Using Groups and Groupings

In Moodle™ you can create differentiated instruction by using the groups and groupings features. This is a multi-step process. In today’s post I’m going to explain the process and how to set it up so that you can take advantage of these features in your courses.

Using groups exclusively allows for predetermined groups of users to work together. Users in a group may see the work of other groups (when group mode is set to visible) or they may only see their own groups work (when group mode is set to separate). Groups is an all or nothing setting. Therefore any groups created in the Groups page at the current time will be used in all activities that are set to using groups. Meaning if a user is in multiple groups they will be in multiple groups within the activities set to use groups. To mitigate this implement the feature called Groupings.

You can allow for one or more groups to be clustered together into a grouping and then within the activity settings individual groupings they can be aligned to an activity. This will allow for groups of users to be created where a user can belong to multiple groups but only occur once inside each grouping. Lastly when determining the “Common module settings” for Group mode/Grouping choose Separate groups (if you don’t want the users to see work belonging to users not within their group) select the grouping to align to the activity and check the Available for group members only option. By selecting the available for group members only setting you will make it so that it only appears in the gradebook to the users associated to the groups aligned to the designated grouping. This is important to use if you are creating multiple activities that are similar but have been edited slightly to meet the needs of multiple users through differentiating.

Below is a step-by-step process to apply groupings to your Moodle™ activities.

1. Create Groups of users for all activities within the course by navigating to Settings > Course administration > Users > Groups.

2. Within the Groupings tab create Groupings and align selected groups to each grouping.

3. Go to the activity settings.

a. Determine the group mode either separate or visible.

b. Select the grouping you would like aligned.

c. Check the Available for group members only box.

- Janelle Gieseke