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Gauchospace Groups and Groupings

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Introduction to Groups and Groupings in GauchoSpace

Groups and Groupings allow participants to work together in groups that are subsets of the participants in the class and make Activities and Resources available to (i.e. restrict from others) subgroups of the participants in your course.

Groups

Groups are collections of participants within a course. A group can include any subset of participants, from none to all participants. Functionally, Groups allow you to segregate your participants within an Activity. That is, within the same Activity, participants can work with other members of their Group, but not with people outside their Group. Contributions to the Activity from members of other Groups will be invisible or read-only, depending on your settings.

Groups are either created by the instructor, created by GOLD and assigned to a TA, or created automatically when two course rosters have merged. For teaching assistant groups, GauchoSpace will automatically add an assigned Teaching Assistant's name and the date/time/location to a section group. If a TA is added later, they will be assigned to their section and their name will be added to that group. If a TA's name is not listed with the group, you can edit the group name to make that change. For grading purposes, the TAs can sort submitted assignments by sections/groups.

How to create a Group

  1. Log in to GauchoSpace and enter your course site.
  2. In the Administration block, click Users, then click Groups.
  3. Click Create Group.
  4. Give the group a name.
  5. Click Save Changes.
  6. Repeat steps 3-5 until you have created all desired groups.

To add users to your group:

  1. Still in the Groups area. Find the group into which you would like to add users, and single-click on that group to highlight it.
  2. Click Add/remove users button.
  3. You will see all of your users (students, TAs and instructors) in the Potential Member list. Click on a name to highlight it.
    • Tip: to select multiple users from the Potential Members list press the CTRL (PC) or the Command (Mac) button on your keyboard as you click each person's name.
    • If a user is already in a group, it will show that in the Selected user's membership section, to the right of the Potential members box.
  4. Click the Add button.
  5. Repeat for all groups until you have put every student into a group.

Change your group name:

This includes groups automatically created for TA sections and merged rosters.

  1. Log in to GauchoSpace and enter your course site.
  2. In the Administration block, click Users, then click Groups.
  3. Highlight the group whose name you wish to change.
  4. Click Edit group settings.
  5. Change the group name as desired.
  6. At the bottom of the page, click Save changes.

Auto-create your group

Using the Auto-create group option can be useful for grading purposes and group projects. This will let GauchoSpace randomly sort your students into groups either based off of number of students in each group or number of groups you want created.

  1. Log in to GauchoSpace and enter your course site.
  2. In the Administration block, click Users, then click Groups.
  3. Click Auto-create groups.
  4. Edit the settings.
  5. Click Submit.
  6. On the next screen you will see your new groups and the members of the groups on the right.

Groupings

Groupings are collections of Groups ("groups of groups"). Functionally, the Groupings setting allows you to segregate participants between Activities or Resources. That is, you may allocate an entire Activity or Resource to an individual Grouping (e.g. Groups A & C), making it invisible or read-only to other Groupings. In certain cases, an Instructor or Teaching Assistant may wish to make certain resources only accessible to particular students in the course (e.g. their discussion sections). By using Groupings you can make a resource only visible to those in that particular Grouping.

Once your groups are in Groupings, you can restrict resources to a particular Grouping and prevent those not in that Grouping from seeing it. All resources and activities can be restricted to particular Groupings in the settings menu of that resource by clicking in the Common module settings section, then choosing a particular Grouping. If you select the check-box that says Available for group members only, this will mean only those in this Grouping can even see the resource or activity. If this is unchecked, others will see the resource or activity exists but will not be able to access it.

How to create a Grouping

  1. Log in to GauchoSpace and enter your course site.
  2. In the Administration block, click on Users, then click Groups.
  3. Click on the Groupings tab.
  4. Click on Create Grouping.
  5. Name the grouping (e.g. "Joe's Discussion Sections").
  6. Click Save changes.
  7. Edit the Grouping by clicking the shirted people icon on the right side under edit.
  8. Highlight any Group you want to add to the grouping and then click Add.
  9. Click Back to Groupings

Repeat these steps to create as many Groupings as you would like.

Restrict Access of resources

Instructors have the ability to restrict access to activities to set groups. The settings for all activites have both a Common Module Settings area and a Restrict Access area. Each handles the restriction of a resource in a different way.

Common Module Settings

The following are the settings available in the Common Module Settings area for activities in GauchoSpace.

  • Visible: If the assignment is hidden, students will not see the assignment. This is the same as using the "Hide/Show" eye icon on your course page.
  • Group mode: Select separate groups if you want to set as a restricted group assignment, this way groups members can only see the work of their group, or select visible groups, which allows non-group members to see work of other students. Using the Group Mode will only set how students submit and view assignments by their groups. Students will see the assignments for all groups, but won't be able to submit or post unless they are in the group.
  • Grouping: If you have groupings, you can select a grouping here to assign the activity to a specific grouping, which is a group of groups.

Restrict Access

Restrict access can allow an instructor to make an activity available based on a conditions. Conditions can be a date, a grade, or group or grouping membership. You can also combine restrictions and set whether the student must or must not meet the condition. This method of restricting access allows you to hide activities from users who don't meet the set condition by clicking the eye icon for your restriction. To learn more about setting up restrictions,visit How can I make an activity or resource only available to particular students?

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