Using Groups in Forums

Using Groups in Forums


Many faculty need to find a way to divide discussion into smaller units. The best method to do this is to use the groups feature. Groups are established by selecting "Manage Groups" under the Site Info tool. Here, select "create new group", on the next page choose a title, a description (if needed), and choose the students to add to the group by selecting the name in the box and pressing the > button to move them into the active box.

Once the groups have been created, move to the forums tool to create new discussion topics for the specific student groups. As you can see from the example below, a discussion topic has been created for each of the student groups. You can establish discussion topics for your groups with whichever titles you choose, whether that be groups names, discussion topics for each group, or some other organizational method. However, you must create a discussion topic for a particular group because threads within each topic will not allow specific permission levels to be set. As we see from the example, the instructor has chosen to organize the discussion topics under the auto-generated "HTS2821 12SP" forum. If you would like to create a new forum for group-specific discussions, you may do so by creating that forum, and then creating the discussion topics for the individual group. In most cases, however, the default forum will be adequate.

When creating discussion topics for each group, the option to limit participants to a specific group is found under the permissions section of the settings. You must first select the role whose permission settings you wish to change, then change the permission level in the drop down below.  In the top drop down box, first select the "student" role from the list, and in the drop down below this select "none." This will restrict access from the general student roster.

Next, select the respective group you wish to give access to the discussion thread from the top drop down, and select "contributor" from the drop down below.

Repeat these steps in while creating the discussion topics for each of the groups, and you now have a customized, group-specific discussion thread for your students.