Many companies have different levels of training for different job classifications. For example, in a construction company everyone in the company needs basic safety training. Employees in the field will need more advanced safety training for working around heavy equipment. Finally, a few employees who handle hazardous materials will need very specific, advanced safety training on the handling of hazardous materials. In this section, we will explore how to use groups and groupings to filter the resources and activities in a course so that only the employees who need certain training will receive it.

In Moodle, a group is a group of users who can work together on an activity while remaining separate from other groups. For example, if a forum is set up for groups, members of the group will only be able to reply to forum postings from members of their own group. If you choose this option, you can even prevent them from seeing any posts from members of other groups.

Groupings are used to restrict access to activities based on group membership. A grouping is composed of one or more groups. Once you have created a grouping, you can limit access to an activity to members of one or more groupings. In our example in this section, we will restrict access to advanced training to only those users who need it based on their group membership.