Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

by Hank VanZile -
Number of replies: 6
Hi there,

I have a question with regards to setting up grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9. I am setting up a course with the following structure:

Grouping A:
  • Group 1
  • Group 2
Grouping B:
  • Group 3
  • Group 4
I want to be able to establish activities that are segregated by group and also activities that are segregated by grouping (but available to all groups within that grouping).

Setting up the group activities is no problem whatsoever. In "Common module settings:"
  1. Set Group Mode to “Separate groups.”
  2. Set Grouping to “None.”
  3. Click the checkbox for “Available to group members only.”
This provides an excellent setup - a single activity, content controlled by group membership, with a handy dropdown menu for admin/teachers to toggle between the different groups.

Setting up a grouping-level activity seems to work differently. In "Common module settings:"
  1. Set Group Mode to “No groups”
  2. Select on specific grouping under "Grouping."
  3. Click the checkbox for “Available to group members only.”
While this seems to work fine, in terms of access to the activity, it appears that I need to setup a separate instance of the activity for each grouping and the experience of it is totally different for teachers and admins.

Here are my questions:
  1. Am I doing something wrong with the way that I'm creating grouping-level activities?
  2. Is there another way to do this so that grouping-level activities work the same way as group activities?
  3. If no to 1 and 2, why does this work differently than group activities?
  4. Does anyone have any experience with updating the groupings code to make this a possibility?
Thanks in advance for any help!

Best,
Hank
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In reply to Hank VanZile

Re: Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

by Séverin Terrier -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hello,

AFAIK :
- grouping mode restriction allows to make resources and activities reserved (and visible) only for people in groups of this specific grouping. It's usefull when you don't want all course participants to access some parts of your course.
- i think you should still let group mode to "Separate group" if you want this feature, event if restricting to a grouping...

hope this helps.
Séverin
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In reply to Séverin Terrier

Re: Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

by Hank VanZile -
Hi Séverin,

Thank you for your reply. I tried out your settings changes and what that does is allow, say, Group 1 and Group 2 to have separate posts within a forum only available to Grouping A.

What I'm trying to accomplish is a single forum where all members of Group 1 and Group 2 can interact (as part of Grouping A) and all members of Groups 3 and 4 can interact (as part of Grouping B) - similar to how a group forum works, but divided instead at the grouping level.

Thanks,
Hank
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In reply to Hank VanZile

Re: Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

by Helen Foster -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi Hank,

As students may be included in more than one group, you can create a group containing members of groups 1 and 2 and create another group containing members of groups 3 and 4. This will result in all members of groups 1 and 2 being able to interact, and the same for members of groups 3 and 4.

Groupings in Moodle are really only for being able to restrict activities to particular students within a group within the grouping.
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In reply to Helen Foster

Re: Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

by Séverin Terrier -
Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Hi

you can also vote for MDL-13609 (solution provided) to reorganize restricting for grouping information.
And perhaps MDL-14975 would help to better understand how it works wink

Séverin
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In reply to Helen Foster

Re: Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

by Hank VanZile -
Hi Helen,

Thanks for your response. I'm wondering if there are any plans (in future development) for groupings to work more like groups or is the ultimate intention for them to remain a tool by which to isolate an individual activity to an individual grouping?

Thanks,
Hank
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In reply to Hank VanZile

Re: Question about grouping-level activities in Moodle 1.9

by Derek Chirnside -
Hank: you say this:

(1) I want to be able to establish activities that are segregated by group and
(2) also activities that are segregated by grouping (but available to all groups within that grouping).

I think (1) is not possible: You cannot make activities available to a group - you ONLY make them available to groupings.

I posted about this in this forum post
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=92265&mode=-1

Harry responded saying the idea is to make a grouping and add only ONE group to it. I think this is true.

As an aside: this seems odd, and unintuitive way to do it. But it does mean a really cool way to manage any number of groups (ie Moodle groups) and any number of groups of groups (ie Moodle groupings). I cannot find any information in the forums or the dev docs on how this has come about. If anyone knows, I'd be interested. I actually think the groupings docs are a little unclear on this, but I've not quite been ready to delve in in case my head was not yet in the right way of thinking.

My real challenge is this: in 3-4 weeks a bunch of lecturers will be setting up some courses for our Moodle trial. What is the simplest way to get this sorted with them and their classes (in one case, over 400 students) ?? (Fun eh??)


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