Nice-to-have: Group communication features

[Dagefoerde]

Now that we have a block which displays a student's groups, the following feature would be a nice addition:

For each group, display all (other) members that are also in that group. There could be one line per group member, displaying the member's name as well as a link 📧 to send a message to that member.

This can become rather complex though; consider the following scenarios:

1. The teacher does not want students to be able to see other members of their groups.
2. The teacher wants students to be able to see other members, but only for selected groups or only for groups that are in selected groupings.

ad 2.: For example, each student might be assigned to two groups: One small exercise group, comprising people that collaborate on tasks and hand in assignments together, and one large attendance group, specifying e.g. a room & date, in which exercises are discussed in public. This scenario is rather common at our university. In this scenario, the teacher might want users to be able to see members of the former, since they are collaborating anyway, but not of the latter.

[mudrd8mz]

the following feature would be a nice addition

Could be. But also let me remind a good old principle "do one thing and do it well". Sometimes trying to do much in a single plugin can actually harm it.

[abias]

Hi all,

I would second David's statement. We don't see a real use for group communication in this block.

Don't hesitate to implement it if you really want to do it - but please remember to add an admin setting to disable this functionality for the whole site then.

Thanks,
Alex

[Dagefoerde]

David, Alex, thanks a lot for your input. Quite some time has passed since we initiated this discussion and we definitely agree with you. That was part of the reason why we created the new https://github.com/learnweb/moodle-mod_groupmembers resource module. As soon as it is approved (https://tracker.moodle.org/browse/CONTRIB-6886) we could try to make a useful, optional(!) integration with mod_groupmembers.

For example, if the resource module is installed and an instance of it exists in a given course, the groups block could link to that instance at an appropriate place.