from a file or setting enrolments via an enrolment plugin).

The description is simply to describe the role in your own words, so that everyone has a common understanding about the role.

See also Contexts, Permissions, Assign Roles and Overrides.