Putting students into groups is useful, particularly when group projects need to be completed. However, placing students in groups can be fraught with problems, one of which is unhappy students wanting to be shuffled into another group after a personality clash. With self-nominated groups, students take on the responsibility for choosing which group they will belong to.

Within Moodle, there are many relationships that can exist between users holding different roles; students can have teachers and group-mates, and teachers can have students, fellow teachers, markers, and administrators. Keeping track of who holds these roles can be aided by one simple, flexible block.

Learning management systems allow a greater variety of activities than has been possible with traditional forms of education. With assignments, quizzes, forum discussions, materials to read and other activities to complete, it's easy for students to lose track of what they have done and what they need to do next. Helping students manage their time will assist them to complete tasks, and hopefully to stay with the course. This is the focus of one block.

So you've been trying some new, dazzling approaches to teaching and you want to know what the students think about it. Moodle provides some fixed educational surveys, but they are unlikely to ask the questions you really want answered. Well, there is a module that allows you to create the survey you want.