Changing group mode = loss of content?

Changing group mode = loss of content?

by Leslie Sandoval -
Number of replies: 7

I had an instructor who was keeping her sole copy of important content in a wiki in her course.

At some point she asked me why all of her students couldn't see the wiki.  I explained to her that she had groups set up and changed the group mode setting - nothing else.

When I was in the wiki I saw no content.  However, the instructor believes that me changing the group mode deleted all her content.

I looked at the logs and show her as having the last edit, and then a series of views by both her and I, and then an update wiki entry where I changed the group mode.  I clicked on the History tab for the Wiki and it won't give me the previous history.

So two questions:

1.) Is it really possible that changing the group mode could wipe out all the contents of a wiki?

2.) Is there any way I can recover her content somewhere in the dark depths of the database?

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In reply to Leslie Sandoval

Re: Changing group mode = loss of content?

by sam marshall -
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I haven't used standard wiki for a while but this is standard Moodle behaviour across most modules. Nothing is lost. Just change group mode back, and you will see your content again. (You may need to do copy/paste if you want to transfer it from being in a group, to not being in a group.)

--sam

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In reply to sam marshall

Re: Changing group mode = loss of content?

by Leslie Sandoval -

I feel silly now.  I've been doing this for almost five years and this is the first time I've had an instructor get fancy with groups.

Thank you. smile

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In reply to sam marshall

Re: Changing groups = loss of content?

by Susan Mangan -

Alright, I have a good one.

Our instructor decided to change the actual groups around for a new project however, still wanted to retain the contents of the old groups' wiki projects and related history for grading purposes.

But to her surprise *POOF* - content gone surprise

Obviously it looks like the links were lost when the groups were removed and this makes sense ... to me because I can understand the technical aspects.  But to a teacher I can see how this can be frustrating and a major bug in their eyes.  Unfortunately, not even recreating the group structure will suffice because the actual ID's in the database won't link up.

I wonder if this is bug worthy in terms of at least putting some controls on removing/changing groups that are linked to current content?

Thoughts?

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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Changing groups = loss of content?

by Stephen Barner -

This just happened to me and I think it's pretty significant.  It's quite common to customize groupings for individual projects within a course and to want to preserve work done by these ad hoc groups at least until the end of the course.  We use groups a lot to separate sections of students, so the teacher can have a single Moodle class for Algebra I, for example, and still keep the period 1 and period 2 students separate.  Within these class groups, it would be convenient to be able to have groups within groups, as well, so that you could dynamically group students within a class.  So I would propose two features, groups within groups (allowing students to be in multiple groups, with the activity respecting these groupings), and work not being lost when the groupings change.

I think the ideal would be to allow students to be separated into groups and then choosing the groups that will be used for that activity.  That way, you could have different groupings of students and then the activity for which you created the custom groupings would respect only the groups that were assigned to it.

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In reply to Susan Mangan

Re: Changing groups = loss of content?

by Jacqueline Wilson -

Same thing happened to me today too sad

I created new groups and deleted the old groups and all content gone from the wiki.

Is there no way to retrieve the wiki from the database so at least we can grade the previous project? Or some way to go back in time like a restore point?

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In reply to Jacqueline Wilson

Re: Changing groups = loss of content?

by Glenys Hanson -

Hi Jacqueline,

As far as I know, the only way you can go back in time is if the teacher or the admin have made and stored frequent backups. As a teacher, I do this every week or before I make significant changes. Then I can always restore the backup either on my local computer or on a copy on the online server. (I'm also a course creator in my category so I can do this.)

As for groups, I learnt the hard way not to delete them too. Now, I put the students in Groups Red, Yellow, Blue and Green for Task One, and East, West, North, South for Task Two, and so on.

If there's another way of avoiding the problem, I'd like to know too.

"Groups within Groups" exist - you have to get your Admin to turn "Groupings" on and explore what it says in the Docs.

Cheers,

Glenys

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In reply to Glenys Hanson

Re: Changing groups = loss of content?

by Jacqueline Wilson -

Many thanks Glenys. Backing up is a great idea. Too bad I realised it too late. At least it was only the first exercise we lost and not more of them.

Cheers

Jacqui.

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