Overview: Moodle provides a way of setting up teams to work on various Activities. A Group Set is a collection of individual Groups. Most courses only need one Group Set, or one set of Groups.
Once you apply a Group Set to any Activity in your course, Group members can only see content from themselves and members their group. You can create as many Group Sets as you need in case you need alternate sets of Groups for certain other Activities, and Group Sets can be used more than once. Remember: you must create the Activity first!
Here is an explanation and demonstration on how to use Group Sets
First, decide how you want to group students. Will you use one set of groups throughout the term, or will you change the group composition during the term? In this example, we’ll assume we’re going to use just one set of groups (one Group Set) for all activities throughout the term.
1 – In the Settings menu, under Users, click on Groups.
2 – Click the Group Sets tab. Create a new Group Set that defines how you want to organize your groups, e.g. “By Teams,” “By Major,” “By Gender,” etc.
3 – Click the Groups tab. You may use the “Auto-create groups” function to automatically divide all your students into groups of a specific size:
You can allocate members to the groups randomly or alphabetically by first name, last name, or ID. The “Naming scheme” allows you to define how the groups will be automatically named. Here, the word “Group” will be followed by a number, such as “1”, “2”, “3”, etc.
After you submit this form, you’ll see your newly created Groups. You can click a group to see its members:
Optionally, you can assign students to groups manually by selecting each group, then using the “Add/remove users” function.
4 – Next, create the Forum (or other activity, e.g. Chat, Glossary, Wiki, etc.): Return to your main course page. Be sure Editing is turned on. Go to the module or week of the course where you want the discussion to display, and use the “Add an activity…” menu to create a Forum.
All groups will share the same Activity– just create one.
In the “Common module settings” section, click “Show advanced.” If you want the groups to have the option to see each other’s postings, use Visible Groups. If you want them to see only their own group’s postings, use Separate Groups. Then pick the Group Set you created in Step 2 (“By Teams”). This will present the activity to all students in the Group Set, but they will only be able to see and interact with other members of the Group Set as you have defined.
Important: A student who is not in the assigned Group Set (not in any Group) will still be able to see the Forum link, but will not be able to see posts inside or add posts. All students should be in the Group Set and in a Group.