Groups

Why use groups?

• You are a trainer in a course where you have several classes and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you only see one class at a time.
• You are a trainer sharing a course with other trainers and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you don’t see the students from your colleagues’ classes.
• You want to allocate a particular activity, resource or topic section to just one class or set of users and you don’t want others to see it.

Group levels

A group or grouping can be used on two levels:

• Course level: The group mode defined at the course level is the default mode for all activities defined within that course. To use groups you need first to set a group mode in Administration > Course administration > Edit settings.
• Activity level: Each activity that supports groups can also have its own group mode defined. If the course setting Force group modeis set to Yes then the option to define the group mode for individual activities is not available. If it is set to No, then the trainer may change the group mode.

Group modes

There are three group modes:

• No groups:There are no sub groups, everyone is part of one big community.
• Separate groups:Each group can only see their own group, others are invisible.
• Visible groups:Each group works in their own group, but can also see other groups (the other groups' work is read-only).

For example, enabling either separate or visible groups on an assignment dropbox enables staff to filter the learners submissions to see only those from a particular tutor group. With visible groups, students can see which other groups are doing the same activities as they are; with separate groups, they do not know which other groups are doing the same activities.

Using groups with discussion forums allow trainers to restrict interaction between learners. Separate groups mean only learners in the same group can see and participate in discussions within a particular forum. Visible groups allow learners to see other groups' discussions, but only participate in their own group's discussions.

Where visible groups are used or the participant can access all groups, the user's own group is shown first, followed by other groups.

Creating a group

1. Click the Create groupbutton in Administration > Course administration > Users > Groups.
2. Add a group name, optional description (displayed above the list of group members on the participants page), enrolment key, and picture (displayed on the participants page and next to forum posts).
3. Click the Save changes
4. Select the group to which you want to add participants, then click the Add/remove users
5. In the Potential memberslist, select the users you want to add to the group. Multiple users may be selected using the Control (Crtl) key.
6. Click theAdd button to add the users to the group.

An optional group ID number (an advanced setting) may be added for matching the group against external systems. Group ID numbers are not displayed anywhere on the site. Within a course, all group ID numbers must be unique. Thus it's not possible to create a group with a duplicate group ID number.

Auto-create groups

Groups may be created automatically via the Auto-create groups button in Administration > Course administration > Users > Groups. To see all the settings, click the Expand all link top right.

General

A naming scheme can be created automatically. # is replaced by sequential numbers, and @ by letters. For example:

• Group @ will create group with a naming scheme Group A, Group B, Group C . . .
• Group # will create group with a naming scheme Group 1, Group 2, Group 3 . . .

You can specify if you would like to create either:

• A particular number of Groups.
• Each group contain a particular number of learners.

When selecting Members per group the Prevent last small group option will allocate additional members to an existing group rather then create a new group with fewer members than you have specified. This setting is found by clicking on the Show More link.

Group members

The option Select members from... allows you to choose from roles assigned within the course, available cohorts, groups or groupings. Specify and Group/Member count work together.

The setting Select members from cohort lists all cohorts which users enrolled on the current course are part of. The number in brackets is the number of users enrolled on the course in that cohort.

The Ignore users in groups checkbox should be ticked to only select group members from users that are not already in a group in the course.

You can also decide whether to Include only active enrolments, which means that if this option is ticked any inactive enrolments (such as suspended users) will not be included. 

Grouping

Create in grouping and Grouping name allows you to create a new grouping and allocate the new auto-created groups to be created to it.

Prior to creating the groups, you can view the groups.

Restricting an activity, resource or course topic to a particular group

To be able to restrict an activity, resource or course topic to a group, Conditional activities must be enabled. This will result in a Restrict access section in the activity, resource or topic settings and a group restriction can then be added.

Groups overview

A overview of groups and groupings is available via the Overview tab in Administration > Course administration > Users > Groups.

The table may be filtered to display particular groupings or groups.