Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Sheila Tan -
Number of replies: 9

Hi there

I created some forums in the Site page so that I can create separate groups based on cohorts (or Intakes). I've made sure I set Group mode to Separate. I created a grouping called 'Students' which all groups are assigned to. 

However, I logged in as a few students, and these students can still see posts from the other group (although unable to reply). 

I'd like all group posts to be invisible to each other. I thought this was automatically the case. Please see group settings in the forum:

groups


What setting have I missed? 


- Sheila

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In reply to Sheila Tan

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la AL Rachels -
Slika Core developers Slika Particularly helpful Moodlers Slika Plugin developers Slika Testers

Hi Sheila,

Have you tried adding a Group access restriction with the eye turned off?

With this setup, group members normally only see posts from their group. If the teacher makes a post to All participants, then everyone will see it, but not have a reply link. If the teacher selects a particular group and posts, then members of that group can reply.

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In reply to Sheila Tan

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Jon Bolton -
Slika Particularly helpful Moodlers Slika Testers

No need to use restricted access, just set 'grouping' to none.

By adding the groups to the 'student' grouping, Moodle is behaving as expected and showing forum poss to all students in the grouping... which contains all the groups, so they will be able to see all posts.

If you set grouping to none, then 'separate' groups will behave as you want.

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In reply to Jon Bolton

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Derek Chirnside -

We have had several questions about this recently.

Does this mean the docs are a little inadequate?

https://docs.moodle.org/30/en/Groupings

Or have we not got the conditional release stuff tied in with it well enough?  Which I note new has restrict access as the main title.

https://docs.moodle.org/30/en/Restrict_access

-Derek

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Jon Bolton -
Slika Particularly helpful Moodlers Slika Testers

Good point Derek - the docs suggest that groupings will still allow activities to be separately viewed by separate groups... so I'm wrong stidi se

I'll check it further later today though, as I still don't think you need to set restricted access to achieve the content only visible to members of the separate groups within a grouping - restricted access will make the activity available only to members of that grouping and no one else.

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Sheila Tan -

Hi Derek

Yes, that is the impression I got. Didn't realise there were other settings involved.

Thank you all for clarifying!


S

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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Stephen Bruce -
I must have missed this new way of ensuring activities are kept separate and hidden based on group/grouping membership.

We have a class where there are 5 groups/groupings and 5 assignments each named after their tutor/marker (eg. Jean's Group, Christine's Group, etc.).

It used to be (in v2.5) that by using separate groups, and by checking "Available for group members only" the students would only see the assignment for their tutor/marker.


Now in v2.9 the checkbox has has been replaced by an "Add a group/grouping access restriction".  




You then have to expand the Restrict Access section and click the eye icon to ensure the activity is completely hidden rather than grayed out.




Is this clarified anywhere in the docs? Seems like a backward step in terms of usability.

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In reply to Jon Bolton

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Andrew Lyons -
Slika Core developers Slika Moodle HQ Slika Particularly helpful Moodlers Slika Peer reviewers Slika Plugin developers Slika Testers

Hi Jon,

Actually this is wrong I'm afraid. The Groups, and Groupings settings are separate and co-existent. They serve different purposes.

Essentially a Grouping is a collection of Groups.

Take the case where you create groups in a course for different purposes:

  • a set of 4 groups according to their allocation to tutor groups in real life;
  • a set of 10 groups for a group work project; and
  • a set of 5 groups according to their allocation in a lab.

In these cases, if you were to use any of group settings on their own in, for example, a Moodle forum, then the students would each be in three groups (one for each set). They would have a list of groups which contained all three of these sets, and would be able to post to all three. Chances are they would often post in the wrong group for the wrong project.

The Groupings functionality solves this problem by allowing you to create a Grouping of the relevant groups. So you'd create groupings for:

  • Weekly tutorships;
  • Group work project
  • Lab work

When you setup a Moodle activity to use these groups, you can then select the relevant Grouping, and only the groups allocated to that grouping will be shown.

Hope that this clarifies things,

Andrew

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In reply to Sheila Tan

Re: Separate groups in forum - they can see each other

napisao/la Andrew Lyons -
Slika Core developers Slika Moodle HQ Slika Particularly helpful Moodlers Slika Peer reviewers Slika Plugin developers Slika Testers

Hi Sheila,

This setup looks correct, but there are a few other things to check.

Since this is the front page, things are a little different. Users do not have the same roles that they do in a course. Users are normally assigned a role as part of their enrolment into a course, or course category - there is no enrolment at the site level, so only system roles apply - e.g. Manager, Authenticated user, etc. Therefore your students don't actually have the role of Student here and it cannot be applied.

The other thing to bare in mind is that forums on the site page are normally publicly visible. If I visit the site forum on my test site, setup as you've indicated with groups and a grouping, I can see a list of all of the groups and I can view posts in all of them.

That said, I can't view all of the groups after I log in.

There are two things which govern which groups you can see:

  • group membership - so it's worth checking that they are only a member of the groups you are expecting them to be in; and
  • capabilities - specifically the "moodle/site:accessallgroups" capability. I'd recommend checking the user permissions for this capability within the forum, and checking for any overridden capabilities, etc.

Andrew

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