Groups in Moodle

The learning platform Moodle offers the possibility to divide participants of a course into groups and groupings and to provide them with separate content and tools. In this tutorial you will learn the basics of working with groups in Moodle.

Moodle course cover image

V2.1 02-2023 | Michael Heinecke, Hannes von Allwörden, Christian Kreitschmann, Özgü Gürsoy | DL.MIN, FB Mathematics | University of Hamburg

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0) license.
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Table of contents & navigation

Clicking on the individual tiles will take you directly to the corresponding chapter. Clicking the ᐅ arrow at the top right will take you to the next section. For an explanation of the further navigation and menu bar elements, click on the ❔ help icon at the top right.

Creating groups

Open your course and click Participants in the Course navigation. Select Groups from the Selection menu.
In the section Groups click the button Create group.
Give a name to the new group and click Save changes.
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You can now create more groups or edit the existing one(s).
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Multiple groups can be combined within different groupings. To do this, choose Groupings from the Selection menu and click the button Create grouping.
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Give a new name to the grouping and click Save changes.
Now you can assign groups to your grouping by clicking on the 👤 Avatar icon.
In the list of Potential members on the right, highlight the groups you want to assign to the grouping and click ᐊ Add. Once you are satisfied with the assignment, click Back to groupings.
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You can now create more groupings or edit the existing one(s) by clicking on the ⚙️ Gear icon.
Call up the section Overview via the Selection menu to get an overview of all existing groups and the groupings assigned to each.

Add participants to groups

After you have successfully created one or more groups, you have four options to add participants to these groups.

Manual assignment (to existing groups)

In the Groups section, highlight the group to which you want to assign students to and click Add/remove users.
Select the participants to be assigned in the right column and click ᐊ Add. Then go back to the Groups section by clicking Back to groups.

Automatic assignment (into new groups)

In the Groups section, click Auto-create groups.
In the Auto-create groups settings you have quite a few options. These are used to automatically assign all possible members from a specific set [1] into a predefined number of groups [2], which are automatically generated according to a predefined naming scheme [3]. Once you are satisfied with the settings, click Preview to check the result before clicking Submit to automatically create the new groups.
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Assignment via enrolment key (into existing groups)

In the Groups section, highlight the group to which you want to assign students to and click Edit group settings.
In the field Enrolment Key you can enter an enrolment key for the previously selected group ("Click to enter text"). Press the Enter key on your keyboard to confirm your entry, then press Save changes at the bottom of the page.
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Tip: For groupings to work with an enrolment key, Self enrolment must be enabled in the Enrolment methods and the Enrolment key for groups option must be set to 'yes'. The section Enrolement methods can be accessed via the Selection menu of the section Participants

Self-registration of participants via activity "Group self-selection" (into existing or new groups)

On your Course homepage, click ❍ Edit in the upper right corner.
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Click Add an activity or resource in a section of your course.
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Select the Activities tab in the dialog and click on the Group self-selection activity.
You now have quite a few setting options. First, you set a name [1]. Optionally, you can set a restricted time slot for enrolment [2]. You can restrict which groups are available for selection [3], set a minimum or maximum number of participants for the groups [4], and change the maximum number of groups per participants [5]. Furthermore, you can edit the permissions of the participants and assign supervisors (not shown in the picture).

Tip: It is possible to change the grouping / supervisor afterwards.

Provide activities and ressources for groups

Groups can be useful in Moodle for several scenarios. Some possibilities are:

Tasks can be worked on in groups.
Tutors can grade submissions from members of a group.
A forum can allow communication within a group without seeing the discussions of other groups.
Materials can be shared with specific groups only.
Appointments can be arranged with groups.

There are different group modes:

Separate groups. The group members of the different groups cannot see each other's activities.
Visible groups. The group members of the different groups can see what the other groups are doing, but can only actively participate in their own group activities.

To globally set the Group mode for a specific course, proceed as follows:

Open the Course homepage and click Settings in the Course navigation.
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In the Course settings scroll to the Groups section to change the settings for the Group mode within the whole course.

For individual activities, the group mode can be switched on and off. To edit the group mode at activity level, proceed as follows:

Open the Course homepage, click ❍ Edit in the upper right corner.
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Open the ⁝ Edit menu next to the activity you want to set a group mode for and click Edit settings.
In the settings of the activity, expand the Common module settings section. Now you can change the settings for the Group mode of that activity.

Tip: If you set Force group mode to "yes" (globally) in the Course settings, that chosen group mode will be applied to all subordinate activities and individual Group mode-settings will be ignored.

You can use the group mode to provide ressources and activities for specific, individual groups. To provide a PDF or a link for a specific group, you can use the Restrict access setting in the settings of that ressource:

Open your Course hompage and click ❍ Edit in the upper right corner.
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Open the ⁝ Edit menu next to the ressource you want to provide to a specific group and click Edit settings.
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Scroll down, expand the Restrict access-section and click Add restriction.
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Select Group in the dialog.
Now you can specify which group should / should not have access to the ressource. Click Add restriction and proceed with Save and return to course.
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