Moodle mid-grade, class, and Group Discussion

Keywords: moodle groups grouping cohorts group large group

 

The moodle platform supports grade, class, and group functions and provides easy-to-use grouping tools. The Group supports open and closed attributes. In combination with the teaching function module, teachers can organize group-based teaching activities.

In moodle, grades, classes, and groups are managed and allocated mainly through cohorts, groupings, and groups. Generally, a group is equivalent to a first-year student. A large group is equivalent to a class in a grade, and a group is equivalent to a group in the class.

 

Why use groups? Let's look at several application situations.

• When several classes are learning the same course, they become teachers. at a certain time, they only want to operate on one of the classes and filter activity and transcript.

• When the instructor shares his or her courses with other instructors, the activity and transcript in the courses should be filtered out, and you are not interested in seeing students in other colleagues' classes.

• When a teacher needs to assign a specific activity or resource to a class or study group, and does not want other students to see it.

In the above case, moodle provides a group solution.

 

The following is a detailed analysis of the three grouping methods.

Group 1 (groups)

In moodle, the most important group is the Learning Group. Many courses, resources, and activities can be managed by groups. Based on the actual situation, we can equate a group with the concepts of grade, class, and study group. However, most of the time we equate groups with learning groups in a class, which makes it easier to manage and differentiate.

As a teaching platform, courses are the main activity areas. You can perform group operations during the course arrangement, assignment, and questions.

1.1 group Application Mode

In the course, the Group has three application modes:

Ø no groups are differentiated in the course.

The separate groups are independent in the same course and cannot be viewed or participated in activities of other groups.

Ø the visual group (visible groups) is limited in the integration of each group in the same course, which can be viewed but cannot participate in activities of other groups.

 

1.2 application scenarios of groups:

Share the research results or discussions in the Group;

Use Forum tools to illustrate the same arguments, and increase the chance of personal participation in each group and allow comparison of different conclusions;

The group uses Wiki and Forum tools to work with a project team;

Restrict a collection of students to access resources (such as a file );

Class teachers access data in the same group (such as test scores );

 

1.3 Establishment of the group:

Here, we will describe the establishment of all groups in a unified manner. In moodle, you can create groups in four areas.

User Management-user-account-group;

Set-> homepage settings-> User-> group;

Course category-"group;

Course-course management-user-group.

 

1.3.1 team creation:

First, set up a group (Course Management-> User-> group) in the course and set the course selection password.

 

1.3.2 group configuration

In the Course settings, set the group mode in "group" to "separate group" or "visible group", and force the group mode to be set as needed, if you have created a large group, you can set the default group as needed. It must be noted that a large group, group, or group is only an attribute and has no effect on the current course users, the limitation is determined by the role of the current user in the course or course activity. The following will be further explained in the discussion of large groups.

Note that if the "force group mode" is selected, the group mode is not optional during later activity management. For example.

In the Course Management> User> course selection method, the instructor or administrator sets the self-selected course. In this way, when a student or teacher chooses the current course, the student or teacher enters the group password (not the course selection password) it can be automatically assigned to each specified group. If you enter the course selection password, the current user has no group. Set the self-service course selection.

Course Selection for students.

 

Note that the password policy must be set in the website policy. The specific operation is: website management-security-website policy. Find the group Course Selection password policy and configure it.

1.4 Add a group user

After creating a group, it is difficult to add users. You need to add users in one group. Of course, to simplify user operations, moodle also provides two methods: Upload user list documents and automatic grouping.

1. For the concept of "group", set the group mode in the "Group" setting item when the course is set up, create a corresponding group, and create a group Course Selection password. In this way, students can directly group their lessons by group passwords.

2. For the group concept, moodle provides the upload User Function to simplify the addition of group members. In the "website management-" user-"account-" Upload user "column, upload the user list document in the specified format. Different from uploading a common user, you must specify the value of a cohorts field. That is to say, you must first create a cohorts field and then upload a user list text file containing the group field value.

 

1.5 Use of groups

As described above, you may have been waiting to ask: So what is the concept of group in moodle? You may have the following questions:

Can I assign assignments to a learning group?

A certain person in the Study Group submitted the assignment. Is the assignment submitted even for the entire group?

Can instructors score assignments for the entire group?

Is it possible that only persons in their own groups can join in the discussion area?

Next we will discuss one by one what the teams in moodle can do.

1.5.1 view course members

A common application of a group is to distinguish members of different groups in a course.

Let's take a look at the list of course members. The rules here are as follows:

Teachers can view all the members of this course;

The students in the same group can see the members of this group;

Ø for the separation group, students can only see the members of this group;

Ø for visual groups, students can see all the members of the current course (including those not grouped ).

 

List of members that can be viewed by the instructor Role in the course.

List of members displayed by the group members when the course is set to "separate groups.

List of members displayed by the group members when the course is set to "visualized group. It is consistent with the Members that the instructor can see.

The list of members cannot be viewed when the separate group mode is set for ungrouped users in the course.

Most of the time, we recommend that you separate groups when setting course attributes to avoid unnecessary troubles.

1.5.2 activities are assigned to specific groups

Unfortunately, although group mode can be set for activities in the course, it does not mean that only a group can be distributed, it only indicates whether a group can see the activities of other groups.

All students can see the activities established by instructors in the course, regardless of the group mode. Only the students or teachers in the group can view the operation events and scores of the students in the activity.

