Hi there!
Is there any way to allow students to create their own groups in Moodle? I have been looking for a solution in the documentation (users and developers) and in the plugins repository, but I couldn't find anything about this topic.
I'm planning to develop (or extend the plugins Group self-selection or Group choice) that would allow students to create, join, change and leave groups as they want.
Thank you in advance for your answers!
Nope. Only teachers can do that.
True, however ... how much risk is one willing to take? How about setting up a Category for Student Groups and a course therein as well. Then assign 'trusted students' as teachers in the Student Groups course. Those 'trusted students' could be the go to people then for all the other students desiring to create a group or other student needs. Hmmmm - students helping students!!! Student Community?!!!
Know it's a 'wild' suggestion, but wonder if showing students they are trusted AND in charge of their own learning (to some extent) isn't a good thing!
Truth in sharing ... no I've not done the above, but do know of a school that did - small school K12 entity - kids loved it and the Tech Director there said he didn't have any problems. Of course, one might be able to contribute that to the entire culture and climate of the school. So your success might hinge really not on what I've suggested, but in the true culture and climate of the entity.
My 2 cents. 'spirit of sharing', Ken
There is an existing issue in tracker about it MDL-13962
And a plugin: https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_choicegroup
Group choice.
MDL-13962 is from 2008. It is in my opinion a huge issue with Moodle in terms of constructivist and collaborative approaches to learning that groups are ONLY teacher driven and maintained (unless we follow Ken's plan)
Not even self sign up. We saw this in the Moodle MOOC's, people going outside Moodle to do their work, using (shudder) email. How 20th century.
-Derek
PS.
Well, I should have been paying more attention ... developers forum is not one in which I normally participate. I also wouldn't call it 'ken's plan' ... more like a wild idea/work-around. Still though, the idea of students being in charge of some of their own learning is, IMHO, a direction edu in general needs to take.
Now that I know there is some discussion and something in works of a formal nature (thanks for the tracker link) I'll withdraw and wait for another 'opportunity' to open mouth and insert foot! [and learn how to use tracker in the meantime!] ;)
'spirit of sharing', Ken
Voted for the issue in the tracker and will install and try out the activity module.
Yes, during the Moodle MOOC, learners were automatically (randomly?) allocated their groups. Unfortunately, this left a significant number of learners in groups where they were the only active participant. In my experience, the more successful groups have been self-selected, especially after they've done some whole cohort collaborative work and have got to know each other sufficiently to decide who they can work with best. It's also an incentive to take the initiative and participate more constructively in discussions, wikis, glossaries, etc. -- Most learners want to end up in an active, productive group.
I think it would also be a good idea to enable learners to personalise their groups, in a similar way that they can personalise their own profiles, to promote group identity, cohesion, sense of belonging, shared values and beliefs, etc.
I heard Dave Snowden (http://cognitive-edge.com/) say that in some cases, he's used dating agency software to enable learners to find their most appropriate collaborators. That made me think of forming groups in a whole new light.
BuddyPress.org, Diaspora*, Elgg.org, etc. all allow users to form and join their own groups.
Just my €0.02!
Matt "I think it would also be a good idea to enable learners to personalise their groups, in a similar way that they can personalise their own profiles, to promote group identity, cohesion, sense of belonging, shared values and beliefs, etc."
Yes but... would not encouraging "birds of a feather to flock together" be detrimental to the current views of encouraging ethnico-racial/social mixity/integration?
Joseph
If they are personalising their groups rather than self-selecting the group membership (two separate actions) then this should *enhance* integration as it is a shared space across the members.
Selecting the make up of the group could be "detrimental to the current views of encouraging ethnico-racial/social mixity/integration".
Hello,
just to note, there is another plugin that let students select their own groups:
https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_choicegroup
I've updated it to version 2.7 sometime ago:
https://github.com/danielneis/moodle-mod_groupselect
and it works quite well at our university.
kind regards,
daniel
Hi Joseph,
That's a reasonable point. I've worked with mixed international cohorts of learners a lot and have seen a variety of attitudes towards ethnico-racial/social mixity/integration (I like that expression). In most cases, a little well-reasoned guidance and leadership from teachers is enough to ensure most learners form their groups around positive, diverse social values. Many learners aspire to such values.
It's often more of a problem to get groups that have already established themselves to split up and mix with others.
I have voted for the tracker issue MDL-13962 and I will watch this issue activities.
I would be glad to develop such a feature, allowing students to create, personalize and join groups in order to work with students who match with their profile (age, native language, point of interests, etc.). My university plan to use Moodle as a MOOCs platform, but as Matt said, the current group management is not suitable for that.
On a developer level, I discovered that the Group API is very limited and doesn't allow the creation of new groups. Does it means that such a feature can ONLY be a core feature?
Thank you all for your answers!
Perfectly possible to let add-ons manage groups
Morning all,
I have been watching this thread with interest. What follows is a summary of thinking with regard to the benefits, or I should say perceived benefits of students creating their own groups.
Mulled over this in relation to FB and sent the following to Martin D recently. I suppose movement forward would take into consideration whether a plug-in/add-on is sufficient as opposed to something in core-MAYBE!
