Groups

Improving the Groups design in Moodle 1.9

Summary of problems:

• Groupings not implemented in modules
• Concept of orphaned groups
• Not integrated into Moodle core
• Potential group sharing problems

Competing proposals

• Groupings OU
• Groupings and Groups

Change groups/groupings relationship

At present both groups and groupings may belong to several courses, you could use one group in several courses and groupings at the same time. This loose relationship of groups and groupings adds too much complexity and is a source of bugs in code.

Solution: Each group and grouping would link the course id directly. Groupings would be only limiting the number of usable groups in activities. This allows free sharing of groups in groupings inside course without potential problems. This idea was proposed by Enrique. See attached db schema.

Benefits:

• fewer tables
• normalized
• simpler SQL
• easier backup/restore implementation
• more compatible with old group implementation in 1.7

Linked groups

maybe in future - it would allow synchronizing of group membership from different courses

Group/grouping cloning

Cloning or duplicating is UI feature only, it helps to prefill new groups/groupings with existing data.

Other code cleanup

Current group code does not follow Moodle coding guide, has several unfinished/broken/obsoleted parts, is not integrated into core, etc. To do:

• integrate setup and upgrade into main lib/db/*.*
• remove columns from groupings table that can be replaced by permissions
• reduce the number of functions, rewrite or fix them, move them into lib/grouplib.php
• rewrite UI in /group/
• implement module and course groupings support, fix all mods to use it (course edit form, mod edit form, etc.)
• fix legacy functions
• documentation

Needed time

1 month for implementation and testing.