Moodlerific.org » Tutorials

Tip: Automatically put students into groups using enrollment keys

melissa — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:44:40 +0000

With school beginning I thought it would be a good idea to write a post about automatically putting students into groups using individual enrollment keys. This is definitely NOT a new Moodle tip, but it’s such a useful piece of information that teachers love I thought I would share and remind Moodle users to take advantage of it.

First, I want to give credit to Julian Ridden (aka Moodleman) for exposing me to this great tip. I first found out about this through his blog post (including a screencast), “Automatic Assignment of Class Groups“. There are other sources that explain how to accomplish this task (see below in “Related Links”) but I personally found out about it through his video.

Description

Groups are set up with individual enrollment keys before students enroll into the course. Teachers will tell students what enrollment key to use according to what group the teacher wants them in. They enter in the key when enrolling into the course and they are automatically put into a group according to which key they enter.

Why use this?

When students are in groups teachers are able to filter grades, assignments and participation by group. This is especially useful for secondary teachers who have multiple hours (or periods) of the same class. If there were no groups teachers would see all their enrolled students in one long, alphabetized list (which is hard to manage and can get very annoying with hundreds of enrolled students!). With groups, teachers can view each group (or hour or period) separately when viewing grades, assignments and participation. If you only use groups in this way and only this way, the students will not even notice anything. This is something a teacher would (greatly) benefit from.

Another (more advanced) use of groups is using groups within activities. Using groups within activities allows a teacher to create an activity and view their participation by group. It also gives the teacher an option to choose whether or not the groups can or can not see other groups participation. But enough of that, this post is showing you HOW to automatically put students into groups. More information about using groups and taking advantage of them will be listed below under “Related Links”.

Click here for a video screencast I created for our district showing the below process

Text Directions

Step 1 – Setting your Course Enrollment Key

1.) Click on “Settings” in your Administration block
2.) Scroll down to “Availability” and set your Enrollment Key

Note: You need to set this enrollment key in your course settings, as well as setting the group enrollment keys [later on]. This enrollment key will NOT be used by students; it only needs to be set to “turn on” the enrollment key option which will prompt students to enter in a key.

3.) Save changes on the bottom of the page

Step 2 – Creating Groups & Setting Group Enrollment Keys

4.) Go to “Groups” in your Administration block
5.) Click the “Create Group” button
6.) Enter in the Group Name (ex: Hour 1)
7.) Set the Enrollment Key (this will be what Hour 1 students will enter after they get prompted to enter an enrollment key when they click on your course for the first time)

8.) Click Save Changes

9a.) Create as many groups as you need

Step 3 – Giving directions to students

9.) Have students log in

10.) Tell them to navigate to your course and click the course name

11.) It will prompt them to enter an Enrollment Key

12.) Have the student enter the Enrollment Key that you provided them

Note: Make sure you give each hour (or group) their individual Enrollment Key

13.) Once they have entered in their assigned Enrollment Key they are enrolled and put into the group

Notes & Tips

Do not confuse the course Enrollment Key (in course settings) with the individual group Enrollment Keys. If anyone entered in the course Enrollment Key they would still be enrolled but they will NOT be in a group.
Students only have to enter in the Enrollment Key once.
You can move, add or remove students from groups by going into the “Groups” link, highlight the Group name and click the “add/remove users” button.
To ensure groups are not messed with in the future (on purpose or by accident) you can change the Group Enrollment Key to something else so no one can join the group later.
If you ever forget an Enrollment Key: check the “unmask” box next to it and it will reveal the Enrollment Key in plain text.

Note: While looking for other links and videos on this process I ran across a recent great post from Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org describing the value of Moodle groups. Check it out!

Related Links:

Automatic Assignment of Class Groups (post and video screencast from Moodleman.net)
Moodle Tip – The Value of Groups in Moodle Courses (post from Around the Corner-MGuhlin.org)
A quick way to get students enrolled into their courses on Moodle (post from Moodleblog.org)
My video screencast showing how to auto assign students in groups
Moodle Docs: How can I sort students automatically into groups during enrollment?
Moodle Docs: Groups FAQ
Moodle Docs: Groups
Moodle Docs: Groupings (advanced use: groups can be organized into groupings – Moodle 1.9 and higher)
Using Moodle: Groups Forum (ask questions and get ideas!)

