Overview
This guide explains what groups are within Learning Space, how they can be created and how they can be used.
Contents
- Video guide
- What are groups?
- Creating and assigning students to groups
- Using groups within Learning Space activities
- Restricting access to content based on groups
- Further support
Video guide
What are groups?
A group is a method of organising students on a course/module/technical resource page. This is beneficial for modules with large cohorts as students can be easily grouped into teams, grouped for tutorials as well as allowing staff to make content visible to students from particular groups.
Important: The Group Choice activity feature within Learning Space allows students to enrol themselves into a particular group within a module, for example choosing a project group to be a participant in. For full guidance on that activity please view the Group Choice activity for Staff guide.
Creating and assigning students to groups
1. Open the module or course page that you want to create groups in and select the "Participants" link from the top menu. 
2. Click "Subscribed users" and select "Groups" from the drop down menu..
3. Click the "Create group" button and enter a group name - e.g. "Group A."You can also add a description in the group description field (optional).
4. Scroll down and click "Save changes".
5. Click on the group you want to add users to and click the "Add/remove users" button. 
This will display a list of all enrolled users on the module/course as potential members.
6. Select a user from the list and click the "Add" button to add them to the group. Repeat to add other users to the group.
Note: To remove users from the group, select their name in the group members box and click the "Remove" button.
7. When you have finished adding users to the Group, click the "Back to Groups" button.
Using Groups within Learning Space activities
To help ensure students only see the information that is relevant to them, it is recommended that staff use Groups within Learning Space activities. The example below shows you how to apply Group access to a Forum activity in Learning Space.
1. Click the "Edit mode" slider to turn editing on (top right, next to your profile image)
2. Click the 3-dot icon at the end of the Forum activity box and select "Edit settings".
3. Scroll down to the "Restrict access" section and click the "Add restriction" button.
4. Select ‘Group’.
5. Then, use the dropdown for ‘Group’ to select the group you would like to limit access to.
6. Finally, scroll to the bottom of the page and select either ‘Save and return to module’ or ‘Save and display’ to save your changes. Or click ‘Cancel’ to discard your changes.
Groups are particularly important in Forums to ensure that students do not receive too many notification emails. For more information on forums please visit our guide to Forum for Staff.
Note: If you want several groups to have access to an activity (e.g. a forum where each group will only see posts made by other members of their group), you will need to create a grouping and add the groups to it. For more information about groupings and how to create them, visit the Moodle - Creating groupings guide.
Restricting access to content based on groups
It can sometimes be useful to restrict access to content based on groups, for example on a course page you may only want a section to be visible to a first or second year student.
1. To achieve this, make sure you are in Edit mode, click the 3-dot icon at the end of the section name row and select "Edit section".
2. Scroll down to the "Restrict access" section.
3. Select "Add restriction..." and then "Group".
4. Select the group that you want to give access to the section to and click "Save changes".
Important: At this stage, all students can still see the hidden content except it will be greyed out to those who do not have access. To make the content truly invisible to users who do not have access, you must click the eye icon and ensure it is crossed.
5. As a staff member, you will see the following label that details who has access to the content.
Further support
For further support on Learning Space, or to report any issues with this guide, please get in touch with the Digital Learning Team via dlsupport@falmouth.ac.uk. Alternatively, please refer to the numerous help guides found on our Knowledge Base.
View the Accessibility Statement for all of our support guides.