Moodle Monday - Small Group Forum Discussions

Including your entire online class in the same forum discussion is often not the most practical way to have a discussion.   Divide your students into smaller groups to promote a more intimate online space for your students to engage, share and participate.  Another benefit is that it leaves space for students to share without feeling as if they are double posting.  Research suggest placing students in groups of no more than seven students.

To sort students into groups go to GROUPS in the administrator block.  First create your groups by clicking on CREATE GROUP.  Then click on ADD/REMOVE USERS.    You will see two lists, move students from the "Potential Members:" list to the "Existing Members:" list to create groups.  When done just click "Back to groups".

When creating a new forum, the very last settings concerns groups.  You have three options, they are:

"The group mode can be one of three levels:

• No groups - there are no sub groups, everyone is part of one big community
• Separate groups - each group can only see their own group, others are invisible
• Visible groups - each group works in their own group, but can also see other groups"

 From: https://svcc.mrooms3.net/help.php?module=moodle&file=groupmode.html&forcelang=

After clicking on the Groups in Administration you will see this screen.   Create your groups, then click to add or remove users to the selected group. 

In this screen you may add or remove users, use the add/remove buttons in the center of the screen.

This screen capture is from the Create Forums page, choose "separate groups", or "visible groups" to separate students.