Giving each teacher their own space

Giving each teacher their own space

by Kevin Westbrook -
Number of replies: 4

This is quite hard to explain and even harder to search for, so forgive me if this has been dealt with before, and also for what might become a long post!

I am frequently in a position where there might be, say, four teachers on a course. They might always have different students to each other, or it might be the same students learning different things. Moodle does a great job to allow activities, communication, etc. to take place without annoying everyone else who isn't involved. However, I have often been in a position where I have wanted to add a specific activity relating to a specific group on the course that is not relevant to any other teacher or student. 

For example, in the summer I was doing an activity involving Padlet, and a large proportion of my students couldn't work with it. I suspect there was a mixture of issues with OS, browser, VPN, country, IT ability etc. It didn't matter, I needed them to be able to respond to the activity, so I set up an assignment activity in the course. This is fine and dandy, but over a 10-week course, if this happens now and again involving multiple teachers, you end up with an awful mess on the course page. The same thing can happen in the forums. Some of these things may need to stay there for weeks, although some will be able to be removed or at least made invisible quite quickly.

So, is there any way in Moodle to allow each teacher an area that doesn't make the course page bigger, longer, messier where they can add activities etc. as they see fit over the length of the course or is Moodle simply not designed that way. Having different courses for each teacher isn't an option.

FWIW I have just upgraded to Moodle version 3.10 and the latest version of the Boost theme.

Average of ratings: -
In reply to Kevin Westbrook

Re: Giving each teacher their own space

by Dave Sherwin -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Kevin,

It appear that you are currently using Groups to provide teachers with access to their students. We currently have courses that have over 50 teachers working with over a 1000 students. So these courses activities Groups mode to be separate mode. That way when teachers access the course they see their students only. Of course we have modified the Teacher role for those courses that teachers only have permission to see their group only. This way it is easier than selecting from a list of groups.

Of course another Moodle function that will help is activity restriction. Teachers can create an activity and then restrict an activity, resource or topic to their particular group. That way the other students and teachers will not see those in their own courses. We have teachers that use this functionality for students that are on IEPs so that that only those students have access to the materials that is appropriate for that group of students.
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Dave Sherwin

Re: Giving each teacher their own space

by Kevin Westbrook -
Thanks for your response Dave. However, I am unclear how this stops the course page from getting clogged up with activities. Are you saying that each teacher would only see the activities/groups that they are involved with on the course page? For example, if I find I need to add a forum, do other teachers not see that forum? Same with a poll, for example.
Average of ratings: -
In reply to Kevin Westbrook

Re: Giving each teacher their own space

by Dave Sherwin -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers
Yes - that is if teachers role permission has been adjusted to limit teachers to only view the groups that they are enrolled. Below is one of the permissions that we have changed so that teachers do not have access to all the groups. So it is important to make sure that the teachers are assigned to groups.
 
Along with making sure that the activity mode for those activities that the teachers want for their groups only to have the activity restriction to be viewed by their student group only when creating individual activities for them. 

Also all other activities that students need access should not have any restrictions, but it is nice to change the activity mode to separate groups. That way the teacher will only have access to their student group scores instead of every group in the course.
Attachment AccessGroups.png
Average of ratings: Useful (1)
In reply to Dave Sherwin

Re: Giving each teacher their own space

by Kevin Westbrook -
OK, that would be a good way of doing it. A bit of admin up front, but otherwise it would work and nobody would notice, so to speak. An admin would presumably see everything, but then any alternative arrangement would also make admin life more complicated.
Average of ratings: -