Setting up various types of forum access?

[brettr]

I'd like to use vBulletin for online courses. I have some questions about allowing access to particular forums, which I know vBulletin can do but I'm not sure to what extent. Each course will be segregated from any other course. A student can only see forums for his course and nothing else. For example, say I have course A and B with the forums below. 'Graduates' is visible only for students that have completed the course. Each course has 15 students.

(Course A)
- General Discussion
- Support
- Team 1
- Team 2
- Team 3

(Course B)
- General Discussion
- Support
- Team 1
- Team 2
- Team 3

- Graduates

All students of Course A can see 'General Discussion' and 'Support'. There are 15 students total in Course A. Teams are divided into 5. Students in Team 1 can see Course A 'Team 1' forum but cannot see the forums for Teams 2/3 in in any course and so on for other teams. No one in Course A can see anything in course B and vice versa. Once students complete their course, they have access to 'Graduates' and no longer have access to their course content. Is this type of access possible?

I will setup new forums for each course so that new students do not see any postings to start. Course A and B, for say Oct 2012, will get archived once completed. No student can see those forums anymore. But I'd like to keep the content around for records. Is there a way to archive these forums off somewhere? I don't want them taking up space that instructors have to see these old courses mixed in with new courses every time they are in the main forum.

[Wayne Luke]

Channels -> Channel Permissions.

All your forums/channels will be listed as well as all your usergroups. You can edit the usergroups to edit their permissions to access those forums/channels. This is exactly the same as it was in vBulletin 3 and 4.