How To create groups and groupings

This applies to Moodle 3.11 from August 2022 onwards

Moodle Help & Support

How to create groups and groupings

Moodle allows creation of groups and groupings (which are sets of groups, or "supergroups").

Groups allows you to split up your class into groups and assign activities and resources to those groups.

Groups can be Separate (people in that group can only see their relevant materials, activities e.g. discussions in forums etc.) or Visible (people in that group can see the materials and activities for all groups but cannot interact with or contribute to other groups e.g. forums, only to their own).

First Step - Enable groups in your module

Navigate to the module you want to work on
Click on the 'Actions Cogwheel' and select 'Edit Settings'
Under the Groups heading change "Group mode" to 'Separate groups' or 'Visible groups'
Change "Force group mode" to 'Yes' if you want to ensure that groups are then enabled for each activity/resource you then add to the module (although this sets the default for ALL activities then created, this can be amended in each activity during creation).

Group settings

Showing group membership

You can allow students to see who is in which group by adding the People block

If you select 'Visible groups', then users can sort Participants by group, if you select Separate groups, participants will see only a list of their own group members under Participants.

To download a spreadsheet of students and their groups, there's a trick - create a hidden Choice and download the student list from there.

The difference between groups and groupings

With Groupings you can create "supergroups" out of your existing groups, allowing you to bunch different groups together into a larger one. For example, a collection of lab Groups taught on a different day to another collection of lab Groups could be clumped into Groupings labelled as that teaching day in order to differentiate them. Groupings is more to aid teaching staff on a module, particularly when it comes to marking; students do not see the grouping title, they only see their Group title.

How to create groups

From the front page of your course: drop down the Hamburger menu and click Participants.
The Participants page opens.
Dropdown the 'Cogwheel Actions' menu on that page and select 'Groups'.

Finding groups in the actions cogwheel menu

3. Click on the 'Create group' button

4. Give the new group a "Group name" (mandatory). "Group description" can be useful (e.g. noting who the marker(s) will be). The rest of the fields are optional.

5. Click on the 'Save changes' button and the new group will appear in the left-hand column.

6. Select the new group in the left-hand column entitled 'Groups:'.

7. Click on the 'Add' / 'Remove' users button under the right-hand column entitled "Members of:". A new screen will appear where you can add the students enrolled on your course to your new group. These are found in the right-hand column labelled "Potential members".

1. Search for a student
2. Select the student and click on the 'Add' button. You will also need to add Teachers if you wish them to take part in the activity and be restricted to that Group. Editing Teachers can access all Groups. NOTE: A student CAN be part of more than one Group.
3. Once finished, click on the 'Back to groups' button.

Adding members to a group

Creating large groups by bulk upload

Although you can create groups by uploading a csv, you can't enrol students.

Contact us at selfservice.nottingham.ac.uk for an example spreadsheet that we can run in to create groups for you.

How to create groupings

Drop down the 'Hamburger menu' and select Participants > Groups > Groupings.

2. Click on the Create grouping button, give it a "Grouping name" and click 'Save Changes.

3. Your grouping will appear on the Groupings tab. Click the blue 'Person button' underneath edit to add groups to your grouping.

Add to groupings button

4. In the next page you can use the 'Add' & 'Remove' buttons to add your groups.

5. Click 'Back to groupings' when you're done.

Adding groups to grouping

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