How to send a message to groups of students or participants

Relevant to Moodle 3.8 from September 2020 onwards

How to send a message/email to Groups

You need to have created the Groups within your module before this will work.  How to create groups and groupings 

Step 1:  enabling groups within your module 

1. Navigate to the module you want to work on and click on the 'Actions Cogwheel' menu 
2. From the dropdown select 'Edit settings'
3. Under the "Groups" heading change "Group mode" to 'Separate groups' or 'Visible groups'
   From the "Group mode" drop-down box choose 'Visible groups' or 'Separate groups'. With visible groups students can see the other groups, but not interact with them. Separate groups means that students will only see their own group.
4. Set "Force Group mode" to 'Yes'
5. Scroll to the bottom of the screen and click on the 'Save changes' button.

Note:  By setting "Force group mode" to 'Yes', the setting you choose (e.g., Visible or Separate groups) will automatically be applied to any new Activities you create (not to activities created prior to the change) therefore make sure you change the settings for each activity if you require it to be different.

Step 2 - Manual creation of a group and adding students to a group

1. In the module click the 'Hamburger menu' and select Participants

2. Click the 'Cogwheel Actions' menu icon and select 'Groups'

3. Click the 'Create group' button

4. Type in a "Group name" and optional "Description" (the description is displayed above the list of group members on the 'Participants' page)

5. Click on the 'Save changes' button

6. Select the group  to which you want to add participants, then click on the 'Add' / 'Remove' users button

7. In the "Potential members" list, select the users you want to add to the group. Multiple users may be selected using the Crtl key.

8. Click the 'Add' button to add the users to the group

Step 3 - Contacting a particular group

 This process sends a message to the students through Moodle's internal instant messaging system.

1. Go to 'Hamburger Menu' and select Participants
   You can now see a list of everyone enrolled on the module.  
2. To choose a particular group to send a message/email to, use the arrow next to the "Search keyword or select filter" box to drop down the list of filters.

3. Scroll down and choose the group. The list of participants will update to show only the participants relevant to this group.

4. Either select the individual groups members (via check boxes) or 'Select all' (at the bottom) and then in the "With selected users..." drop-down box choose 'Send a message'

Notes:

This process sends a message to each student. They receive it as...

1. If they are ONLINE it pops up as a message and goes into their Messages folder.

2. If they are OFFLINE  then it goes into their messages folder and is sent as an email.

How instant messages are received is governed by the individual's profile settings. See Help sheet on How to use Moodle messaging for more information

There is NO subject or module context on the message - is it  sent from one person (teacher) to another (student) so you should include the name of the module in the message to give it a context.

Similar tutorials

The following other resources are also relevant to this topic:

• How to send students on your module an email
• How To create groups and groupings
• How to release resources to students at different times or in different groups
• How to release grades to students on a specified date (or to a particular group of students)