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Confusion on Groups

Hello,

I am trying to sort out how to organize the group thing.

 

I have a course that I will be running 2 or more classes simultaneously. Each class (4-5 students) will have it owns sharing space group. I'd like to be able to subdivide the group into the modules for ease, as part of each module requires sharing the activity results with the class.  Module 1 will be a separate sharing space than Module 2 (and so on), each class will only be able to see their own class participants shares.

 

I've tried a few different variations and can't seem to quite get it right.

Is this possible? 

 

TIA

5 replies

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    • Customer Success & Onboarding Team Leader at OpenLearning
    • Alenka_Prezelj
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Hi Natalie! First, I just want to make sure we're on the same page regarding classes and groups.

    Please note that the course content (pages, videos, activities etc) appear the same in all classes. If you change something in one class, the change will be visible in all classes. 

    However, students and their contributions (submitted files, comments etc) are class-specific. The students only see other students (and their work) within the same class.

    You mention that you will have about 4-5 students per class. Are you planning to further divide these 4-5 students into groups? I'm trying to figure out if you need groups in the first place. This is usually used with large classes for project work. Please let me know and then we can continue to figure out what the best solution for you might be.

    What kind of activities are you planning?

      • Natalie_Forrest
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Alenka Prezelj  

      First - thanks so much for getting back to me so quickly.

       

      Alenka Prezelj said:
      If you change something in one class, the change will be visible in all classes.

       Yes, totally got that. Which is awesome!

       

      Alenka Prezelj said:
      The students only see other students (and their work) within the same class.

       Yes, I was trying to make the sharing space something that was repeated in every class but the students only saw their particular class. 

      Alenka Prezelj said:
      You mention that you will have about 4-5 students per class. Are you planning to further divide these 4-5 students into groups?

       No, I'm not planning to divide the groups further. I usually only get about 4-  5 students at a time, but often run multiple classes of the same course with different start dates.

       

      Alenka Prezelj said:
      I'm trying to figure out if you need groups in the first place. This is usually used with large classes for project work. Please let me know and then we can continue to figure out what the best solution for you might be.

      What kind of activities are you planning?

       I'd like to have a specific place for the students of each class to share their responses/discoveries from their activity and have each student respond to everyone in their group/class. I'd like it to be organized so that it's easy to find (preferably in the module itself) and easy to follow for them and for me.

      Ideally each module has it's own share space.  I've attached a photo of a module. #4 Share Your Senses is where I'd like people to post their responses to the activity and then respond to classmates.

      The activities are applied eco-pyschology, so they have to go out into Nature, then report back their understandings and then ask questions, maybe post a photo of their work..etc... Everyone has to respond to other group members in order to receive completion for the module.

       

      Thanks Alenka,
      Natalie

      • Customer Success & Onboarding Team Leader at OpenLearning
      • Alenka_Prezelj
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Natalie Forrest 

       

       Yes, I was trying to make the sharing space something that was repeated in every class but the students only saw their particular class. 

       

      Great! This is how classes work by default, so no worries there.

       

       No, I'm not planning to divide the groups further. I usually only get about 4-  5 students at a time, but often run multiple classes of the same course with different start dates.

       

      OK. But students would work individually, right? They would all have the same tasks. In this case, I don't think you need Groups at all. Please note  that a group is not the same as class (on OpenLearning.)

       

      Alenka Prezelj said:
      I'm trying to figure out if you need groups in the first place. This is usually used with large classes for project work. Please let me know and then we can continue to figure out what the best solution for you might be.

      What kind of activities are you planning?

       I'd like to have a specific place for the students of each class to share their responses/discoveries from their activity and have each student respond to everyone in their group/class. I'd like it to be organized so that it's easy to find (preferably in the module itself) and easy to follow for them and for me.

      Ideally each module has it's own share space.  I've attached a photo of a module. #4 Share Your Senses is where I'd like people to post their responses to the activity and then respond to classmates.

      The activities are applied eco-pyschology, so they have to go out into Nature, then report back their understandings and then ask questions, maybe post a photo of their work..etc... Everyone has to respond to other group members in order to receive completion for the module.

       

      OK I think I understand. You can put these activities (I assume the students will mostly post some text, maybe submit some documents or images) on whichever page you want. What they submit will be visible in the gallery. 

      For your Introduction page, instead of asking them to introduce themselves in "Group", you could ask them to do that either in the comment section (you can also make posting a comment obligatory in Page settings), or use a Post text widget. I will create one just to show you how it works. (you can remove it) Underneath you will see the Gallery where all submissions from this task (or page, depending on the settings) are collected. There's also Gallery on the left-side menu where ALL submissions (from all pages) are collected and can also be filtered.

      Now, let's say you'd like your students to reflect on 2.Senses Reading. Again, you could ask them to share their thoughts as a comment, or again use a Post a text widget. (I'll do that for you as an example as well)

      Students can also read each other's reflections and comment on them.

      There's a whole lot other widgets that you can use, feel free to explore and try. For photos, there's a Post a file widget, for example.

       

      Hope this helped! :)

    • Natalie_Forrest
    • 5 yrs ago
    • Reported - view

    Aha, so I was making it was more complicated than it needed to be. Your clarifications do help, I was trying to have a separate place/page for the postings. This is smoother.

     

    So just for clarification sake, so I don't open another 20+ hours to figure this out for sure:

    If I have classes A,B, C all running simultaneously,

    A & B are private/4-5 people in the classes and C is an open group (meaning some people don't want to wait for a group and will do it on their own).

     

    Participants from A, B, & C won't be able to see any other groups postings on the page (like the introduction), OR participants from A & B won't see each other's postings but everyone can/will see C because it's an open class.

     

    So everyone's posts (regardless of private or open) from A,B & C will be visible on the gallery page? I'd like to keep things separated to the classes for privacy as we get into some pretty tender things sometimes.

     

    As an admin, how can I move freely amongst the different classes to post/respond to questions?

     

    Thanks for clarification, I am familiar with widgets but I had spent so much time trying to get the group thing sorted out that I hadn't got there yet. 

     

    Thanks so much,

    Natalie

      • Customer Success & Onboarding Team Leader at OpenLearning
      • Alenka_Prezelj
      • 5 yrs ago
      • Reported - view

      Natalie Forrest Hi! :)

       

      Participants from A, B, & C won't be able to see any other groups postings on the page (like the introduction), OR participants from A & B won't see each other's postings but everyone can/will see C because it's an open class.

       

      No. Participants only see posts from their own class, no matter what type the class is, public or private. Public course just means that anyone can join. Private courses are invite-only or activation code based.

      Students should only be in one class at a time.

      You can run several classes simultaneously (like you mentioned), but only one of them class can be public.

       

      As an admin, how can I move freely amongst the different classes to post/respond to questions?

      You can do this by:

      1) Going to Course setup > General > Change class

      or

       

      2) Here:

       

       

      Option 2 sometimes requires you to refresh the page for the change to actually kick in.

       

      Hope this helps!

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