How to Establish Groups

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  • May 17, 2018

Moodle provides the option to create groups, add students to groups, and enable group mode in activities. Groups are usually established within a course to help orchestrate group projects and discussions.

Manually Creating Groups

  1. Locate the Administration block on the main page of your course. Select Users, and then Groups.
  2. Select the Create group button. The page refreshes to the group settings page.  Enter a Group name; you also have the option of providing a description, as well as a picture.
  3. Select Save changes.
  4. Repeat until you have as many groups as you would like.

Adding Users to Groups

  1. Select the group you to which you wish to add users. Select Add/remove users below the right box.
  2. Select the user name you would like to add in the right box and select Add.
    1. Hold Shift and click further down the list, or hold Ctrl and select the specific users you’d like to add if you would like to add multiple users at once. Select Add once all desired users have been selected.
  3. The users will appear in the left box when they have been successfully added to the group. Select Back to groups when you’re finished adding users.
    Select a group name to list the members of that group.

 

Auto-Creating Groups

  1. Locate the Administration block on the main page of your course. Select Users, and then Groups.
  2. Select the Auto-create groups button. Be sure to select the Expand All button on the next screen to make sure you can see all of the available options.
  3. Enter a Naming scheme – entering “Group @” will generate groups with letters (Group A, Group B, Group C); entering “Group #” will generate groups with numbers (Group 1, Group 2, Group 3).
  4. Choose a criterion for “Auto create based on”
    1. Number of groups
    2. Members per group
  6. Enter a number to correlate with the previous setting (step 4) in “Group/member count”
  7. Select the course role from which to draw group members—this field defaults to Student.
  8. If you’d like to choose members of an already established group, you can choose that group in the “Select members from group” dropdown. This field defaults to None.
  9. Choose how members will be allocated to each group:
    1. No allocation; groups will be empty
    2. Randomly
    3. Alphabetically by first name, last name
    4. Alphabetically by last name, first name
    5. Alphabetically by ID number
  10. Select Preview to see how your groups will look, and then select Submit to create and save.

Enabling Groups in Activities

Forums

You may want to use groups in your forums to allow students working on a group project to discuss their ideas, allow different sets of students to answer different questions, or create smaller, more intimate discussion.

  1. Access the forum in which you wish to use groups.
  2. Select Edit settings in the Administration block.
  3. Use the drop box to select Separate Groups or Visible Groups in the Common module settings.
    1. Separate groups: each group member can only see and work in his or her own group; other groups are invisible.
    2. Visible groups: each group member works in his or her own group, but can also see other groups.
  4. Select either Save option at the bottom of the page.

Assignments

You may want to use groups in an assignment for a project in which students will work together to submit one item.

  1. Access the assignment in which you wish to use groups.
  2. Select Edit settings in the Administration block.
  3. Select Yes for the Students submit in groups setting. This allows students to work collaboratively. Groups can be graded as a whole or students can be graded individually.
  4. If Require Students Click Submit Button is set to Yes, then Require All Group Members Submit becomes an option. If enabled, all students in the group must click the submit button before the assignment is submitted. If set to No, only one group member needs to click submit.
  5. To prevent students from working collaboratively, use the drop box to select Separate Groups or Visible Groups in the Common module settings. Student work is graded individually.
  6. Select either Save option at the bottom of the page.

Interested in learning more about how you can use groups in your online course? Feel free to explore the following articles on our Center for Teaching and Learning: