I have a custom list that I would like to populate with items based off of an AD Group, which is a list of students. One of our teachers wants a running markbook his department to use, but I am not sure there would be a way to get the list to be populated from an AD group
We are using Sharepoint 2010 and Sharepoint designer 2010
All of the answers below require custom development and using Visual Studio. If you have no experience with that you should look up a commercial / open source solution that is ready to be used.
The answer may depend on wich version of SharePoint you have (Foundtion vs. Standard vs. Enterprise).
You can create a custom field type that connects to AD and gets the list of members (see the related steps here). Then create a custom SharePoint list that includes this field type and the other fields required for the markbook.
Alternatively (I would prefer this one) you can create a managed assembly connector for the Business Connectivity Services (BCS) to access the required data in AD. A similar sample (connection with the File System) is described here.
You can display the information in this case either via an External List or using the Business Data Web Part (enterprise feature).
To create the markbook, you should create a standard custom SharePoint list again, add a fild type of External Data, specify your external content type and select the required field (like Display Name of the AD user), and optionally other fields to display with. See details here.
