Groupoverview

Groupoverview is a resource activity module for Moodle which allows teachers to build a structured overview of all the groups in a course that can then be viewed by the students. Teachers define this structure by creating categories to which the groups of the course can be mapped.
Motivation
Whereas teachers can always see an overview of all the groups and groupings, students can – at the best – only look at one group in the ‘Participants’ view of the course at the same time. There is no way for them to view a list of all the other groups, not to mention the groupings.
However, in a course where students are encouraged to collaborate and to take a look at the other groups’ work on a regular basis, this can quickly become an obstacle. They need an easier and more accessible way to find out what the other groups are doing. This plugin aims to provide such a functionality.
Let’s say for example that each group is working on creating a portfolio about an author who was a leading exponent of a literary movement. These literary movements could be used to divide the groups into different categories such as ‘Realism’, ‘Naturalism’ and ‘Stream of consciousness’.
The teacher then maps the groups working on Gustave Flaubert’s and Theodor Storm’s portfolio to the category ‘Realism’, the groups that are preparing the portfolios of Émile Zola and Stephen Crane to ‘Naturalsim’ and the groups responsible for Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s, Jane Austen’s and Edgar Allan Poe’s portfolios to ‘Romanticism’.
This way, each group quickly knows who they can ask for help on specific subjects and who they have to talk to in order to avoid overlappings of the portfolios and make the overall collection as coherent as possible.
Additionally, the groupings of the course could also be used as categories, so that the students can take a look at them.
Usage
Note: It only makes sense to use this plugin if the group mode of the course is set to ‘Visible Groups’. Keep in mind that even if this is not the case, students _will_ be able to see the name of the other groups. However, the elements of the list of groups link to the specific groups in the ‘Participants’ view of the course which can only be seen by the students when the group mode is set to ‘Visible Groups’ as mentioned above.
Add the module instance into the course.
Define at least one category.
Save the settings for the module instance and keep the editing mode on.
Choose a category for all the groups of the course.
Author
The groupoverview module was developed by Corinna Hertweck <corinnah.development@gmail.com> at the DHBW Karlsruhe, Germany <softwareengineering.dhbw.ka@gmail.com>.
Credits
For the implementation of the Groupoverview plugin, David Mudrák’s Poster plugin was used as a template. It was very helpful in that a lot of its code was reusable and so it gave this plugin its basic structure. Therefore, many thanks to David!
License
Copyright (C) 2016 Corinna Hertweck <corinnah.development@gmail.com>