Groups

The Groups tool allows a teacher to create and manage working groups of learners. This is a simple organizational tool allowing for the automatic or manual grouping of learners, yet from a pedagogical point of view this can be a very powerful tool for online learning. Group work encourages peer support and interaction, helping a student overcome that sense of isolation which is one of the main challenges he/she may face in online study. In conjunction with other tools, the use of the _Groups_tool can help to develop team-work skills, providing opportunities for task leadership and for mutual reflection and feedback between learners. As such , it can help students keep on task and enrich their online study experience considerably.

The Groups tool allows a teacher to assign a range of Chamilo tools (documents, agenda, assignments, announcements, forum, wiki and chat) to a group which can be configured as private to the group, effectively providing students with secure online workspaces which cannot be viewed by other learners or groups.