Groups are used to

• teach multiple course sections using one course page
• filter grade book
• for group assignment submissions (set up groups first)
• group discussions and collaborative activities
• provide access to resources or activities to a specific student or group of students (using resource or activity Restrictions)

Groupings are used to

• make resources or activities available to specific groups of users
• avoid confusion when multiple group schemes are used in a course (e.g. one set of groups for a set of discussions, another set of groups for another set of discussions, and a third set of groups for a group assignment)

Resources and Activities can be configured with no groups, visible groups or separate groups.

• No groups - activities and resources are available to everyone in the course once they are visible in a course
• Visible - group members interact in their own group, but can see what other groups are doing.  Mainly used for Discussion Forums.

Example: a student in one group can view forum postings from another group, but they can't respond to those postings, only to postings from within their own group.

• Separate (hidden) - each group member can only see and respond to forum postings from other members of their own group; postings from everyone else are hidden.