About Users and Accounts

Users can create accounts to subscribe to Pearson products and resources, but an account's main purpose is to identify a user in RUMBA. Accounts can exist without subscriptions.

Users

This table shows sample user types from inside and outside of Pearson:

External Users	Internal Users
Students and instructors in Higher Education Professionals training in disciplines from nursing to auto-mechanics Students and teachers in primary and secondary education (kindergarten through high school) School, college, and corporate administrators of online learning Retail accounts for direct-to-consumer products such as standalone eBooks Self-study users	Media production teams and quality assurance Sales representatives Technical specialists Customer support representatives Customer service representatives Operations staff

Associations and roles within organizations, such as schools or universities, help identify some users. Roles include:

Students who attend a school or university
Teachers who teach at a school or university
Customer administrators (like a course coordinator) who work for a school or university, or represent a district
Pearson administrators like sales and support representatives, business unit personnel, or RUMBA administrators.
Users of demonstration products defined outside of RUMBA.

This image shows the relationship among users, accounts, and organizations:

User image

A user can have associations with multiple organizations, but only one role within one organization. If a user teaches and takes continuing education classes at the same school, the user's role is teacher, but his or her learning context is as a student.

Access rights determine the level of permissions (view, create, edit, and delete) RADmin users have for different categories of functionality, such as products and resources or projects.

Accounts

An account is a unique set of information that identifies a user and enables him or her to sign in to Pearson websites and content applications. A user should have only one account, and only one user should be associated with an account. A user can register for multiple products using a single account without needing additional accounts. However, a user might create multiple accounts, usually by mistake or forgetting the username and password.

Depending on the associated organization and role, account information might include the user's:

Personal information, such as first name, last name, and gender
Contact information, such as email address and phone number
Associated organizations and roles
Username and password

The minimum amount of information required for most accounts is a username and password. For security purposes, a username and password are used by RUMBA to authenticate the user when he or she signs into a Pearson website or content application.

Accounts are created in one of these ways:

Proxy: A RADmin user creates an account for another user. For example, a Pearson administrator might create accounts for teachers, K–12 students, or customer administrators. When a user created by proxy signs in to a Pearson website or application, he or she is required to change the temporary password and consent to the terms of use and privacy policy.
Self-registration: Users create their own accounts when they register for Pearson products. However, a user can also create an account without completing the registration process. Once the account is created, the user can use the username and password at a later time to register for Pearson products.
An external application requests RUMBA to create a user.

Additional User Information

From RADmin, in addition to user account information, you can view the user's original account details, subscriptions, transaction history, and payment refunds.