Creating Groups in Moodle
In the Administration block you have a link called Groups. Groups are useful for breaking down a course with a lot of students (i.e., participants) into manageable subsections. These subsections or groups could correspond to sections of your course, which may be led by different Teaching Assistants. Groups may be helpful when using Forums because they will allow you to communicate with students based on the group to which they are assigned. When you click on the Groups link in the Admin block, you will see the following screen:
. . . and then name your group and add an optional description:
You may proceed by clicking the button “Create Group” and add the participants to the group manually. Be aware that if you have a lot of participants or are creating multiple groups, this may be time consuming.
An alternative is to enter an enrollment key (this is similar to a password) in the corresponding field in the screen above, and then you should give this enrollment key to all the students/participants you wish to be in this group. Finally, instruct the students to login to the course site with this enrollment key as soon as possible, and they will automatically be filtered into this group. Repeat this procedure if you are establishing multiple groups. Naturally, this method can be more efficient for you, the instructor, but does rely on the conscientious cooperation of the students.