Section 13.2. Student Groups

13.2. Student Groups

Moodle has an unusual, but effective, way of managing small student workgroups. You define your groups then set the group mode for the class or for each tool. The group mode you choose also determines the behavior of each.

There are three group mode options:

No groups

Everyone participates as part of the class. Groups are not used.

Separate groups

Each group can see only their own work. They can't see the work of other groups.

Visible groups

Each group does their own work, but they can see the work of the other groups as well, as shown in Figure 13-2.

Figure 13-2. Visible groups

Once the group mode is set for the course or for the tool, students will interact with your Moodle course as they normally would. The only difference will be the people they meet in the forums, workshops, assignments and other tools. For example, if you set the group mode of a forum to separate groups, Moodle will create a forum for each group. Each student will see the same link to the forum, but they will be able to access only the discussions for their particular group. You need to create the forum only once; Moodle takes care of creating the individual group forums.

To utilize the group mode, you first need to create the student groups:

1. Click Groups on the People block.

2. Click Turn Editing Mode On. You will then see the Groups editing page with three columns, as shown in Figure 13-3. The left-most column lists the people who are not in a group. Teachers will have a # next to their name. The middle column lists the groups. The right-most column lists the people in a particular group once they have been assigned.

   Figure 13-3. Groups editing page

   
   
   

3. At the bottom of the Groups editing page, type the name of a new group and click "Add new group."

4. The name of the group will now appear in the groups list. Select the group you just created.

5. Select the students from the lefthand column you want to add to the group. Then click "Add selected to group ->."

6. Repeat steps 3 through 5 for each student group you need.

Once you've set up your groups, you can set the group mode for each tool. Once you've added a tool to your course, such as a forum, you can set the group mode on the course's main page. When you look at the page in editing mode, the right-most icon next to each tool toggles between the three possible group modes shown in Table 13-1.

Table 13-1. Group mode icons

	No groups mode
	Visible groups mode
	Separate groups mode

These icons will be visible unless you've forced the group mode in the course settings.