Overview
This guide explains how to create and use the Group Choice activity.
Contents
What is Group Choice?
Group Choice, based on the standard Choice activity, allows students to enrol themselves in a Group of their choosing within a module. Staff have the ability to choose the Groups offered and the maximum number of students allowed in each group. The Group Choice activity can be identified by the red avatar icon.
Important: The Group Choice activity requires you to set up Groups. For details on creating Groups please refer to the Groups Guide.
Creating a Group Choice activity
Navigate to the module or course page that you want to add the Group Choice activity to and ensure that you have editing enabled by clicking the "Edit mode" slider at the top right of the screen.
Scroll down to the end of the section that you want to add the activity to and select 'Add an activity or resource'. 
From the pop-up window click on 'Group Choice'.
The settings panel will then appear for this activity. To configure Group Choice follow the recommendations outlined below.
General
Enter a name in the 'Group Choice name' field.
Add a description about the Group and ensure the ‘Display description on page’ checkbox is ticked so the description is visible to students when added to Learning Space.
Important: By default staff are no longer shown, or available to select, within the Group Choice activity, for example to facilitate a group task. If you would like this feature made available please contact dlsupport@falmouth.ac.uk.
Miscellaneous settings
If you’d like a student to join more than one group, ensure the ‘Allow enrollment to multiple groups’ tick box is checked.
Publish results
Publish results relates to whether the status of the Group is shown to students. There are four results options, with 'Always show results to students' being the default setting.
Depending on your intentions for the Group Choice, choose from the following:
- ‘Do not publish results to students’ – This option ensures students won’t see any details or status about the group other than seeing when a group is ‘full’.
- ‘Show results to students after they answer’ – This options ensures that once the student has an ‘active choice’, they will see the status of the group such as how many people are in the group and how many slots are left. If they remove their choice, they will no longer see the status of the groups.
- ‘Show results only after the choice is closed’ – This option ensures that the status of the group will be shown along with student names, only after the closing date for the group choice has passed.
- ‘Always show results to students’ – This default option ensures that the status of groups are always shown. Anonymity can be set next, if required, under the Privacy of results section.
Privacy of results
Privacy of results refers to what students are able to see in terms of the status of a group such as number of members as well as their names.
There are two options to choose from:
- ‘Publish anonymous results, do not show student names’ – This option ensures that when group statuses are visible to students that student names remain hidden.
- ‘Publish full results, showing names and their choices’ - This option ensures that when group statuses are visible to students, that student names are visible.
Allow choice to be updated
If you would like students to have the ability to change their choice decision - e.g. to leave the group they initially joined to join a different group instead, then select ‘Yes’ from the dropdown menu.
Show column for unanswered
This is a useful administrative setting that enables staff to see a column with the names of students who have yet to join a Group. If desired, this can be enabled by selecting ‘Yes’ from the dropdown menu.
Limit the number of responses allowed
Enable - This option enables you to limit the number of students that can select each Choice option. When the limit is reached, no one else can select that Group Choice option.
Disable - If the limit is 'disabled' then any number of students can select each of the Choice options.
A limit can be assigned by selecting 'Enable' then entering a number in the General limitation field, which is explained next.
General limitation
To set the student limit for each group, ensure you select ‘Enable’ from the 'Limit the number of responses allowed’ dropdown and then insert the desired number into the ‘General limitation’ field and click the ‘Apply to all groups’ button.
Groups
This setting allows you select which Groups will be available for selection by students. For details on creating groups please refer to the Groups Guide.
To make a Group available, click on the group in the 'Available Groups' panel and select the ‘Add’ button. The selected Group will then appear in the 'Selected Groups' panel and these are the Groups that will be visible for students to join.
Restrict answering to this time period
To limit the time period in which students can make their choice, tick the 'Restrict answering to this time period' box, and then make a date selection using the date selection tools.
Restrict access
To release the activity on a specific date, scroll to the ‘Access restrictions’ section, click on the ‘Add restriction' link and click 'Date'.
Then select a ‘from’ date and time from the drop-down options.
Selecting ‘From’ ensures the activity is available from a specified date.
If you want the activity to be available for a limited time, you can add another restriction by clicking the 'Add restriction' button and then selecting 'Date'. This time you need to select 'Until' from the drop-down options, then select the date and time that you want the activity to close.
Selecting ‘Until’ ensures the activity is available until a specified date.
Activity completion
If enabled, Activity Completion is tracked either automatically or manually by the student based on certain conditions. Multiple conditions may be set if desired, meaning the activity will only be considered complete when all conditions are met.
There are three options with 'Students can manually mark the activity as completed' being the default. Select one of the following:
- Do not indicate activity completion.
- Students can manually mark the activity as completed.
- Show activity as complete when conditions are met.
Important: Please view the Activity Completion guide for further details.
Finally to save the settings you have selected for this activity click on ‘Save and return to module’.
A Group Choice activity has now been successfully created allowing students to enrol themselves in a Group within a module.
Important: Staff can add students to groups manually through the standard Group management within the module. Please note, it is not possible to add students through the Group Choice plugin itself.
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.