Tip: Flexibility with resource/activity links

melissa — Thu, 21 May 2009 17:52:56 +0000

One thing I had trouble with when using Moodle is getting it to look “nice” and laying out the middle content how I wanted. This was a bit tough when adding resources and activities because 1.) you had to use the icon set for that resource/activity 2.) I could not change the font size or color and 3.) I couldn’t lay out multiple activities on the same line which made for one long list.

Then I stumbled upon Moodle Docs: Course Homepage – Tips and tricks. Basically, that link gives the idea to make resources or activities in a hidden section, copy the link then use that URL somewhere else giving you more flexibility to link to your content. Here are modified instructions from that link which I have used:

Set your weeks or topics to 1 more than you need
Create the resources or activities you want in that last section
Choose a resource or activity that you just created, open it and copy the URL (this is the direct link to that resource/activity)
Navigate to the place you want to link to the resource/activity you just copied
Insert a label
Insert text or maybe even an image and make that a link using the URL that you previously copied
Go back to your course settings and set the weeks or topics one less (hiding that last section with the stored resources and activities)

How can this be used? I have used this method when I wanted the activity link to be bigger, a different color, an image or when I wanted to make multiple activities be on the same line. I have also used this method when I did not want the default icon for a certain activity.

In my opinion this method gives you much more flexibility in formatting your links look and layout. You can also use the copied URL direct link in an HTML block, compose a web page resource or any place where you can make a link instead of the label resource which I mentioned in the above instructions.

Check out Tips and tricks from Moodle Docs for a more in depth and varied ways of this method. I would like to hear if anyone else has a different method of accomplishing the same thing or would like to add their two cents!

Moodle Tip: Get rid of that pesky News Forum

melissa — Mon, 18 May 2009 15:45:57 +0000

For some people this might be a “duh” tip but I know there are some people who are wondering why the News Forum keeps coming back after deleting it or wondering how to get it back because I didn’t know when I was first starting out!

The News Forum is a special type of forum that is in your course by default. Think of this forum as a one-way street of information. The teacher(s) can give out information but student can not reply (unless you tweak other things). Another useful function of this forum is that by default it forces everyone to be subscribed which sends out an email to students when there are postings. This can of course be turned off.

So, you don’t want that forum? Okay…

Go into your course Settings
In the drop-down menu “News items to show” choose 0
Scroll down, Save Changes
Delete the News Forum by going to your course, turn editing on, click the X
Delete the Latest News Block (or hide it)

Yahoo, it’s gone and will stay gone!

Uh oh, you want your News Forum and Lateset News Block back?

Go to course Settings and choose the number of News items to show
Scroll down, Save Changes
Go back to your course homepage and Turn Editing On
Add the “Latest News” block

Done, you got it back!

I personally like the News Forum because it is a way to give important news to your students. I’ve used this for our district’s main page when there is news about our district’s Moodle site. This works out great because it emails the teachers that have Moodle accounts automatically, so I don’t have to hand pick each staff’s email. However, users use Moodle in such different ways that this may not be something they would ever do.

Tutorial on how to make online quizzes

melissa — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 15:22:24 +0000

Check out this tutorial on how to make an online quiz in Moodle in two different ways. The first way is creating a simple quiz with the quiz module in Moodle. The second way is with the SCORM/AICC module in Moodle. The tutorial includes directions with pictures. I found this link through Tipclique.

Read Using Moodle online

melissa — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:25:16 +0000

It looks like you can read the first Using Moodle book online as well. It says some pages are omitted but it looks like a lot of the book is available to read online.

Links to check out

melissa — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:54:44 +0000

Take a few moments to check out some Moodle links I have bookmarked in the last week or so.

Collection of Moodle Video Tutorials

melissa — Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:25:35 +0000

From the Global Classroom blog – a collections of links to many Moodle video tutorials. Video topics include labels, quizzes, databases, activites, formatting and much more. A great collection of videos on a variety of Moodle topics to help you quickly learn!

Blog post source: http://theglobalclassroom.blogspot.com/2008/12/make-your-new-years-resolutionto-learn.html