### Authentication Method

All users have one primary method of authenticating to Mahara. In certain special cases, they can also have a secondary way of authenticating, but in most cases they have just one way.

Here, you can choose what mechanism this user can use to authenticate to Mahara. Most of the time, you will not need to touch this, as it will be set correctly for you.

In some circumstances, you might need a user to authenticate to Mahara using a different method to what they have previously used. For example, if they used to use LDAP but the LDAP server does not know about them any more, and they wish to continue to get access to their account, you could set this to a different method such as 'Internal (No Institution)'. The user will then be able to log in directly to Mahara without using the LDAP server - although you should use the 'reset password' field above to choose an initial password for them.