randomly assign groups in canvas

University Center for Teaching and Learning

How to put students into groups in canvas for collaboration.

• Quick Start
• Instructor Help
• Student Help

What are Groups?

Groups are a small version of a course and used as a collaborative tool where students can work together on group projects and assignments. Instructors can create groups for students to collaborate on group assignments, pages, collaborations, and more. Instructors can also allow students to create their own groups.

How are Groups Created?

• Click on the People link in the Course Navigation Menu.

• Give the Group Set a name (e.g. “Project Groups” or “Discussion Groups”).

• Click Save .
• If you used the self-enroll or random-enroll options, you do not need to do anything further. The number of groups you specified has been created and it is now either up to the students to enroll themselves or the system has already managed enrollments.

• To place students into groups, or to move students from one group to another, drag and drop the cards with student names on them to the desired group.

How Do Students Use Groups?

Students can access their groups from the Home Page of the course or with a Groups button that appears in their Canvas Global Navigation menu once they are enrolled in at least one group.

Clicking the name of their Group will take them to their Group page, where they may use a selection of Canvas content creation and collaboration tools to work with their peers. The tools available for student use within their Group page are:

• Announcements (group members may create Announcements that other group members will see)
• Pages (group members may work together to create Canvas Page to present their work)
• People (see who else is in their group)
• Discussions (have a group discussion board)
• Files (upload, download and share files)
• Collaborations (create collaborative documents using Microsoft Office 365)
• Note: Students may use the Conferences tool to have web conferences, but we recommend they use Zoom instead.

With all of these tools, students have full creator access, meaning that while they are within this group space, they have the same “rights” as teachers do in the main course to create content.

How Do Teachers View Group Work?

Course Teachers and TAs may enter each group’s page and view their work at any time.

• Click on People in your Course Navigation Menu

Instructor Help for Groups

Creating groups.

• How do I add a group set in a course?
• How do I manually create groups in a group set?
• How do I automatically create groups in a group set?
• How do I automatically assign students to groups?
• How do I manually assign students to groups?
• How do I create self sign-up groups in a group set?
• How do I prevent students from switching groups in self sign-up groups?
• How do I allow students to create their own student groups?
• How do I message students who have not signed up for a self sign-up group?

Editing and Viewing Groups

• How do I edit a group set in a course?
• How do I move a student into a different group?
• How do I assign a student leader to a group?
• How do I view all groups in a course as an instructor?
• How do I view content and student activity within a group as an instructor?

Student Help for Groups

• How do I view all groups in a course as a student?
• How do I view my Canvas groups as a student?
• How do I join a group as a student?
• How do I leave a group as a student?
• How do I create a group as a student?
• How do I upload a file to a group?
• How do I start a collaboration in a group?
• How do I create a discussion in a group?
• How do I close a discussion for comments in a group?
• How do I manage groups as a student group leader?
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• Groups in Canvas

Student Groups in Canvas allow instructors the ability to create group discussions, group assignments, and group collaboration spaces.

Creating Groups in Canvas

Instructors can manually or automatically assign students to groups within a group set.

• Click  People  in the Canvas course menu
• Select a Group Set name that briefly identifies your course and the purpose of the groups, e.g. TST_101 Project Group.
• Select how students should be assigned to groups. Select one of the following three options (automatically-created groups, manually-created groups, or student-created groups).

Instructor-Created Groups

Automatically-created groups.

• Select the option to "Split students into ___ groups"
• Require group members to be in the same section*
• Automatically assign a group leader for each group
• Click  Save  to have Canvas create the groups and randomly assign students to the groups.

Manually-Created Groups

• After naming the Group Set, click  Save . An empty Group Set will be created.
• Click  + Group  in near the top-right corner of the page
• Name the group. Optionally set a limit for the number of students you want to be able to place within the group.
• Click  Save  to create the group.
• Repeat steps 2 through 4 for as many groups as are needed for the Group Set.
• Drag and drop students from the list of Unassigned Students into the appropriate groups.

