Why are course creator permissions not set?

I assigned a teacher the other day in a new course in the course creator role.  I got a message today that she could not find out how to edit something.  Huh? 

I recalled that I had to give the course creator role permission to be assigned in a course context, which I thought was strange...

I logged in as the teacher, expecting to see that the functionality was available and that it was operator error, but I too could NOT SEE the course block, which is where the editing link lives.  Strange

I then used a new feature of moodle to look at the permissions of the course creator role.

I used the native Capability overview report

Using this report, I could look up a specific permission, like course edit for the Course creator role, or any other role, and see if it was set or not.  At the bottom of the report it shows this

Notice where it says "Not set", that was the default value of almost all of the permissions for the Course creator role.  I do not get it.

I activated most of the permissions by editing the role and explicitly turning them on.

Then I browsed back to the course logged in as my teacher in the Course creator role and was able to see the edit link as well as other permissions that were previously Not set.

Moral of the story?

If you give a role a new context, you may have to set the permissions for it too!