Group Choice

Why use it? 

This feature is useful for organising students into smaller groups of their own choice for collaborative work. 

The Group Choice plugin enables students to enrol themselves in a group within a course, giving them a choice over group selection. Teachers must specify which groups are available for selection and can set limits on the number of students allowed in each group. 

Step 1: Create Your Groups 

Before adding the Group Choice activity to your Moodle page, you'll need to create the groups that students can choose from. To do this, navigate to the course's Participants Settings: select Participants from the Quick Navigation Menu, then use the dropdown to choose Groups.  

Open

Click the Create Group button to add each group you'd like to make available for students to select from. Enter a Group name. Optionally, enter a Description to remember what the group was created for.  

Open

Click Save Changes. 

Step 2: Add the Group Choice Activity

Turn on edit mode. Scroll to the section where you want the Group Choice activity to appear, then click Add an activity or resource and select Group Choice.

Step 3: Add the Groups to Participate in Group Choice

In the Group Choice plugin, the Groups setting is where you select the specific groups or groupings that students can choose from when participating in the activity.

 Navigate to the Groups setting within the plugin

Add Groups/Groupings

Select a group and click the Add Group button to include individual groups for student selection. This allows you to specify which specific groups you want to make available.

If you have a grouping that includes all your desired groups, you can add the entire grouping by selecting it and clicking Add Grouping.

Once you click the Add Group or Add Grouping button, you can also set a response limit for the group. If you want to apply a limit across all groups, you can do this in one step by using the Apply to all groups setting.

Step 4: Restrict answering period

This is an optional setting which enables a defined specific time frame during which students can make their group selections. To set a time frame, tick the option box for Restrict answering to this time period.

Specify the Open date and time to indicate when students can begin making their selections.

Set the Until date and time to define when the group selection will close.

Step 5: Settings

General

Give the Group choice activity a name and description.

Miscellaneous settings

Allow enrollment to multiple groups

Check this box if you would like students to select more than one group to participate in.

Max enrollments

To adjust this setting, you must first enable Allow enrollment to multiple groups. This option allows you to set the maximum number of groups each student can join. If set to 0, students can join an unlimited number of groups.

Publish results

This setting determines if and how students can view the results of group selections.

Do not publish results to students: Results are only visible to teachers; students cannot see the list of group members or the number of participants in each group.

Show results to students after they answer: Once a student selects a group, they can view the results, which may include who else has joined each group, depending on privacy settings.

Show results to students only after the choice is closed: Students will see group results only after the activity’s end date or after the teacher manually closes the choice. This is useful if you want students to choose groups without being influenced by others' choices.

Always show results to students: Results are visible to students at all times, even before they make a selection. This option lets students see the group distribution and availability in real-time.

Privacy of Results

Publish anonymous results: Students will see how many participants are in each group but not individual names.

Publish full results, showing names: Students can view the names of group members, useful for fostering transparency and helping students identify group members for collaboration.

Allow Choice to be Updated

Controls whether students can change their group selection after their initial choice.

Show Column for Unanswered

When enabled, the Show column for unanswered setting adds a column to the View Responses table that indicates how many students have not yet made a selection in the Group Choice activity.

Filter Out Response Data for Users with Expired or Suspended Enrolments

Turn on this setting to ensure inactive suspended students won’t be included in the activity.

Limit the Number of Responses Allowed

Controls how many students can enrol in each group when enabled. To ensure the same response limit applies uniformly across all groups, you must always select the Apply to all groups option.