Moodle in English: Visible groups don't work as I expect

Visible groups don't work as I expect

Howard Miller - 2014年11月21日星期五 23:10

If I have groups set up and the database in Visible Groups mode it acts oddly...

If I (as a student) select "All participants" in the Groups dropdown and then create a new entry, the entry appears to be added to all the groups, not just mine. Is this correct? It seems wrong to me and it is certainly inconsistent with the way, say, Forums work.

In anticipation, I have created a bug report...

https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-48326

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Re: Visible groups don't work as I expect

Itamar Tzadok - 2014年11月22日星期六 00:14

The fact that it is inconsistent with the way the Forum works may also mean that there is a bug in the Forum rather than in the Database ...

I agree that there may be something wrong in the current behavior, but not necessarily what you point out. The 'All participants' is a pseudo group, but a group nonetheless. All the students are by definition members of the 'All participants' group and so should be able able to post and view entries in that group. What may be inconsistent is the fact that the entries of the 'All participants' group are displayed not only in that group but also in every other group, whereas entries of other groups are displayed only in their respective group.

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Re: Visible groups don't work as I expect

Howard Miller - 2014年11月22日星期六 04:26

I'm not sure I'm too bothered about it, but I have a client whose students find it to be a problem.

I think their issue is that they feel that students should *only* be able to post in their own group, no matter what. What we are saying here is that students can create new entries in this 'pseudo group' as well as their own group.

So, the next question becomes, how do I stop students adding entries to the "All participants" pseudo-group if I only want them to create entries in their own group? I don't think I can. Surely, if not a bug, it's a missing capability, a missing option AND a very odd default. It relies on students understanding what is going on.

I think...

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Re: Visible groups don't work as I expect

Itamar Tzadok - 2014年11月22日星期六 05:09

I'm inclined to agree that the 'All participants' group is not particularly useful. I think that it was meant as a display mode, that is, display entries from all groups in one list, but at some point was confused with an actual group in the activity to the effect that adding entries in Visible Groups mode and 'All participants' was allowed without any conditions (mod/data/lib.php lines 2095-2102)

You can try removing the option from the group selector by javascript (a css solution is not cross-browser) but this may have side-effects so need to be investigated.

hth

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Re: Visible groups don't work as I expect

Howard Miller - 2014年11月24日星期一 17:34

At the risk of being pedantic (who me?)...

"Visible groups - Each group member works in their own group, but can also see other groups"

I think that's pretty clear. They can *see* other groups but they shouldn't be able to add new entries even in them. In effect the latter is exactly what is happening from an end-user point of view.

I'm more surprised that nobody seems to have noticed/cared before.

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