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.
- In the menu bar at the top of your course page, select the Course Management button (gear icon ). The Course Management panel will open.
- On the Course Management panel, under User Links, select Groups. The Edit course groups page will open.
- Click the Auto-create groups button. The Auto-create groups page will open.
- In the Naming scheme field, enter @ group.
- From the Auto create based on drop-down menu, choose Use Student names.
- In the Group/member count field, enter 1.
- In the Group members area, from the Select members with role drop-down menu, choose Student.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.