Group Work

Forums is the main discussion area for every course. It is important for you to understand how groups are setup in forums so that you can have students in selected groups for specific discussion topics.

Using Groups in Forums

Groups are most commonly used in Forums. Using groups in Forums allows the instructor to create individual forum discussion threads for each group. These separate discussions can be used to provide groups with a space in which to communicate about group projects or to respond to discussion questions collaboratively.

Set Up a Forum for Group Use

1. Create a General Forum in your LATTE course. (Click here for more detailed instructions.)
2. Once you have named the forum and determined its other settings, select either “Separate groups” or “Visible groups” from the Group mode drop-down menu.

   
   

    
   • Separate groups: use this setting when you do not want groups to view each other’s work. For example, if you want to pose a single question (or set of questions) to the whole class, separate groups will allow each group to respond to the question(s) without being able to view other group’s responses.
   • Visible groups: use this setting when you do want groups to be able to view each other’s work. For example, if you want to assign each group a different question (or set of questions), visible groups will allow each group to work on their own questions and to view other groups’ responses to their questions.

3. Click Save and return to course.

Creating Group-Only Forum Discussions

1. To create a forum thread for a specific group, click on the forum you would like to alter.
2. While inside the forum you can decide if you would like to make a forum post for a specific group or for all of the groups from the drop-down menu next to "Separate Groups."
    
3. Click the Add a new discussion topic button.
   
    
4. Post to your discussion topic by clicking the “Post to forum” button.
   
    
5.  Having returned to the Forum page, repeat steps 1-3 for any other groups (or discussion topics).

6. Once you have created all of your discussion topics, return to the forum page. To view all topics in the forum, select “All participants” from the Separate/Visible groups drop down menu. You will see a complete listing of discussions in the forum with a column specifying their group.

For a demonstration on how to create groups, please watch this video.

It is helpful to go through each group to make sure that it was set up correctly.

Also, it is important to explain group work so that everyone knows how it will be used.