Groups: Membership in two or more groups

Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Ralf Hilgenstock -
Number of replies: 13
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If I understood he developement of the groupmodul correct, one use can get member in one, but not in more groups. Is this right?

I think it is very usefull if user can get member in two or more groups. Example: In a course as a simulation there are groups A,B, and C und a third group D is there with the leader or speaker of the group A,B,C.

An other Example is a project group which prepares an event. Some people must be member in more groups preparing different parts of the event.

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In reply to Ralf Hilgenstock

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Yes, this will come later.  There are many issues to sort out first even with single group membership, since Moodle was not originally designed with groups in mind.


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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Przemyslaw Stencel -
IMHO we should make a distinction between groups as they are being implemented now and teams of students working on particular activities.

Groups are meant as cohorts, that is, they are fixed course-wide. If a student is a member of a group, he will be a a member of this group in all activities in the course. And if he is moved from one group to another, his group membership gets automatically updated for all activities.

I think it would be very useful if it was possible to team-up students on a per-activity basis, that is, different groupings could be used for different activities. I'm not sure if this will be possible once multiple group membership has been done. Or would it be better to have a different feature (teams)?

Just brainstorming smile - ideas, comments, anyone?
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In reply to Przemyslaw Stencel

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Eric Francoeur -
I am new to Moodle, and I just posted something along these lines in the Workshop forum. I realize now that I was confusing  groups and teams. I think a "team" feature is eventually absolutely essential for Moodle (in terms of submitting and evaluating as a team). Here's a few thoughts: teams could be permanent or on per-activity-basis. Work-in-progress could be accessed and edited  by all team members, but only a pre-selected "team leader" could do final submission. Would it be possible to develop a special module to test the "team assignement" concept? Eric
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In reply to Eric Francoeur

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Bryan Williams -

Eric,

Have you tried using the Groups features, splitting members into teams, with say a Workshop activity? Team leaders can be designated as teachers, with or without course editing permissions. This allows them to view what's going on across teams, and manage their own team members.

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In reply to Ralf Hilgenstock

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Joe Griffin -
Ralf

I raised this earlier this week and got a good suggestion (can't find the exact thread just now).  Create one of more aliases for students who need to be in more than one group and add each alias to each group.  That way a single student can be in a number of groups.  That is what I intened to try out anyway.

Hope this helps

Joe
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In reply to Joe Griffin

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Grant McWilliams -
This is really messy. I passed over hordes of CMS systems because users belong to one group. Moodle lets me fake it enough so I can get by without groups for a while but it's also starting to show its limitations. Simply Moodles house is too big for it's foundations.. It sounds like a lot of this will change with Moodle 2.0. I'm holding off on a lot of my development work because I don't really want to rewrite everything a second time. All of these "cmsish" portal type systems should start with groups/roles, templating and be modular. Everything else can be added to that. Don't get me wrong as I think Moodle is great but so many of the things that need to be changed right now are at the core. Moodle is growing up!

Grant
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In reply to Grant McWilliams

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Martin Dougiamas -
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Think about using more than one course, as groups are course based.  That can allow more flexibility.

Jumping straight to full groups was a big thing conceptually so I took it in stages, multigroup membership is in the second stage.  There is nothing in the database that prevents it, just the interface is restricted. 

There are many issues that need thinking about.  Some examples:
  • how can we make a clean interface that allows you to see students who are not in groups yet?
  • when a student starts a discussion in a forum, shuold it be visible to ALL the groups they are a member of?
  • how can we efficiently store membership of DATA (eg forum posts) to belong to many groups?
If you actually want to help you can post some GUI mockups and user stories describing details of how groups should work, in your view.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Bernard Boucher -
Hi Martin,

it looks like a sql query challengewink

If we choose from other course, the list of courses will appear fist in the same column and after choosing the course the groups or the poeple will appear.

Note alphabetical filter on the bottom.

I hope it may help to start suggestions and cogitation,

Bernard

Attachment tout.gif
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Nadja Kutz -
Hi,

I imagine groups as being little "subcourses". I.e. they
should be in principle be able to work autonomously.
So a group should really have the same functionality as a
course, i.e. it has "teachers" and other roles, who can
assign activities according to their role.(In particular
one should be able to have subsubcourses).
The teachers of the "upper course" (i.e. thats whats now
THE "course") are then the "administrators" for the
"subcourses" (i.e. thats whats now a "group"), i.e. they have full administrator rights for the "subcourses" and may have the
possibility do assign activities globally for all subcourses.
I think this functionality is extremly important for
collaborative learning if the task is getting complex.

I posted an application example in the german moodle - and
as I guess most of you havent read this smile I repeat it here:

Imagine various classes should construct a robot via moodle,
which should play in a ball match against similar robots
from other classes.(they have these games at MIT).
Since a robot is a relatively complex object one would need
to form groups within the class to care about the
construction of subunits (like construction of sensors etc.)
And may be one would need subsubunits (like visual sensors etc)
Nevertheless the cooperation of the whole class has to
be there to.

Imagine how you would realize such a thing within Moodle.
Its not really possible without installing several copies
of nowadays (smile)Moodle and the teachers would have to zap
between Moodles.

Please let me know if its clear what I mean.

Nadja
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In reply to Nadja Kutz

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Martin Dougiamas -
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I agree that the interface to create this could be a little simpler, but you could just create a Moodle course for each of these n working groups, and have one extra course for the "top level". You can visually group them using a course category for all of the n+1 courses. Since each of the students will see their own courses listed in the "Courses block" the end result will be fairly seamless.

By analogy look at the relation between this course "Using Moodle" and the various other courses for various interest groups on this server.
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In reply to Martin Dougiamas

Re: Groups: Membership in two or more groups

by Nadja Kutz -
Lets say: this is a somewhat more or less possible workaround.smile But it is also not really good working.
Yes the interface is very interesting:just imagine 120 students
with 6 classes, each has five subcourses/groups with 3
subsubgroups....
And in particular the question of how learning material is
provided is messy. Just imagine you have a
library (whoohoo another open thread by me (see library discussion)), where relevant course material can be found.
Imagine the subcourses gather together their own material
too. Canonically as a student you would like to see
all the material which you need together. Since may be not all
content gathered by the students should go immediately
to the central library (since this content could be e.g. drafts
etc. or it could be even a learning task to gather material) this student has to check all his topcourses for material
or the teacher has to link each single item!



nadja
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