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Manage groups guide

Explore how to create and use groups and groupings on Moodle.

About manual Groups

If students are already part of a group, these groups can be manually created in Moodle by creating the groups and manually allocating the students to the groups. This option works well when you have a small number of students to allocate to groups. If your students are in a group and you have a large number of students the Programme Administrator can use the bulk enrolment method to create the groups.

Create Group

Enrolled users drop down menu opened. Groups selected

  1. Select Participants from the contextual navigation menu above the module name to open the list of enrolled users. 
  2. Change the drop-down menu from Enrolled users to Groups
  3. Select Create group.
  4. Add the Group name and optionally a Group description.
  5. If you want you can enter an Enrolment key. A group enrolment key will let the user into the whole course, and it will automatically make them a member of this group. Note: you need to set a student enrolment key too if you use this option.
  6. If you want to enable Group messaging, so that the students can use Moodle messages to communicate, select Yes from the Group messaging drop-down list.
    1. If you or other lecturers want to view and participate in the Group messaging, then you will need to add yourself and other staff to the group.
  7. Select Save Changes.
  8. Your group will display on the Groups page.
  9. Make sure the group is highlighted and then select Add/remove users
  10. The Potential members list on the right displays all students and staff enrolled on the module. Use Search (name or email) at the bottom of the Potential members list to find the student.
    • Note: you may need to use a % between first and surname so you can find people with middle initials.
  11. Select the student and select the Add button. The student will be added to the Group members list on the left.

    Add/remove users menu

  12. Once you have finished adding people to the group, select Back to groups at the bottom of the screen. There is no need to save.

Edit Group membership in the Participants list

You can quickly enrol participants on groups or edit their group membership from the Participants lLst.

Enrol via the Participants List

  1. Open the Participants ListParticipants list, group membership
  2. In the Groups column, select the pencil icon next to a participant's list of group memberships. If they are not in any groups yet, it will say "no groups".
  3. Select the group(s) you want to add the participant to from the dropdown list.
  4. Select the save icon to save the membership.

Edit group membership via the Participants List

  1. Open the Participants ListParticipants list, adding groups to participant
  2. In the Groups column, select the pencil icon next to a participant's list of group memberships.
  3. To add them to a new group, select the group(s) from the dropdown list.
  4. To remove them from a group, select the X next to the group name.
  5. Select the save icon to save the membership.

Screencast: Create groups manually or automatically in Moodle 4

This screencast demonstrates how to create groups in Moodle.

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