Note:: The following activities are separated into groups by default.

Jobs

For example, after a teacher assigns a assignment (separated groups), the student submits the assignment (online or in file mode). Other members in the group cannot see the "current student submitted the assignment" event, you cannot see the Jobs submitted by the other party.

If other students in the same group have already submitted their homework, they still need to submit the assignment again, even if the assignment is repeated.

Normally, it is enough for a member of the group to submit a job on behalf of everyone. However, on the moodle platform, everyone must submit the job. Otherwise, you cannot be given a score.

We will continue the discussion in the following major groups.

Discussion board

In the discussion board, the discussion is conducted in different groups. For example, if a student in a group initiates a topic in the discussion board, only the students in the group can view and reply to the topic, students in other groups cannot see this topic.

 

1.5.3 instructor rating operations

Instructors can score assignments in groups. Of course, the operation on the group is to show only a group and score each member of the group, rather than score the group, and then the students have scores.

Two groups (grouping)

A group is a collection of users used for user management. The main purpose of a group is to facilitate management. It contains multiple groups.

A large group is a collection of several groups in the course. If you select a large group, students in different groups in the same group can work together. That is to say, no matter what the group mode is, the group is ignored as long as it is a large group.

 

 

Establishment of 2.1 Major Groups

Create a large group in "Course Management-" user-"group.

 

Is to create a large group list.

 

 

 

2.2 ADD team members

A large group is a collection of multiple groups, so we need to add the corresponding groups to the large group for use.

As shown in, you can see that the number of activity items has changed.

 

2.3 use of large groups

In the previous group, we mentioned how to arrange activities (such as assignments) for a group so that the assignment can only be conducted by the group's students. This requirement can be achieved through the corresponding configuration and the combination of "big group.

Assume that multiple classes in a certain course are on, and the teacher assigns different assignments according to the needs of each class. How should we implement this function?

2.3.1 assignment by group

Log on as an administrator. Go to "website management-> development-> test features-> test Settings" and open only the "available group members" option. (Version 1.9 seems to be available by default and has not been tried)

After this option is enabled, in theory, all activities in the course can be performed by group only. For example, you can select "only available to group members" in the course activity and select it. (You need to click to select the advanced option)

In this case, you can see the assignments shown in the course resource list. This is the instructor's course page.

At this time, the students who are not in the "Class 1, class 1" in the big group cannot see the assignment.

 

Note:

"Large Group + only available to group members" is used. No matter what the group mode is, the rules of this activity are only performed according to the large group, and no group is judged.

In the code, it is "enablegroupmembersonly" in the website configuration + "groupmembersonly" in the course ".

 

3. Group Management (cohorts)

For groups, user management is the most commonly used place. Group the students who have learned the same course to a group. Then, the students can be quickly deployed to each course through group synchronization. If Group Synchronization is not used, it is a painful process to add users to the course one by one or allow students to select courses on their own.

 

3.1 group category

In moodle, groups are divided into two types:

System Group

Ø course category group

The system group is a global variable and is common on the moodle platform;

The course category group is a local variable and can only be used in a specific course category.

 

3.2 Create a group

You can create a group in two places based on the group type.

Log on as an administrator and choose website management> User> account> group to manage system groups.

System groups are generally used to establish teacher groups and are mainly used to manage and share teaching resources.

 

Similarly, access "website management-" Course-"add course" as an administrator and select a specific category, as shown in. At this time, groups are mainly set up for course categories (major and minor categories.

The following is a simple operation to create a group.

Note that the scenario options in the group include:

Ø System

Ø throughout the systemCourse categoryList

When describing the Group category, we have already talked about two categories: System and course category.

If the scenario is "system", the figure of the system group above is shown. If you select the relevant course category, it will be directed to the relevant course group. For example:

3.3 Member Management

Deleting a user from a group may lead to the revocation of the user's Course Selection for multiple courses, that is, the user's personal settings, scores, groups, and other user information for these courses will be deleted.

 

3.4 Group Synchronization

For Group Synchronization operations, go to course management> User> course selection method.

 

During group synchronization, You must select the role in the course after the user synchronization.

In version 2.1, users selected by the Group cannot delete the default roles selected during synchronization.

In Version 2.3, any role can be deleted.

Is the list of course members after group synchronization.

After adding a new course in moodle, there are no users in the course "selected users. In this case, you can manually select a course, select a self-help course, and select a group to add users to the course.

Among the selected users, we can see that the course selection method is group synchronization.

After the group is synchronized, the current group user is not automatically assigned to each Learning Group and still needs to be assigned by the teacher.

Although we try to understand a group as a grade, it should be noted that there is no nested relationship between the Group and the big group (class) and the group.

 

 

Note:

Only the website administrator role can perform operations on group selection. Neither the administrator role nor the instructor Role in the course can perform group selection operations.

 

 

Postscript:

From the perspective of current research on teams, big groups, and groups in moodle, their main role is to simplify the workload when operators add users in user management. Secondly, they can also be used in the allocation of activities. But in general, it still cannot meet the needs of teaching, and there is still some improvement. For example, submitting homework and correcting homework. If you do not need to perform operations on every student in group mode, it would be great.

The above is a discussion of groups, gouping, and cohorts in moodle over many days. I hope it will inspire you.

 

Hansy

2012-11-19