Moodle - Groups and Group Activities.................................................................................................... 1

Workshop Objectives ....................................................................................................................................... 1

Introduction to Moodle Groups ...................................................................................................................... 2 What are „Groups‟ in Moodle? ....................................................................................................................................... 2 Set your Moodle Course into Group Mode ..................................................................................................................... 2

Create Groups ................................................................................................................................................... 4 Auto-create Groups ......................................................................................................................................................... 4

Add Students to the Group(s) .......................................................................................................................... 7

Create Group Activities ................................................................................................................................... 8 Add an activity ................................................................................................................................................................ 8 Create a Group Forum/Discussion .................................................................................................................................. 9

Grading Group Activities .............................................................................................................................. 12

Using Groupings in Moodle ........................................................................................................................... 13 Create Groupings .......................................................................................................................................................... 13 Put Groups into Groupings............................................................................................................................................ 13

Assign Resources Exclusively to a Grouping ............................................................................................... 15

Activity Modules ..................................................................................................................................... 17

Moodle - Groups and Group Activities

Workshop Objectives By the end of this workshop you will be able to:

Identify a group and a grouping

Create groups in your Moodle course

Populate your groups with students/participants

Create group activities in your Moodle course

Grade group activities

Show students how to find what group(s) they are in

Create groupings put groups into groupings

Assign specific resources to specific groupings

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Introduction to Moodle Groups

What are ‘Groups’ in Moodle?

Moodle allows you to group your students in order to allow them to work together on one or more

projects, papers and other activities and lessons you may have planned for your course. Within one

course, you can create groups, put students into these groups and set up activities where they either

interact with other groups, or just interact with their group mates without “knowing” or “being aware”

of any other group(s) in the course.

All activities (items under the Add an Activity drop-

down menu) can be given a group mode, so that

groups can work together on particular portions of an

activity, or collaborate on assigned work.

You can also assign resources (items under the Add a

Resource drop-down menu) to specific groups, so that

the materials are only visible to that group. This is done

using Groupings.

You can “group your groups” into larger groups called Groupings, which can then be assigned various

resources for private/exclusive access. NOTE that you can only assign resources to a Grouping, *not*

a group.

So, now that we know what groups and groupings are, we can begin to create some groups!

Set your Moodle Course into Group Mode

To work with Groups, you need to tell Moodle that your course will be

using groups by setting your course to Group Mode.

1. In the Admin Block, click on Settings

2. Scroll down the page to “Groups”

GROUP MODE – the group mode can be one of three levels:

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 group mode can be defined at two levels:

1. Course level - The group mode defined at the course level (in Settings) is the default mode for all

activities defined within that course

2. Activity level - Each activity that supports groups can also define its own grouping mode. If the

course is set to "force group mode" then the setting for each activity is ignored.

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FORCE GROUP MODE

If the group mode is "forced" at a course-level, then the course group mode is applied to every activity

in that course. Individual group settings in each activity are then ignored.

This is useful when, for example, one wants to set up a course for a number of completely separate

cohorts, like Course Sections. (For further information, please contact the FacLab about Meta

Courses).

By default, Group Mode is set to “no groups”

3. Set Group Mode to either “Visible” or “Separate”.

4. Save Changes

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Create Groups

1. To create groups, click on the Groups link in the

Admin Block. The Groups screen will open up.

2. Click on the Create group in the lower portion of the

screen. Fill in the name, description and other

optional details for the group.

Click the “Create group” button at the bottom of the screen to create the group

Auto-create Groups

You can also let Moodle create groups for you by just specifying how many groups you want, or how

many students per group. It will randomly assign students into groups for you, naming the groups

either Group A, B, C … or Group 1, 2, 3,… according to your specifications. Or you can change the

naming convention to Team if you don‟t want the word

“Group”.

1. From the Groups page, click Auto-create groups

2. Click the “Show Advanced” button to reveal extra

options

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Select members from role = who should be in groups? Students only, teachers only, or

all?

Specify = create groups based on number of groups you will set, or number of members

per group?

Group/member count = how many groups should be created or how many members

should be in a group?

Prevent last small group = applies if you choose members per group, so you can

prevent only 1 or 2 people being in a group alone. Moodle will add them onto other

bigger groups

Allocate members = randomly, alphabetically firstname, lastname, alphabetically

lastname, firstname, or alphabetically by ID number

Naming scheme = Group @ (alphabetical, i.e. Group A, Group B, Group C,), Group #

(numerical, i.e. Group 1, Group 2, Group 3…) or you can put your own word in place of

“Group”

*Create in grouping = Yes/No (put these groups into a bigger grouping?)

