Working with groups

Mahara groups provide a shared space where users can collaborate, communicate, and organise activities around a common purpose.

Groups can be used for teaching and learning, project work, communities of practice, or administrative teams, allowing members to share pages, portfolios, files, discussions, and resources in one place.

Depending on the group's settings, membership can be open to everyone or managed by a group owner, making groups a flexible way to support collaboration, peer interaction, resource sharing, and the development of online learning communities.

Visit the Mahara manual for detailed guidance on using groups and creating groups.

In this guide:

Using groups in Mahara
Group setup and management

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Using groups in Mahara

Groups can support collaboration by providing a dedicated space for people to work together and share resources. Within a group, members can participate in co-creating pages and editing pages and collections and sharing files and portfolios.

Groups are particulary useful for courses, projects, and communities of practice. Just some example use cases include:

Module resource sharing - a module leader creates a group for a specific cohort of students and shares lecture slides, reading lists, seminar materials and assessment guidance all in one central location.
Collaborative group projects - students working on a group assignment use a Mahara group to create and edit pages together, adding their project files, sharing research findings and to document their progress throughout the project.
Professional practice or placement support - students on a placement could use the group to share their reflective journals, evidence their learning and experiences, while tutors and supervisors can monitor progress, make comments and offer guidance.
Peer review activities - a tutor could create a group where students share portfolio pages with their cohort, and provide constructive peer feedback as part of a learning activity.

Group setup and management

Find and join groups

You can search for groups you own, belong to, or have been invited to, or can join (hidden groups will only appear if you have been invited to join the group).

From the Main menu on the dashboard, select Groups or select the Engage button on your dashboard.
Use the Search drop down to select your search scope, this is All my groups as default.
- All my groups – Groups you're a member of or invited to
- Groups I'm in – All groups you belong to
- Groups I own – Groups you administer
- Groups I'm invited to – Groups you've been invited to
- Groups I can join – Open groups available to join
- Groups I'm not in – Groups you're not a member of, including pending invitations
- All groups – All visible groups
Select Search to view results
Results display the group title, administrator, description, type, and member count (if visible)
Select Join this group to immediately join an open group - note you can leave a group at any time after joining
If you want to join a group that needs the approval of the group administrator, select the Request to join this group button next to the group. The administrator will receive a notification and will decide whether to admit you to the group.

Creating a group

To create a new group, navigate to your dashboard, select Engage or from the Main menu, choose Groups and select Create Group.

Complete the Basic information:

Group Name - enter a name for your group. This field is required
Associate with Institution - the group is automatically associated with the institution of the person creating it
Group Description - provide a brief description of the purpose of the group
Under the Settings tab, choose options for Membership, Content, Visibility, Editability and General
Open - set to Yes to create an open membership group. Anyone can join without administrator approval
Request - set to Yes to allow users to request membership. Requests require approval from a group administrator
Friend Invitations - set to Yes to allow group members to invite friends to join the group. Group administrators can always send invitations regardless of this setting. Accepted invitations automatically add users to the group.
Recommendations - set to Yes to allow members to recommend the group to their friends. For request-membership groups, recommended users must still be approved by a group administrator before joining.
Content creation and editing - choose who can create and edit content within the group
Group category - select a category to make the group easier to find
Shared portfolio notifications - choose who is notified when a group portfolio is created or a member shares a portfolio with the group. Note: For large groups, limit this to tutors and/or administrators to avoid excessive notifications.
Comment notifications - choose who is notified when comments are placed on a group page and artefacts.

Press the green Save group button to save the group or select Cancel to abort setting up the group.

Add members to the group

Once you have created your group, you can add members to the group.

On your dashboard, select Groups from the Main menu or click the Engage button
Select the group you want to add members to
This opens up the Group menu
Select the green Invite members button on the right hand side of the page
Search for your users in the Search box and select the user you want to add. They will be added to the Potential members box. Repeat the steps if you want to invite multiple users at once.
Select the people in the Potential members box and click the arrow to add them to the People to be invited box.
Click Submit to send a notification to each of the people selected.

Manage a group homepage

The Group Homepage is the central space for a group. It provides a quick overview of the group and easy access to all group areas. The information displayed depends on both the default settings and the options selected when the group was created.

For full guidance on managing the group homepage and to find out how administrators and regular group members can use the homepage, visit the Mahara manual.

To navigate to a group homepage, from the Main menu select Groups > select the group name and this opens up the group homepage.
On this page, the Group administrator can:

- Click the grey pencil on the right hand side of the page to make changes to the group homepage.
- Click the Settings button to make changes to the group settings.
- Click the Copy button to duplicate the group. The group’s files, journals, pages, collections and group settings are copied. Group membership and forums are not copied
- Click the Delete button if you want to permanently delete the group. Group members will receive a notification about the deletion.

On the Group Menu, the following options are available for administrators:

Group home - opens up your group homepage
Members - allows you to see current members or invited members
Portfolios - enables you to access portfolios shared with the group
Share - allows you to share group portfolios with others by setting access permissions for account holders or make them public. The share tab is only visible to members of the group with edit permissions
Forums - allows you to create a new forum, add new topics for discussion, edit or delete the forum
Reusable content - access your artefacts that have been shared with the group (files, journals and plans).

The Mahara manual has additional guidance on setting up and using forums within your groups.

Share a group portfolio

Digital Learning

Working with groups

Table of contents

Using groups in Mahara

Group setup and management