Don't be discouraged by the idea of manually populating a group with students. It takes only a few clicks to place a student in a group. To create and populate a group, perform the following steps:

1. Select Course administration | Users | Groups. This takes you to the Groups page.
2. Click on the Create group button. The Create group page is displayed.
3. You must enter a Name for the group. This will be the name that teachers and administrators see when they manage a group.
4. The Group ID number is used to match up this group with a group identifier in another system. If your organization uses a system outside Moodle to manage students and this system categorizes students in groups, you can enter the group ID from the other system in this field. It does not need to be a number. This field is optional.
5. The Group description field is optional. It's good practice to use this to explain the purpose and criteria for belonging to a group.
6. The Enrolment key is a code that you can give to students who self-enroll in a course. When the student enrolls, they are prompted to enter the enrollment key. On entering this key, the student is enrolled in the course and made a member of the group.
7. If you add a picture to this group, when members are listed (as in a forum), the member will have the group picture shown next to them. Here's an example of a contributor to a forum on http://www.moodle.org with her group memberships:

8. Click on the Save changes button to save the group.
9. On the Groups page, the group appears in the left-hand side column. Select this group.
10. In the right-hand side column, search for and select the students that you want to add to this group:

Note the Search fields. These enable you to search for students to meet a specific criteria. You can search the first name, last name, and email address. The other part of the user's profile information is not available in this search box.