*If yes, then give Grouping Name (e.g. Team 1, Team 2, Team 3 can be groups that

will be put into a larger grouping called “Group-Projects”)

How many

groups? Or How

many members per

group?

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Click Preview to preview how the groups will look like

If satisfied, click Submit.

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Add Students to the Group(s) 1. In the left column, select the group you want to

populate.

2. Click on the “Add/remove users” button

3. In the column on the right, select the students

you want to add to the group (select multiple

names by holding down the Control CTRL key

on the keyboard and clicking).

4. Click the left arrow button to bring them over

into the group

5. Click the “Back to groups” button

NB:

To remove a student, you would select the student’s

name in the left column and click the right arrow button

to take him/her out of the group.

Add/remove users – add

students to the selected

group, or remove students

from the selected group

Edit group setting – change

the name or description of

the selected group

Delete selected group –

delete the selected group

Create group – create a

new group

Automatically create

groups

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Your groups will show the number of members in parenthesis beside their names, and when you select

a group with members, they are listed in the column on the right.

Create Group Activities

Add an activity

1. Turn Editing On.

2. Select “Add an activity” in the week or topic where

you wish to place the activity

With the exception of

Game

Glossary

Lesson,

Questionnaire, and

Slideshow

all activities have a “group mode” that can be set to either separate, visible or no groups.

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So, for example, if you select an “Online Text” Assignment, fill in all the details for the name,

description, Grade value, due date and availability, etc. When you get to “Common Module Settings”

near the bottom of the screen, you can set the Group Mode and the Visibility for the Assignment.

Lastly, click Save Changes to create the assignment.

Create a Group Forum/Discussion

1. Click “Add an Activity” and select Forum.

2. Fill in the information, select “Standard forum for general use” as the Forum Type, and

select “Separate Groups” for the group mode. (or Visibe Groups, depending on your

preference)

3. Save Changes

Group Mode – if an activity has a group mode

setting, then it can be set as a group activity,

with visible groups or separate groups. If you

set it to “no groups” then it will NOT be a

group activity.

Here is where you can control who can see and participate in the topics for discussion.

All participants – everyone can see the topic;

Dept1 – only Dept1 group members can see the topic;

Dept2 – only Dept2 group members can see the topic.

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The landing page for the Forum is displayed, with no topics posted yet.

If you will initiate a discussion, then BEFORE YOU ADD A TOPIC select the target group.

In the upper left corner is a drop-down menu with the forum‟s group mode.

Here is where you can control who can see and participate in the topic you will add.

All participants – everyone can see the topic and participate in the discussion,

Dept1 – only Dept1 group members can see the topic and discuss with only Dept1 members;

Dept2 – only Dept2 group members can see the topic and discuss with only Dept2 members.

1. Select one of your groups from the menu

2. Click the “Add a new discussion topic” button

3. Add your message

4. Click Post to forum

The following screenshots show examples of what the students will see in the 3 different group modes.

Dept1 group members see their discussion topic and the general “ask a question” topic for all

participants.

The column named “Group” also tells you which group is the target of a particular topic/discussion.

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Dept2 group members have no discussion topic dedicated to them but can see the general “ask a

question” topic for all participants. They cannot see the topic for Dept1 because the forum’s group

mode is “Separate Groups”. If it were “Visible Groups”, they would be able to see the Dept1 topic,

and read their discussion, but will not be able to participate. There would be no “Reply” button for

them to post a response.

Dept2 group members see their discussion topic and the general “ask a question” topic for all

participants.

As the Teacher, you can see all the topics at once if you select “All participants” from the drop-down

menu, as shown in the figure below.

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Grading Group Activities

You can select the Group Name from a similar drop-down menu in the upper left corner of the Grade

Book, or the Activity, in order to display the students in that group.

Below: group assignment, showing students in Dept1 Group.

Grading via the grade book

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Using Groupings in Moodle

You can put your groups into groupings in order to assign resources to them, or to create larger groups

of groups.

