The following roles have been created to give an overview of how roles can be used to create different levels of access, and a different look and feel to the site.

• anonymous user -- this role refers to people who visit the site, but are not site members (people who have not signed up for an account)
• audio -- users in this role can create podcasts
• authenticated user -- the default role for all site members. Users in this role have a blog, and can store bookmarks, create groups, create image galleries, and portfolio artifacts.
• instructor -- instructors have all the rights of students, but can create courses and assignments.
• maintainer -- site maintainers have full rights over editing all site content.
• siteadmin -- the siteadmin has full administrative rights over the entire site. This role should be used sparingly.
• student -- this is a placeholder role. For added security, all rights can be removed from the authenticated user role and assigned to the student role. For an organization who is limiting site membership, this configuration means that even if someone managed to create an account on the site, they would have no rights until an admin assigned them into a role.
• wiki -- users in this role can create wiki pages, and can revert revisions.

It's also worth noting that this site uses a generic school paradigm -- it contains a student and instructor role, and instructors create assignments within courses. However, if those roles aren't used, the hierarchy is effectively flattened.