Roles

Everyone in your organization has one of two roles: Participant or Facilitator. On top of that, a facilitator can make a participant a Sensemaker, which lets them help make sense of what your community said. You'll also see Operators now and then. That's the Polaris team.

The same descriptions live inside Polaris under Your Organization → Roles, so you can check them any time you're deciding what someone should have.

Participant

Participants share their experience by responding to a listening session's questions.

Who usually holds it: the people you're listening to. In most schools that's students, but it can just as easily be families, staff, or community members, depending on who the session is for.

A participant can:

• Respond to the listening sessions your organization opens, by recording or writing
• Join a conversation or activity with the room code a facilitator shares

A participant can't see your roster, your listening reports, or anyone else's conversations.

Facilitator

Facilitators run listening sessions and turn what participants say into action.

Who usually holds it: teachers, counselors, coaches, and building or district leaders who plan sessions and act on the results.

A facilitator can:

• Create, schedule, and close listening sessions
• Read the listening reports your organization has access to
• Search and ask questions across your organization's conversations
• Host collaborative activities, and see the activity boards your sensemakers host
• Add participants to the roster and grant or remove Sensemaker access
• Share and rotate your organization's join codes
• Write the participant questions people answer when they join

Sensemaker

Sensemaker isn't a separate role. It's a permission you turn on for a participant you trust to help make sense of what your community said.

Who usually holds it: a student voice team, a group of student leaders, or anyone you've asked to help read the results with you.

A sensemaker keeps everything a participant can do, and can also:

• Host collaborative Thematic Analysis activities
• Read your organization's listening reports, except those shared with staff only
• Join activities built from a listening report

Operator

Operators are members of the Polaris team who support organizations on the platform. They can do everything a facilitator can, open the participant pages to help troubleshoot, and manage every organization from our side. They're also the only people who can change someone's role.

Changing someone's role

At sign-up, the join code decides the role. Someone who enters your participant code becomes a participant; someone who enters your facilitator code becomes a facilitator. See Join Codes for how to share them safely.

To make someone a sensemaker, open Your Organization → Roster and flip the Sensemaker toggle next to their name. It's available once they've signed in at least once. Select several people to change them all at once.

To switch someone between participant and facilitator, reach out to your Polaris contact or support with their name and email, and we'll change it for you. If they joined with the wrong code because it was shared too widely, rotate that code too.