Create Groupings

1. Click “Groups” in the Admin block

2. Click on the Groupings tab

3. Click Create grouping

4. Name the grouping and Save changes

Create one or two more groupings

Put Groups into Groupings

1. Under the Edit column (far right) click

the show groups icon (3 people huddled

together) for one of the groupings

2. From the list on the right select one or

more groups to add to this grouping.

3. Click the Add button

Put some groups into all your groupings

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After grouping your groups you will see them listed:

Clicking on the Overview tab shows a general listing of all groups, groupings and group members:

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Assign Resources Exclusively to a Grouping

1. From your course home page,

Turn Editing On 2. Add a Resource (say, a link to

a file)

3. Fill in the information until

Common Module Settings 4. Click the “Show Advanced”

button

5. Check the box for “Available

for group members only”

6. Now the Grouping option

above it becomes enabled and you can select a Grouping to which you want to grant exclusive

access

7. Save and return to course

On your course home page, you (only

the teacher) should see the Grouping that has

exclusive access in parenthesis beside the

name of the file link.

NB: The Wiki and Workshop activities can delve deeper in terms of groups by creating one

wiki/workshop for a grouping so that its sub-groups have exclusive access. Along those general

lines…!

Another example is, if you put each student in their own exclusive group, you could put them all into

one grouping called, say, “Independent-Projects” and then create this wiki as a “Student Wiki” with

“separate groups” mode. The effect would be that for this wiki activity, each student gets their own

wiki which no one else can see or edit except the teacher and that student. You can easily establish that

as a writing portfolio, or a teacher-student feedback/project-planning space…and more!

This is ONE wiki activity, set to visible

groups. The effect is that each group

gets their own wiki page, separate

from the rest.

A good use would be for group

annotated bibliography

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Show Students How to Find What Group They Are In

8. After logging in to Moodle, click on your Name

to access your Profile.

OR look in the Administration Block in your

course and click on Profile there

9. Your Profile page should show among other items, your Group(s)

for the selected class.

For More Information on Groups and Group Activities: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Groups

http://docs.moodle.org/en/Groups_FAQ

The following pages are a listing of all the Activity modules in Moodle along with a brief description

of what they are, what they do and whether they are gradable or not.

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Activity Modules

Moodle contains a wide range of activity modules that can be used to build up any type of course.

Assignments

Assignments allow the teacher to specify a task that requires students to prepare digital content (any

format) and submit it by uploading it to the server. Typical assignments include essays, projects,

reports and so on. This module includes grading facilities.

Chats

The Chat module allows participants to have a real-time synchronous discussion via the web. This is a

useful way to get a different understanding of each other and the topic being discussed - the mode of

using a chat room is quite different from the asynchronous forums. The Chat module contains a

number of features for managing and reviewing chat discussions.

Choices

A choice activity is very simple - the teacher asks a question and specifies a choice of multiple

responses. It can be useful as a quick poll to stimulate thinking about a topic; to allow the class to vote

on a direction for the course; or to gather research consent.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is useful in the initial stages of a task, for example for gathering a range of ideas

or finding out what students already know collectively.

It's useful to set some ground rules for “cognitive-factorying” which can include:

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1. Everyone's contribution is valued, and no comment or criticism is given until all the

contributions are listed;

2. Everyone has the option to participate, or not;

3. Wild ideas are as welcome as sober ones in the ideas-generating stage;

4. Everyone's idea must be expressed in a single sentence or using keywords.

Database Activity

The Database module allows the teacher and/or students to build, display and search a bank of record

entries about any conceivable topic. The format and structure of these entries can be almost unlimited,

including images, files, URLs, numbers and text amongst other things. You may be familiar with

similar technology from building Microsoft Access or Filemaker databases.

Feedback

With this module you can survey or evaluate your students with a customized survey.

Forums

This activity can be the most important - it is here that most discussion takes place. Forums can be

structured in different ways, and can include peer rating of each posting. The postings can be viewed in

a variety for formats, and can include attachments. By subscribing to a forum, participants will receive

copies of each new posting in their email. A teacher can impose subscription on everyone if they want

to.

Glossary

This activity allows participants to create and maintain a list of definitions, like a dictionary.

The entries can be searched or browsed in many different formats.

The glossary also allows teachers to export entries from one glossary to another (the main one) within

the same course.

Finally, it is possible to automatically create links to these entries from throughout the course.

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Hot Potatoes

This module, the "HotPot" module, allows teachers to administer Hot Potatoes quizzes via Moodle.

