The groups feature allows an instructor (or editing TA) to assign students to one or more groups. These groups can then be used to:
- allow students to submit group assignments and group quizzes or participate in group forums.
- restrict access to activities and resources to specific groups.
- sort submitted assignments by sections/groups for grading purposes.
- apply group overrides for students with DSP accommodations.
Because students can belong to multiple groups, it is advised to organize groups into groupings ("group of groups"). For example, students may be in one group for a group project and in another group for a weekly discussion. By putting groups into groupings, you can tell certain GauchoSpace activities to recognize only specific groups and ignore others.
In multi-section courses, each section in GOLD automatically has its own group in GauchoSpace. These groups are placed in a Section grouping.
This article describes how to create a group, how to create a grouping, and how to set up a GauchoSpace Assignment, Quiz, or Forum where students submit in predefined groups.
Reviewing these basic concepts will help you understand this article:
Activity: Activities are added by instructors for students to submit materials and interact with the instructor or other students. Some examples include Assignments, Quizzes, and Forums. Certain activities can be graded within GauchoSpace and are automatically populated in the gradebook.
Assignment: "Assignment" is an activity that enables instructors to collect, grade, and redistribute students’ work. Assignments are intended for one-to-one interaction between students and instructors. Unless students are submitting as a group, they cannot see each others' work. Students can submit many types of digital content (e.g., documents, spreadsheets, presentations, images, etc.), type online text directly into GauchoSpace, or be graded on offline assignments outside of GauchoSpace (e.g., presentations, performances, or class participation). Once instructors grade an assignment activity, students can see feedback and grades for their work in the Assignment and the gradebook.
Forum: "Forum" is an activity where students and teachers can exchange ideas by posting comments. Instructors may allow files to be attached to posts, attached images will be displayed inline. There are five basic forum types within GauchoSpace, the most popular being the standard forum for general use. Forums can also be graded through the gradebook using whole forum grading or ratings.
Group: A group is a collection of users in a GauchoSpace course site. Users can belong to multiple groups. Some groups are created automatically in GauchoSpace (such as for discussion sections or labs that are registered under a parent course). Other groups can be created manually. Instructors and Editing TAs can create and manage groups from the Participants page.
Grouping: A grouping is a "group of groups". This is useful to help manage users in a course. Because students can belong to multiple groups, students may be in one group for a group project and in another group for a weekly discussion. By putting groups into groupings, you can tell certain GauchoSpace activities to recognize only specific groups and ignore others.
Group Mode: Group mode determines how students view content in group activities. Separate groups mode will restrict visibility of submitted/posted content to members of a student's own group. Visible groups mode allows visibility of submitted/posted content to members of any group.
Groups are either:
- Created by the instructor with a predetermined roster
- Created by the instructor using the Auto-Create function (best for random groups)
- Created by a bulk import
- Created automatically from GOLD (with the designated Teaching Assistant added from STAR, common for discussion sections or lab courses)
- Created automatically by GuachoSpace when two course rosters are merged.
How to Create a Predetermined Group
Instructors and Editing TAs can create a manual group and add the appropriate users as group members. This works best when there are specific students within a group.
- In the Administration block, click Users, then click Groups.
- Click Create Group.
- Give the group a name and an optional description. Then, click Save Changes.
- Now you can populate your group with users. On the Groups page, single-click on the group to highlight it.
- Click Add/remove users.
- In the Potential members list o n the right, you will see course participants (students, TAs and instructors). Select a name to highlight it. Click Add to include this user in the group.
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- 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.
- The Selected user's membership section will show any other groups the student is associated with (for example, section groups).
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How to Create a Random Group
The Auto-Create Group option will let GauchoSpace randomly sort your students into groups based on the number of students in each group or total number of groups you want to be created.
- In the Administration block, click Users, then click Groups.
- Click Auto-create groups.
- Define the naming scheme of the group to be named as a letter series or a number series.
