In Moodle what is the difference between a Course Creator and a Teacher in terms of permissions?

In Moodle 1.7 roles have been greatly improved.

I don’t think the question really matters at this point since you can always override settings or create your own combination of permissions, as well as just define (create) new roles.

I particularly love this new feature, because we’ve ran into a few professors changing their course settings and that has interfered with our administrative house keeping for the site.

In Moodle 1.7 there are default roles and those you choose to create. The process is a bit more involved than in older versions of Moodle. While in a specific course you would go to Administration > Assign roles. After clicking the role you want to add users to you are given the option of all users in the system in one column(on the right) and those users who are currently in the role you choose (on the left). You are also given the choice of overriding roles. The great thing about this, is you can decide what “Guests” can do in each class! There is no longer the blanket rules set by the program on “Guests.” This is a great thing for those professors who have complained about their “Guests” not being about to post to forums, etc.

Unlike version 1.6, there is separate administration for creating new roles. In 1.6 you would merely change the name of the role of the professor within the course. To define roles in the new version, starting at the site administration; Users > Permissions > Define Roles. When you click on the “Add a new role” you are given a huge list of options. So now you can create very specific combinations of rules. This is also where you delete those roles you don’t need. You can also decide what roles should be allowed to assign roles to others (Allow role assignments).

Moodle Links
Moodle Development: Roles
Roles and Capabilities Forum