Hidden Groups
When creating a site group there a number of new options that allow you to control who can see the group and it’s members.
Education Technology Support is currently reviewing the roles that can see hidden groups within sites, and access is likely to become more restricted in the future.
The new Group membership visibility option offers 4 choices:
Visible - The group will be visible all the time
Only visible to members
Only see own membership
Hidden - The group and it’s members can only be seen users who have the ability view hidden groups.
In addition to the visiblity option, when either Visible or Only visible to members is selected, the Show group in dropdown menu for activities in group mode option is displayed.
If this is checked the group will be displayed in activities that support group modes, and users can use this to switch between the different groups if they have the ability to do so.
Uses for Hidden Groups
Reasonable Adjustments
The creation of a hidden group for reasonable adjustments allows a group to be created with no members ahead of time. Once created Group Overrides on Assignment and Quiz activities (and other supported activities) can be created to adjust the constraints applied.
This can be done ahead of there being any students in the site.
Once students have been enrolled into the site, they can be allocated to the relevant hidden group to gain the adjustment already set up.
The group visibility being set to “hidden” means that their membership of this adjustment group is not disclosed, other than to the relevant privileged user roles.