The quizzes are created on the teacher's computer and then uploaded to the Moodle course.

After students have attempted the quizzes, a number of reports are available which show how

individual questions were answered and some statistical trends in the scores.

Journals

This module is a very important reflective activity. The teacher asks the student to reflect on a

particular topic, and the student can edit and refine their answer over time. This answer is private and

can only be seen by the teacher, who can offer feedback and a grade on each journal entry. It's usually

a good idea to have about one Journal activity per week.

Lesson

A lesson delivers content in an interesting and flexible way. It consists of a number of pages. Each

page normally ends with a question and a number of possible answers. Depending on the student's

choice of answer they either progress to the next page or are taken back to a previous page. Navigation

through the lesson can be straight forward or complex, depending largely on the structure of the

material being presented.

Lightbox Gallery

A lightbox gallery resource allows you to display multiple images from a directory using the

Lightbox2 Javascript libraries. Image editing plugins allow you to resize, crop and rotate images, while

the tagging and captioning options allow for searchable images.

Map

Allows teachers to create an interactive Google Map with the class, where students add locations with

annotations or descriptions, images and links as needed.

Mediabird Study Notes

Mediabird is about learning together. Users can take notes on subjects they want to learn and discuss

questions in the context they appear. Study groups can be created exclusively within the activity, and

particular note pages assigned to particular individuals or groups within the activity.

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Page Menu

This activity allows one to construct menus with various link types. This activity's primary use is to

provide navigation for the Page Course Format, but can be used independent of that. You can link a

page menu to a Page block which provides an instant navigation menu within a block that your

students could use as an extra means for getting around our course.

Podcaster

Allows teachers to populate an RSS Feed of uploaded media files which students can access

independent of Moodle. Every time the teacher adds a new file, the feed is refreshed so it acts as a

Podcasting station. File types that can be uploaded are: 3gp, ai, aif, aiff, avi, au, bmp, dv, dif, eps, flv,

gif, ico, jpe, jpeg, jpg, mov, movie, mp3, mp4, mpeg, mpe, mpg, pct, pdf, pic, pict, png, ps, qt, ra, ram,

rtf, svg, svgz, swa, swf, swfl, tif, tiff, wav, wmv, xdp, xml

Questionnaire

The questionnaire module allows you to construct questionnaires (surveys) using a variety of question

types, for the purpose of gathering data from users. It is based on phpESP, and Open Source

questionnaire tool. See http://phpesp.sourceforge.net

Quizzes

This module allows the teacher to design and set quiz tests, consisting of multiple choice, true-false,

and short answer questions. These questions are kept in a categorized database, and can be re-used

within courses and even between courses. Quizzes can allow multiple attempts. Each attempt is

automatically marked, and the teacher can choose whether to give feedback or to show correct answers.

This module includes grading facilities.

Resources

Resources are content: information the teacher wants to bring into the course. These can be prepared

files uploaded to the course server; pages edited directly in Moodle; or external web pages made to

appear part of this course.

SCORM/AICC Packages

A package is a bundle of web content packaged in a way that follows the SCORM or the AICC

standard for learning objects. These packages can include web pages, graphics, Javascript programs,

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Flash presentations and anything else that works in web browsers. The Package module allows you to

easily upload any standard SCORM or AICC package and make it part of your course.

JPG Slideshow

This module is a simple activity which allows the user to view a set of images using thumbnails.

Select the directory which contains the image files (png, gif or jpg format)

Teachers will see a link to a special page that allows them to edit titles and captions for the pictures.

A warning will appear for teachers if there are filesizes which are larger than the threshold set by

admin for this.

Wikis

A Wiki enables documents to be authored collectively in a simple markup language using a web

browser.

"Wiki wiki" means "super fast" in the Hawaiian language, and it is the speed of creating and updating

pages that is one of the defining aspects of wiki technology. Generally, there is no prior review before

modifications are accepted, and most wikis are open to the general public or at least to all persons who

also have access to the wiki server.

The Moodle Wiki module enables participants to work together on web pages to add, expand and

change the content. Old versions are never deleted and can be restored.

This module is based on Erfurt Wiki.

Workshop

A Workshop is a peer assessment activity with a huge array of options. It allows participants to assess

each other's projects, as well as exemplar projects, in a number of ways. It also coordinates the

collection and distribution of these assessments in a variety of ways.