Group Work

Sometimes it makes sense to organize the work into groups within a course.
You must first create and manage the groups.

1. Select the appropriate course and click on the gear wheel in the upper right corner to open the course settings.

2. Then select the tab "Users" and click on "Groups".

3. There, scroll down to the actions you can perform and click on "Create Group".

Here you can make general settings such as setting the group name, adding a description or uploading a picture.
After you have saved the information below, you will return to the group home page, where you can also see your created groups. (In this example "Group A", "Group B" and "Group C").

Then you can assign the individual course participants to the groups.

4. Click on the group you want to edit first and then on the bottom right on "Add/remove users".

5. At the right side of the list of "Potential Members", select one participant at a time and click on "Add".

If you have selected all group members, these are automatically saved.
Then you should see all group members listed on the left side:

6. Now you can click on "Back to Groups" in the bottom left corner and continue with the other groups as described in step 4.
The groups are automatically saved.

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Alternatively you can leave the "Create groups automatically", "Import groups" option or use the grouptool-module

If the participants join the course manually (only courses that are not created and synchronized in the CMS), your participants can be assigned to the different groups by enrollment keys.

There are three group modes:

• No groups: Everyone belongs to the whole group.
• Separate Groups: Each group member sees only the activities (e.g., forum posts, wiki or database entries) of their own group
• Visible Groups: Each group works by itself, but the activities of the other groups can be tracked

You can set the group work for the entire course or assign individual activities to group work.

Working in groups can help cooperative learning in a targeted manner. Some - often used - methods are:

• Group puzzle: "expert groups" develop the material to a specific theoretical background and translate it into a concrete application in the original groups. ("Learning through Teaching")
• Constructive Controversy: Groups must look at the issue from opposite perspectives and defend their point of view. The goal, however, is a common contentual consensus. In addition to the learning effect of the broader topic, the discussion is also stimulated here. (compare thinking hats)
• Brainstorming: After learning about the topic, the participants collect all the ideas. The groups evaluate and rank all approaches to decide which ideas will be developed together.

More information about groups in Moodle