16.2.1 Galaxy for Staff: Overview
What staff need to understand about Galaxy and how it differs from the student experience.
Staff should understand how Galaxy works for students — the entire student section is essential background — but with some key differences.
Key differences for staff
- Staff do not earn stars, streaks, or badges. Visiting the Galaxy screen as a staff member redirects to chat.
- Staff can preview the student experience via Student Emulation (if their role allows it). Anything earned while emulating is sandboxed and doesn't affect real students.
- Staff have two things students don't: a Galaxy Analytics page, and (for admins) the ability to configure Galaxy and profile-picture permissions via roles.
How to think about it
Teach yourself the student-facing concepts — constellations, earning stars, the mastery progress bar, streaks, badges, badge styles, and badge profile pictures — as "what your students experience." Then layer on the two staff-only capabilities:
- Galaxy Analytics — for monitoring engagement and progress (see the next page).
- Roles — for controlling profile-picture uploads and limiting Galaxy features (see the roles page).
Defaults by license (context)
- Students have Galaxy, streaks, badges, and photo upload on by default.
- Staff / Admin have Galaxy off by default — they use analytics and emulation instead.
Why it helps
Knowing exactly what your students see — and what you can and can't do yourself — lets you support and encourage them confidently, and use the right staff tools for monitoring and configuration.