Moodle 2.0

Chapter 4
You can change this setting for individual activities. For example, suppose
you want to run groups through a course separately. However, you have one
project for which you want all students, in all groups, to be able to see each
other's work. You can choose Separate for the course, and then for that one
project, override the course setting by using Visible for the project. Then,
only for that one project, each group can see the other groups' work.
Running separate groups through a course versus having
separate courses
Using Separate groups allows you to reuse a course for
many groups, while giving the impression to each group
that the course is theirs alone. However, this doesn't work
well for a Weekly format course, where the weeks are
dated. That's because the course home page displays the
dates for each week. If you start each group on a different
date, the weekly dates will become incorrect.
If you're running a Topics format course, you can easily
reuse the course by separating your students into groups
and running each group individually. Later, you'll see how
to assign teachers to a course. You can also assign a teacher
to a group, so that each teacher can see only his or her
students.
If you run several groups through a course, and those
groups are at different points in the course, be aware that
the teacher cannot regulate the flow of students through
the course by turning topics off and on. That is, you cannot
reveal just Topic 1 until the group has finished it, and then
reveal Topic 2 until the group has worked through it, and
then Topic 3 and so on. If you tried this while running
several groups who were at different points in the course,
you'd be turning off topics that some groups still need.
If you really must enforce the order of topics by revealing
them one at a time, create a copy of the course for each
group, or use conditional activities to reveal activities after
previous ones have been completed by a student.
20. Normally, the course's group mode can be overridden for each activity.
When the course creator adds an activity, the teacher can choose a different
group mode than the default group mode set for the course. However, when
Force group mode is set to Yes, all activities are forced to have the same
group mode as the course.
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