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Create One-Person Groups Named for Individual Students in Moodle

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For certain activities such as Forums, to create private spaces where you can interact with individual students, you will need to create one-person groups for each student. (Activities such as Assignments and Quizzes are "private" by default).

This is most commonly used to create individual journals using a forum activity. See Set Up Student Journals in Moodle.

Auto-create Groups with Individual Student Names

The most useful naming convention when working with one-person groups is to name each group for the student it contains. There is a quick way to generate these student-named groups automatically with the Auto-create groups tool.

  1. In the menu bar at the top of your course page, select the Course Management button (gear icon Course Management button looks like 3 gears). The Course Management panel will open.
  2. On the Course Management panel, under User Links, select Groups. The Edit course groups page will open.
  3. Click the Auto-create groups button. The Auto-create groups page will open.
  4. In the Naming scheme field, enter @ group.
  5. From the Auto create based on drop-down menu, choose Use Student names.
  6. In the Group/member count field, enter 1.
  7. In the Group members area, from the Select members with role drop-down menu, choose Student.
  8. You need to place your single-student groups in a Grouping so that you can assign an activity to the Grouping: click the Grouping heading to expand options.
  9. From the Grouping of auto-created groups drop-down, select New grouping and in the Grouping name field, enter a name (e.g., "Single-student Groups"). For more information about Groupings, see Create Groupings in Moodle.
  10. Click Submit. You'll be returned to the Groups tab, and in the Groups column (at left) you'll see each student's name followed by a (1), indicating the number of students in the group.
  11. To check and make sure the single-student groups were added to your new Grouping, click the Groupings tab. You should see the Grouping listed, followed by the Groups named for students.