Group formation

Activities ::: mod_groupformation
Maintained by Multimedia Communication Lab KOMMultimedia Communication Lab KOM
Formation of optimized learning groups - by topic preference or best match of individuals' charatceristics and preferences; in one easy to use Moodle acticity; languages available: German, English
Latest release:
101 sites
180 downloads
27 fans
Current versions available: 5

Description


To provide a better learning experience the group formation plugin offers a great possibilities to optimize the composition of learning groups working together on the assigned (or selected) tasks.

It is designed to cover three most frequent and relevant scenarios required in university courses. Depending on the selected scenario, the plugin uses three different approaches by generating dynamic questionnaires. The questionnaires inquire several personal-dependent relevant criteria such as motivation, goal setting, character, team performance and prior knowledge.

The collected data is used by the GroupAL algorithm to form groups optimizing the learning outcome for all participants in all groups.


Following three scenarios are provided:

  •     Project teams - work intensively together to finish a project (e.g. conduct a study, delivery of a report, etc.).
  •     Homework groups - complete (smaller) assignments in regular intervals (often weekly) as a preparation for examination.
  •     Presentation groups - work together for a relatively short time period to finish a presentation (usually to be held in class).

At the Presentation groups scenario, the course executive has to define topics, which students sort to regarding their personal priority of interest.

To lower the effort barrier, group formation offers students to export/import their answers for reuse in other courses.


The questionnaires are available in English and German.


Installation/Admins

Before Installation

  • Make sure the Moodles cron job is running. The groupformation plugin will never start creating groups if cron is not running. Further information about the cron can be found here on moodle.org

Installation

Unzip the zip file in the “mod” folder of the Moodle directory and, if necessary, rename the folder to "groupformation". Then visit your Moodle server's Site Administration -> Notifications page and Upgrade Moodles database, -- OR -- Go to Administration > Site Administration > Install add-ons to install the Groupformation module directly from your Moodle installation.



How to use the Groupformation Plugin (Admins/Teachers)

In Moodle start the edit mode and create the Groupformation activity.

Choose Moodle activity

Choose one of the three scenarios and enter the maximum size or number of groups.

You can include preknowledges which may be important for the activity. Depending on the scenario you have choosen, preknowledges will help to improve the matching of the groups.

After you done all the settings a questionnaire will be created.

When the students completed their questionnaire you can end the activity and start the groupformation algorithm.

Capabilities for the teachers/tutors

Group formation overview tab

In the "Overview" you can observe how many students:

  • assigned to the course
  • started to fill out the questionnaire
  • completed or submitted the questionnaire

You also can see how long the questionnaire is available to the students and end or start it at any time.

Start group formation algorithm menu

In the "Group formation" tab you can start the algorithm to forming groups. In the settings you can choose to exclude the student who not answered the questionnaire. Tutors, teachers or other not relevant roles in Moodle assigned to the course are excluded from the group formation.

When you start the algorithm to forming groups, it can take a while till it finishes(depending on server and the number of students it could take up to 30 min). If you wish to, you will be notified by email when the group formation is done.

After the group formation succeeded you can see the preview of the groups and their quality, which is the performance index(GPI). You can edit the groups by moving the students from group to group. If you satisfied with the result you can adopt the groups to Moodle. If not, you can discard the results and start the algorithm again.

Preview of the questionnaire

Here you have a preview of the questionnaire. Your answers will not be saved. Because of your role as a tutor(or similar) you not taking participation in the group formation.

Change settings

Edit plugin settings

In the navigation side bar, which is usually to your right, you can adjust the settings. Some settings will be disabled, as soon as students started to complete the questionnaire. All settings which have no effect to the questionnaire would be still available. Those are for example the group size or number and the time period in which the questionnaire is available to the students.


Installation-wide settings

Installation wide settings (for export and archiving)

As Moodle site admin, go to Site administration > Plugins > Activity Modules > groupformation.

  • Archiving time: Groupformations will aoutmatically be archived (anonymized and removal of individual users answers) after the set time.
  • Import/Export answers: if set to YES students can export and re-import their asnwers (e.g. in a different course or year after)
  • Participant code: (experimental) In case you plan to map the users' answers to other study data conducted, let students enter a participant code at the beginning of the group formation questionnaire. The format is: lldddd (l=letter, d=digit). This data can then be found in the Moodle database for each participant.


How to use the Groupformation Plugin (Developers)

As a developer you might want to edit the questionnaire content or configure the GroupAL implementation.

For manipulation of the properties and configuration of the questionnaire and GroupAL algorithm, take a look at the define_file.php (https://github.com/moodlepeers/moodle-mod_groupformation/blob/master/classes/util/define_file.php). You can edit the categories of the questionnaire and the criteria that are used for the GroupAL algorithm.

For manipulation of the questions of each category, take a look at the directory xml_question (https://github.com/moodlepeers/moodle-mod_groupformation/tree/master/xml_question). You can edit the xml files and add additional categories and languages.

The groupformation plugin relies on the custom library groupAL which can be found in the subfolder ./lib of the plugin. The groupal algorithm is used by the job_manager.php (https://github.com/moodlepeers/moodle-mod_groupformation/blob/master/classes/moodle_interface/job_manager.php) file. You can edit the used matcher and implement further algorithm types.



