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Using Groups
Types of Groups
There are three types of “group” forums
as described below.
1 – a forum that is open to everyone who can see and reply to everyone
else – this is the single person image when editing (can’t get
a screen shot right now as the server is down) 
2 – a forum that is open to everyone who can
see everyone, but only post and reply within their own group section. (this
is where you have two
visible people in the icon) 
3 – a forum that is open to everyone, but you
can only see, post, and reply to those within your group (this is the two
people icon where one
is grayed out) 
When a forum is made visible, it is available to everyone to see it as a
link. When you go to the forum, one of three things will happen depending
on the setting above.
If 1 then – you will just see the forum as you
would normally.
If 2 then – you will see the forum, but there will be a drop-down
menu to the top left. This tells you which group of students’ posts
you want to look at. I can see posts in all groups, but will only be able
to post and reply to those in my group.
So if I am in group 1 and I have group 2 selected, I will be able to see
their posts, but will not be able to reply. If I have group 1 selected, then
I can post and reply.
If 3 then – you will see the forum, but will
only be able to do anything when you have your group selected.
What does all of this mean.
You only have to make one forum per group project. When a student goes into
that forum, they select their group from the drop-down menu in order to post
to their group.
It does not appear that you can make a forum itself invisible to a selected
group of students, only posts within the forum.
Assigning Students to Groups
One problem with the current version of Moodle is that a student can only
be assigned to one group at a time. Furthermore, if you change the group
that a student is in, they no longer have access to their old posts within
the previous group. We believe that multiple groups will be allowed in future
versions of Moodle, but do not know when. If you do want to change the groups
around, it is suggested that you change the group settings of previous group
works within forums so that everyone can view them or alert the students
to the change.
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