Groups and Groupings

Why use it?

Groups can be used to manage group activities or to restrict access to course sections, activities and resources to members of a group.

Groupings are collections of Groups within a course.

Step 1: Add Groups

PARTICIPANTS in Quick Navigation Menu, dropdown and choose GROUPS.

Open

Click the Create group button (scroll down).

Click here to see screenshots...

Open

 

Step 2: Group settings

Enter a Group name. Optionally, enter a Description to remember what the group was created for.

Click Save changes.

Step 3: Add or remove users to/from a Group

Select the Group where to add or remove users from, and click the Add/remove users button.

Select the user or users from the left box and click Add or select them from the right box and click Remove.

Step 4: Add Groupings

Go to the course page and from the Administration block on the left-hand side of the page, click Users > Groups.

Click on the Groupings tab and once redirected to the Groupings page, click the Create grouping button.

Step 5: Grouping settings

Enter a Grouping name. Optionally, enter a Description to remember what the grouping was created for.

Click Save changes.

Step 6: Add or remove Groups to/from a Grouping

Go to the course page and from the Administration block on the left-hand side of the page, click Users > Groups.

Click on the Groupings tab. You will be redirected to the Groupings page.

Underneath the Edit column, click the show groups in groupings icon:

Select the group or groups from the Potential members box on the right and click Add or select them from the Existing members box and click Remove.

How to use Groups and Groupings to manage group activities

Once you have created groups within your course, you can set up group activities.

The most common Moodle activities to which groups apply are Forums, Wikis and Assignments.

On the settings page of the chosen activity, scroll down and expand the Common Module settings.

Use Group Mode to enable groups. Select Separate or Visible groups. If you choose Separate Groups, students work in private groups. Visible groups means members of other groups can view, but not participate in the activity. In most scenarios, we advise to select Separate Groups.

If your groups are in a Grouping, select it from the Grouping drop-down.

Once a group activity is set up, you can filter by groups using the drop-down menu at the top of the activity.

How to restrict access to course sections, activities and resources to a group

On the settings page of a course section, activity or resource, enable the Restrict access setting.

A group restriction can then be added as the criteria. (Group is only one of the ways to restrict access; see Restrict access for more details.)

IMPORTANT: Make sure you click on the eye-icon to hide the criteria, especially if you restrict access to students with Inclusion Plans (IPs) so that their identities are hidden (i.e. their names will not appear under the activity from Moodle’s homepage for everyone to see).