Groups & "No Groups"???

Using Groups in Moodle is a useful strategy for instructors:

Why use groups?

• You are a teacher in a course where you have several classes and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you only see one class at a time.
• You are a teacher sharing a course with other teachers and you want to filter your activities and gradebook so you don’t see the students from your colleagues’ classes.
• You want to allocate a particular activity, resource or topic section to just one class or set of users and you don’t want others to see it.
• This screencast about using groups also highlights the benefits of using groups.

Why can groups be a bad thing?
Well, they really aren't, however you do need to pay attention to what it means to be in a group.  You don't want to be "filtered out" of any activity, if you really need it!
The Setting: No Groups is often overlooked when giving students access to things like posting to a forum.  No Groups means ALL students can see/post/reply, and if a student can't do these things, take a look at this setting:

*This can be done at the "Course" level (Gear - Edit Settings), or for individual Forums/Activities (Gear - Turn Editing On - Edit Settings for each activity)

You can "force" this setting so any Forum or Activity automatically changes to "NO Groups".  To do this:  From the Gear - edit settings:

 Change Group Mode to "No Groups" and Force group mode: Yes, means All students will be able to see, post, etc.  This is the most common setting, unless you actually choose to use groups and filters.  By Forcing this change, it will apply to any current forums/activities already in place.