Potential privacy issues

The plugin asks participants for personality traits via questionaaire. This data is stored until course end or deletetion of activity or until 365 days passed (see installation wide settings; only works if cron is enabled). Make sure your university/organization regulations allow asking and storing of such personal information. The answers of individuals are never shown to the course administrators, but to the user himself. Don't hesistate to contact us at team[at]moodlepeers.de for further assistance.

Screenshots

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Contributors

Multimedia Communication Lab KOM
Multimedia Communication Lab KOM (Lead maintainer)
Please login to view contributors details and/or to contact them

Comments RSS

Show comments
  • Multimedia Communication Lab KOM
    Thu, 3 Nov 2016, 10:51 PM
    Dear David and Moodle-team,
    a couple of weeks ago (11. October) we added the revised version that passes all travis-ci checks and does not depend on any other installation any more (policy conform). We would highly appreciate to get the plugin accepted as it is nominated for an award and will propably get high attention at November 23 and afterwards.
  • David Mudrák
    Thu, 17 Nov 2016, 2:33 AM

    Thanks guys for the new version, and for the patience. I was able to successfully test the plugin. And I must admit I like the idea of it. It is clear that the current version has been written for a particular use-case and requirements. But there is a way to customize it and eventually in the future, make all the questionnaire questions fully editable via the UI without the need to touch the XML files.

    While testing the functionality and reviewing the code, I spotted couple of issues that you might want to have fixed in a future version. None of them looks like an approval blocker for me though. I am happy to approve this now so you can get feedback from wider community.

    You are cleared to land, welcome to the Plugins directory.

  • Ricardo Caiado
    Sun, 18 Mar 2018, 4:24 AM
    Hi,
    Any updates do Moodle 3.4?

    Ricardo
  • Multimedia Communication Lab KOM
    Fri, 11 May 2018, 2:01 AM
    We are currently working on releases for Moodle 3.4 and Moodle 3.5. Sorry for the long wait.
  • Multimedia Communication Lab KOM
    Sat, 12 May 2018, 2:05 AM
    We released a new version for Moodle 3.4 and Moodle 3.5 today - Enjoy and please use the issue tracker on github.com to inform us about problems, concerns or feedback.
  • Michael Hughes
    Tue, 8 Oct 2019, 8:55 PM
    Is there an intended update for Moodle 3.6 and later?
  • Guido Roessling
    Mon, 18 Nov 2019, 4:22 PM
    Note: having this plugin installed broke my installation after the update to Moodle 3.8 - dropdown menus stopped working, assign instances could no longer be graded. I have no idea why this was the case (and debugging did not give any helpful insights), but the problem occurred after re-installing the plugin (and running upgrade), and disappeared after deinstalling the plugin and running upgrade.
  • Thomas Schröder
    Tue, 7 Jan 2020, 5:09 AM
    The same happened to me (see https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/MDL-67358).
  • Dennis Mix
    Mon, 24 Aug 2020, 9:12 PM
    I add the title for Group Formation and when I save I receive "There are required fields in this form marked." Appears to not recognize that I typed in information in the field.
  • Dennis Mix
    Mon, 24 Aug 2020, 9:12 PM
    Sorry, using moodle 3.9
  • Laura Fink
    Mon, 11 Oct 2021, 8:57 PM
    We downloaded the plugin on 3.11 Moodle, Alpha theme. We have already tried to use the plugin with our students but encountered the following issues:
    First, although the choices to first question were given, students could not choose the answer to the choice question.
    Further, students have answered the third question (multiple answers about the personal characteristics), but could not proceed to question 4. When clicking on “forward” or on to the “question 4” at the top, the page only refreshes and reloads but students remain stuck at question nr.3.
  • Laura Fink
    Mon, 11 Oct 2021, 11:25 PM
    To my previous question and issue let me add that we were applying two group formation plugins in the same subject respectivelly online classroom. The other plugin was Group choice. We wanted to compare. Could that be the reason for issues I am describing. Thank you for your anwser.
  • Asad Syed
    Mon, 21 Nov 2022, 8:31 PM
    This is a great plugin. Is it possible to show a filtered list of users who can form a team based on pre-requisite competency that users have? Like we would like to form a group based on certain competencies that the group of people must have among themselves before they are assigned the activity.
  • Per Hessellund
    Wed, 7 Jun 2023, 4:59 PM
    Just installed the plugin on Moodle 4.1.
    Now I miss "Projekt Teams" in Group formation settings.
    There is also missing some of the questions for the students to fill in.
    Is there a way to fix this?
  • Miroslav Fikar
    Wed, 13 Mar 2024, 10:14 PM
    Installation of the plugin throws error (Moodle 4.1):
    mysqli::real_escape_string(): Argument #1 ($string) must be of type string, array given
    Error code: generalexceptionmessage

    line 1149 of /lib/dml/mysqli_native_moodle_database.php: TypeError thrown
    line 1149 of /lib/dml/mysqli_native_moodle_database.php: call to mysqli->real_escape_string()
    line 1361 of /lib/dml/mysqli_native_moodle_database.php: call to mysqli_native_moodle_database->emulate_bound_params()
    line 1412 of /lib/dml/mysqli_native_moodle_database.php: call to mysqli_native_moodle_database->insert_record_raw()
    line 1313 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to mysqli_native_moodle_database->insert_record()
    line 643 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to external_update_descriptions()
    line 923 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_component_updated()
    line 677 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins_modules()
    line 1953 of /lib/upgradelib.php: call to upgrade_plugins()
    line 721 of /admin/index.php: call to upgrade_noncore()
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