Student-Created Groups

• Click the checkbox next to "Allow self sign-up"
• Limit the number of student members within each group
• Click  Save  to create the Groups within the Group Set
• Provide your students instructions for how to join a group . The People menu item needs to be available to students in your course.

Please Note: Students are allowed to switch groups at any time in student-created groups. Therefore these groups cannot be used for graded assignments.

Using Groups in Canvas

Learn how to do any of the following with Canvas Guides:

• Create a Group Assignment
• Create a Group Discussion
• Access a Group as a Student
• Access a Group as an Instructor

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Keep Teaching

Facilitating group work using canvas.

Group projects, presentations, demonstrations, and similar assignments can be valuable learning experiences for students as collaboration affords shared knowledge building amongst peers. The following process is a straightforward approach to structuring group work via Canvas. For more complex tasks, consider adding additional guidance and checkpoints to ensure high-quality final products.

Note: Due to physical distancing requirements in our current teaching and learning situation, group work should be conducted primarily online.

• Instead of randomly assigning students to groups, consider constructing groups based on students' availability. You can either ask students to provide their typical availability via a Canvas Quiz then manually assign them to a group or allow them to self sign-up to a group based on their schedules.
• Creating groups via People automatically provides a space in Canvas for students to coordinate their work and allows you to collect one deliverable per group.
• You may allow students to complete projects using non-IU technologies, but to ensure access and support equity, always provide a basic process that only requires IU supported technologies.
• The complete set of instructions and grading criteria are provided in the Assignment description.
• Submission type is set to "Online" and the appropriate "Online entry options" are selected.
• If you would like the ability to assign different scores to students in the same group or provide differentiated feedback, select the "Assign grades to each student individually" checkbox.
• A due date is set and matches the information provided in the course syllabus.
• If an availability date is set, it is at minimum two weeks before the due date.

Note: If the assignment is a paper or essay, you may wish to enable Turnitin Plagiarism Review .

• This could be a graded or ungraded assignment. The intention is to create accountability for progress as well as an opportunity for formative feedback from the instructor.
• Consider if you would like to provide individual or group feedback at this checkpoint then select the appropriate options when creating the assignment in Canvas.
• If eliciting feedback via an Assignment, do not select "This is a Group Assignment." Consider setting "Display grade as" option to Complete/Incomplete for ease of grading.
• If eliciting feedback via the Quizzes tool, select the "Graded Survey" for the Quiz type. Collecting feedback via a Graded Survey allows you to provide points for completion and view student survey responses in Speedgrader .

Note: If collaboration and/or joint knowledge construction are not germane to the course learning outcomes, consider modifying the task to an individual project or presentation in efforts to reduce the logistical coordination and psychological load required in group work.

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Getting Started with Groups in Canvas

• Last modification date Updated On February 16, 2022
• Categories: Canvas , Groups
• Categories: collaboration , communication , content differentiation , Getting Started

Canvas  Groups  are a way for instructors to organize students within a course for group assignments, group discussions, or other collaborative work. The Groups tool creates course-like areas in Canvas that include the following navigational options:

• Announcements
• Discussions
• BigBlueButton (Formerly Conferences)
• Collaborations

Managing Group Sets

Managing groups, managing group enrollment, managing group activities & content.

A  Group Set  is a collection of groups. A new Group Set is needed for every assignment that calls for a new grouping of students. When getting started with Group Sets, learn to:

• Create a Group Set with the Canvas guide  How do I add a group set in a course?
• Edit a Group Set with the Canvas guide  How do I edit a group set in a course?

Do not delete a group set after submissions have been made by any group in that set.

Use unique group names in order to ensure students can identify which course the group is from, as all of their groups are listed in a single place outside of the course.

Do not delete a group after a submission has been made by that group.

