Hi everyone,
Just a comment regarding Tip 13: "Did you know you can Import Groups?"
During the Friday morning presentation I was asked in the chat scroll why you would choose to backup & restore / import a backup of just groups when you could use a CSV to import students into groups in the course. (If you're not familiar with how to do that, check out the first Fortnightly Tip - Bulk Uploading of Users)
I wasn't particularly happy with how I answered - it was a little of a non-answer. That's understandable during a presentation, and perhaps one of the problems with iMoot as a presenter is the chat scroll can be a distraction. But I think it was a valid question; why did I find this an interesting way to accomplish the problem of putting the same students into the same groups across courses?
Yesterday the answer dawned on me - I had forgotten the scenario.
This tip came from some clients who had this solution to the problem they faced - groups across multiple courses. I had suggested using cohorts. In the presentation I mentioned they couldn't use cohorts for some reason. Had I remembered the reason, I would have had the answer as to why they couldn't use a CSV.
The clients were a team from a large organisation that uses one Moodle. And this team did not have Site Administration privileges. They didn't have access to creating and managing cohorts, and they definitely didn't have access to importing users from a CSV.
I think their solution was brilliant, and I certainly concede that it's not a problem everyone would face. Perhaps that's why I thought it was a brilliant solution - in most of the Moodles I work with, I have that ability to import users. This is a handy way Teachers and Course Creators can do the same.
Sorry for that answer two weeks late. I knew there was a method to the madness. :)