Part of what we do in our courses is to have Groups of students in the course to have smaller discussions, or to work on projects. Also we use group discussions to do Group work. For example, all groups work on or discuss the same question; in other cases, an instructor may assign different topics to different groups.

This would require the capability to create groups within a course, as well as assign students to groups, as well as create discussions for the groups, and be able to grade them either 1) individually in the group; or 2) as a group, and all receive the same score.