1. Absolute agency for the students offered in these three features alone. SEE ABC below
-Moodle comparison: Manager has ultimate agency in terms of decision for action.....and highest level of privileges
-FB students can manage that role themselves
2. Massive sense of ownership for the student in FB
-Unless there is a personalised learning section limited sense of ownership for the learner....in Moodle
3. Great opt for students to lead their own engagement, action, and steer their way through a number of learning processes with their peers.....wiki, chat, Q&A etc
4. Most importantly....the students can inform self-chosen groupings.....this is so interesting....tis a very true saying birds of a feather...and it is always the case across the age range...from the youngest children to the most elderly adults.....when asked to pair up or choose a group-if they have made that choice you get more out of them! Simple....they have chosen on safety....and nothing else.........if they feel safe-they express more and will take more risks in their learning....self chosen activity-big tick = sense of purpose, which = higher motivation levels-very simple, but true.
Facebook features:
A. Notifications
https://www.facebook.com/help/327994277286267/
B. Groups
https://www.facebook.com/help/334851196593673/
C. Group Admin
https://www.facebook.com/help/418065968237061/
***********So, key concepts for innovation in moodle with the learner in mind********
1. Ownership
2. Control
3. Freedom
4. Choice
5. Self-paced activity
6. Self-directed activity/Peer support
7.collaboration/communal oppts
cheers,
Dawn
Thanks Tim! I know these two plugins and I have even given them a try, but none of them allows group creation by the students themselves.
I want the students to be able to customize their group with a picture, a brief description or even a video of their own. Nobody wants to be part of an automatically generated "Group 23", everyone wants to be part of a group with a punchy name, a funny description and a sketchy video.
If I wanted to develop a new activity that would allow the students to create and manage their own groups. Would the plugin API be powerful enough to do it? Would it need some modifications of the Moodle Core API?
Hi Guillaume,
I, like many others, usually end up using a separate system (sometimes with SSO) for social networking type activities simply because it's easier; dedicated UI's, coherent programming logic, better user experiences, etc., but that doesn't synchronise with Moodle's learning activities at all, i.e. groups and groupings aren't automatically assigned to things like wikis or forums. It would be much better to do all this within Moodle.
I haven't tried this but I don't see why it wouldn't be possible to create a new student role http://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Creating_custom_roles with permissions that enable them to create and edit groups http://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Permissions I think this would also create some problems for teachers and learners learning how to use Moodle's rather unintuitive roles and permissions system, but could be a potential workaround in the short term until a more usable feature comes along.
Personally, I like the way groups work on https://buddypress.org/ Additionally, http://elgg.org/ does it slightly differently and has some advantages. I would really like to see more facilities to give learners more autonomy and control in Moodle. I think this would make it more appropriate for self-directed learning*.
*See Malcolm Knowles', Stephen Brookfield's, and, more recently, Etienne Wenger and Jean Lave (Communities of Practice), as well as Zoltan Dornyei's work in that area.
Be nice to see something, other than a workaround, moving forward with this in the not- too- distant future...
Cheers,
Dawn
Hi Matt,
I agree with you that working with a separate system is sometimes a good solutions, especially if the external service is used to host some publicly available contents, but when it comes to private contents, loosing the control on who can manage the data is a serious drawback.
I checked the roles capabilities and every group actions are presented in the same setting called /moodle/course:managegroups. Because there is no ownership on a group, I would have preferred to be able to only allow the students to create groups, without giving them the opportunity to delete the groups of someone else.
I'm trying to use the groupchoice plugin and find that the functionality of the options on the creation form are dysfunctional. I cannot, for example, expand all, not can I choose which groups to use from the form at the bottom of the page.
Troubling is that the rather simple process in the Moodle.org documentation is inconsistent with the groupchoice form I'm presented with.
Using 2.7.1+
tried with PHP 5.5 and PHP 5.4 (just in case there is a PHP issue -- this bit me a year ago...) problem persists
tried with Chrome and with Firefox browsers.
Screenshots are attached.
I already precreated grouping with groups within; expected to indicate this grouping for students to choose a group within the grouping (as shown in the Moodle.org doc); max membership in each group set to 5.
Help appreciated -- September is near....
Cheers, Peter
Peter, I'm sure you will get some help here. This post has inspired me to create a page for Groups in my embryonic Curated (wish) list on the docs.
https://docs.moodle.org/27/en/Curated_list/Groups
Don't forget to VOTE for the tracker item for this question.
-Derek
Peter,
There was a bug in a version of the mod_choicegroup plugin released in June, it's been corrected during the summer. Sorry about that.
Hi all,
There is a new version of Group self-selection plugin currently under development. It
offers many new features, such as the possibility for the students
themselves to create new groups, password protected groups, non-editing
teacher assignment etc.
The repository of the project is https://github.com/birrel/moodle-mod_groupselect
Feel free to test it and I would be most thankful for any feedback that you may have.
BR,
Pirkka
Hi Pirkka,
Great, thanks for picking up on this project. The old module hasn't been updated for 3 years and is no longer maintained. I've starred the project on Github and I'll try it out.
Matt
Now also released in the Plugins directory: https://moodle.org/plugins/view.php?plugin=mod_groupselect
