Groups

Introduction

Groups are extremely handy containers for both (1) content and (2) user segregation. Like Courses and unlike Folders, Groups have members. Think of a Group as:

• Mini- or sub-course
• Folder where you can control access.

Groups can be nested inside other groups, but not inside Folders (of course, Folders can exist inside Groups).

Roles

Like Courses and Workspaces, we have three roles:

• Admin:

An Admin can make any change to the container. Specifically, only the Admin can add / remove members, change member roles.

• Edit:

Edit roles allow members to change the content. For example, you can add content, rename content titles, add Wiki articles.

• Read:

This is the default role for students, who only have read-access to child content (unless visibility affected as shown in the next paragraph).

Members

Groups are unique in that they inherit their members from the top-most container (i.e. Course or Workspace).

In order to access a group that is inside another group, the path has to be clear. In other words, if a Course member is denied access to a Group, he / she is also denied access to all subgroups (even if they are members of that subgroup).

Use Cases

Typical use cases include:

• Separating class into groups of students based on section, while the main course has common content for all students
• Grouping students for larger projects or group assignments
• Grouping content to temporarily hide it until we are ready to show it (like folders)