Creating a group

Groups help community members collaborate on projects, events, or network activities. Groups can be public or private. After you join a group, you can participate in discussions and receive group emails and notifications.

We've created this guide to help you get the most out of your group. It covers

• Features 
• Requirements 
• How to create a group 
• Why forums don't work like email groups
  

Features

• Community members will be able to see your group in the Groups section (and your group may also be featured on the home page)
• Public or private (only members can see content)
• Can make the group by invitation only
• Send an email to all group members (messages are not archived)
• Can integrate text, widgets, discussion forums, an RSS feed, and a comment wall
• Group members can be promoted to administrators to help manage the group

Requirements

• Clear purpose — Explain why you are creating the group and what members can expect if they decide to join. Groups, whether public or private, should facilitate participation and collaboration.
• A leader — Groups need leaders. Identify at least one administrator (you can have several) who will be responsible for the group, answer questions, and coordinate activities.
• Engagement plan — How will you reach out to group members and keep them engaged? How will you connect your group with the broader community? While activity within public groups shows up on the Latest Activity column on each page, content (discussions, comments, etc.) will not show up in search results. So you'll need think about if and how to share group updates with the telecentre.org  community. You may, for example, post blogs highlighting your group's activity. You can also contact one of our Community Learning Coordinators (CLCs) to let them know about interesting developments.

How to create a group

• Contact a CLC before you start to discuss your objectives. They can advise you on the best strategy and share best practices.
  
• Go to the Groups page and select Create a Group.
• Upload an image. It will look best if sized at 175x175 pixels.
  
• Insert a short description stating the purpose of the group and whether it is public or private.
  
• Select the features you want: text box, discussion forum, RSS reader, comment wall. You can change these as your group evolves.
  
• Public or private? Decide if you would like the group to be public (any member can see the group, join, and post content) or private (only invited members can join the group and post content). Choose carefully — the privacy level cannot be changed after you create the group. If your group is private, non-members will only see basic group information (name, image, description, number of members, date of latest activity), but they will not be able to browse members or content.
  
• Determine if members can send messages (via email) to the entire group. Messages are not archived.
• Wait for approval. A CLC will review your group information and contact you with any questions. We do this to ensure that all group leaders receive support and advice.
  

Why forums don't work like email groups
Groups are good for sharing information, updating members, and collaborating. They have forums within them that can be used for discussions.

But if your primary purpose for creating the group is discussion, be aware that members do not automatically receive notifications of forum discussions — All participants must manually opt to be notified of new discussions, and must opt to be notified of new replies to each discussion that interests them (see instructions).

This is different from an email group (such as Dgroups), where all members are automatically emailed replies. So group leaders can not be sure whether members have received notification of the latest replies.

If you opt to have a forum within your group, we encourage you to regularly remind members that they can choose to be notified of new forum discussions. And send a periodic update using the "Message" feature to inform them of new and interesting content in the group.

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