Groups  are the specific groupings of students within a Group Set.  When getting started with Groups, learn to:

• Automatically create groups in a group set with the Canvas guide  How do I automatically create groups in a group set?
• Manually create groups in a group set with the Canvas guide  How do I manually create groups in a group set?
• Create self sign-up groups in a group set with the Canvas guide  How do I create self sign-up groups in a group set?
• Allow students to create groups with the Canvas guide  How do I allow students to create their own student groups?

Students can only belong to one group in a group set. This precludes them from taking part in group work or group discussions in Canvas in multiple groups for the same assignment/activity.

Do not change membership in a group after a submission has been made by that group.

When enrolling students in Groups, learn to:

• Automatically enroll students in groups with the Canvas guide  How do I automatically assign students to groups?
• Manually enroll students in groups with the Canvas guide  How do I manually assign students to groups?
• Assign a student leader to a group with the Canvas guide  How do I assign a student leader to a group?
• Change group enrollments with the Canvas guide  How do I move a student into a different group?
• Prevent students from changing self sign-up group enrollment with the Canvas guide  How do I prevent students from switching groups in self sign-up groups?

While students can manage their Group spaces in Canvas, instructors are able to generate activities for groups and view group content. When managing group activities and content, learn to:

• Grade Group Assignments in the SpeedGrader with the Canvas guide  How do I grade group assignments in SpeedGrader?
• Create a graded Group Discussion with the Canvas guide  How do I assign a graded discussion to a course group?
• View a group’s files with the Canvas guide  How do I view group files as an instructor?
• View a group’s content and student group activity with the Canvas guide  How do I view content and student activity within a group as an instructor?

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2 September 2022

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Using Groups in Canvas 

This article will show the different options for groups in Canvas

Using groups in Canvas is a great way of organising students into cohorts outside of the enrolled Lecture/ Tutorial/ Lab sections. There are different options for creating groups: 

• Allow self-sign up in a defined number of groups 
• Automatically assign students to a defined number of groups 
• Manually create groups and randomly assign students 
• Manually create groups and manually assign students 

For students to be organised into groups within the same section, either enable Canvas to automatically allocate the students or manually create the groups by selecting and dragging students one by one.   Requiring group members to be in the same section in self-sign up groups will NOT work as most courses have one main lecture stream in which all students are enrolled.   For students to be added to more than one group, you will need to create and manage multiple Group Sets 

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Group Discussions

Canvas Teaching Tips are distributed by the Dodge Family College of Arts and Sciences Online and Academic Technology Services office and offer SHORT helpful tips about Canvas, online learning, and academic technology.

Click here for more Canvas Teaching Tips

Group discussions allow you to create Canvas discussions where only a subset—say 5-12—of your students are able to interact with each other. This is useful when your course has more students than can easily interact on one discussion board or for group projects. You can keep the same groups for each discussion or change them throughout the term.

Steps to Creating Group Discussions

Step 1 – set up group set(s).

First, you’ll need to set up your group set(s):

How do I add a group set in a course?

If you don’t want Canvas to randomly assign students to each group (as might be the case for group projects), make sure you next assign students to each group: 

How do I manually create groups in a group set?

STEP 2 – Create the Group Discussions

Once you’ve created and populated your group sets, you are now ready to set up your discussions themselves:

How do I create a graded group discussion in a course?

Canvas help is easy to find and always available. Click the Help button in the Canvas global navigation for 24 hour support and great help guides.

Click here to view a guide on using Canvas Help

Learn more!

If you'd like to learn more about this Canvas tip, or Canvas in general, please contact our office at 405.325.5854 or [email protected] .

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• Canvas: How to Create a Quiz with a Question Group…

Canvas: How to Create a Quiz with a Question Group for Randomization

You can create a quiz using a question group. Question groups allow you to place multiple questions within a group for students to answer. You can choose the number of questions that should be answered from the group and how many points to assign each question. Creating a question group randomizes questions within a quiz.

• How do I create a quiz with a question group to randomize quiz questions?
• How do I create a quiz with a question group linked to a question bank?

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