Cohorts in Moodle allow users to be categorized and allocated across courses. Cohorts provide benefits like corporate confidentiality by separating client groups and easier enrollment. Cohorts are collections of users that can be assigned across a system or course categories. The key differences are that cohorts can be allocated to multiple courses while groups and groupings are only within a single course. Coordinators and administrators can create and manage cohorts to customize what users can access.

1. Cohorts in Moodle 2.0 Exploring the Possibilities... LindyKlein.com

4. Why Cohorts? Corporate confidentiality (eg Client A must not see Client B’s courses) Collections of users independent of teaching courses, such as community groups (eg All of Year 9 students) Easier enrolment options! Uses in your context?

5. What Are Cohorts? Simply put, using cohorts is a way of categorising users in your Moodle system... The term “cohort” has been introduced to signal the difference between cohorts, groups and groupings (as opposed to the previous term “system-wide groups”) A cohort is a collection of users, that can be allocated across a Moodle system as a whole, or across course categories

6. So what’s the Difference?? Cohort – a collection of users within a system-wide or course category Group – a collection of users within a course Grouping – a collection of groups within a course

7. The Difference... Groups and Groupings cannot be allocated to other courses – Cohorts can!

8. So Who Can Create Cohorts? By default, only the system administrator and manager can create, delete and manage cohorts BUT: This can be added to other roles, by setting privileges in the define role area (Site Administration>Users>Permissions>Define Roles):

9. How Are Cohorts Created? One of two ways, either through Users or Courses: Or

10. Cohort Creation - Users Two great YouTube videos are available demonstrating how to create cohorts from the User options – check them out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMWZW_n0eVI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dMqaeOGXuHQ

11. Cohort Creation - COurses

12. Cohort Creation – Courses cont’d

13. Cohort Creation – Courses Cont’d

14. Seeing Cohorts Cohorts can only be seen in the context they were created for – so be careful!

15. Customising What Users Can See Image courtesy k8marieuk, available from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1092504 Be aware that the front page settings override cohort settings, so if you’re using cohorts to keep courses only visible to cohort-based users, don’t enable visibility of courses or categories on the Front Page!

16. Altering cohort enrolments Remember, when you unenrol a cohort, you remove all the user data from the course! Same goes for when you remove a user from a cohort – all the data is removed with them! Image courtesy ba1969, avail from http://www.sxc.hu/photo/1344755

17. Ways You Can Use Cohorts! Cohorts are great for when you have naturally occuring categories of users that are spread across more than one course enrolment. For example, a collection of Science teachers needing a space to share ideas, a collection of students all studying the same degree, but many different courses, or corporate clients who need their own private spaces.