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- If "@" is used then groups will be named with the letter suffixes (A,B,C, etc).
- If "#" is used then groups will with number suffixes (1,2,3, etc).
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- Specify whether you want to create a specific number of groups or whether you want to create groups with specific number of people in it. Also, specify the number of groups/people in the group.
- Update other settings as needed:
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- Select members with role: Choose whether to include only students or users with other role
- Select members from grouping: Specify whether you want to include members from a specific grouping only
- Select members from group: Specify whether to include members from a specific group
- Allocate members: Choose how to allocate members to the group
- Prevent Last Small Group: When selecting Members per group, depending on the number of users in the course, the last group can end up with significantly fewer members than expected. You can select this option to avoid the situation. For example, with 14 students in a class, you specify you want groups of 4. If this option is unchecked, it will create 3 groups of 4 and one group of 2 students (thus creating uneven-sized groups). But if that option is checked, it will create 2 groups of 5 students and one group of 4.
- Ignore users in groups: Select this option to include only group members that are NOT already in a group in the course.
- Include only active enrollments: By default, GauchoSpace will only include students with active enrollments in auto-created groups. Deselect this option to include students with other enrollment statuses.
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- In the Grouping subsection, you have the option to create a new Grouping from the auto-created groups and provide the new grouping a name.
- Click Submit to create your groups.
How to Rename a Group
Once a group has been created, instructors can modify the group as needed. We recommend not changing the name associated with section groups as the data is refreshed from GOLD. If a TA is missing from a section, they should be added in STAR (which will feed into the group name associated with the section).
- In the Administration block, click Users, then click Groups.
- Highlight the group whose name you wish to change. Then, click Edit group settings.
- Change the group name as desired.
- Click Save changes.
Bulk Import Groups using a CSV file:
Import groups allows you to both create groups and populate them with users through a single import.
- Create a CSV file (e.g., using Microsoft Excel, Google Sheets, Mac Numbers) with two columns:
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- First column: Include either the UCSBnetID, email address, or perm number for each user you wish to place into a group. Use the same identifier for all users.
- Second column: Contain the group name in which you would like to place the user.
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- Save file as a CSV.
- In the UCSB Course Tool block, click Add User/Assign Roles.
- Click Bulk group import.
- Drag and drop the CSV file. Or click Choose a file to select and upload the CSV file. Click Submit data to save.
- The groups will be created based on the uploaded file. Note:
- If the student is not registered in the course, nothing will be done for that student, and you'll see an error message.
- If there is a group name and the group exists, the student will be added to the group.
- If the group does not exist, it will create the group and then add the student to the group.
Because students can belong to multiple groups, it is advised to organize groups into groupings ("group of groups"). For example, students may be in one group for a group project and in another group for a weekly discussion. By putting groups into groupings, you can tell certain GauchoSpace activities to recognize only specific groups and ignore others.
We recommend that you always place your groups in a grouping. This is particularly important if you are also using groups for DSP student accommodations. This will help maintain privacy of DSP student accommodations should groups be used and/or displayed in other activities.
In multi-section courses, a Section grouping (that contains each section in GOLD) is created automatically.
There are two main steps to configure a Grouping:
The first thing to do is to create a new grouping, a new "group of groups". To create a new grouping, follow these steps:
- In the Administration block, click Users. Then, click Groups.
- Click on the Groupings tab.
- Click Create grouping.
- Name the grouping (e.g. "Assignment 1 Grouping").
- Click Save changes.
Now that you have created the grouping, you would need to add the groups to your grouping. The grouping should only include those groups that are relevant to this specific assignment. To add groups to the grouping, follow these steps:
- Click the people icon on the right side under edit.
- Highlight the group you want to add to the grouping. Then, click Add.
- Once you are done adding all the groups to the groupings, click Back to Groupings.
Step 1: Enter your course site and click Turn editing on.
Step 2: Go to the week/section block where you have added your Assignment. To the right, click Edit > Edit Settings.
Step 3: Navigate to the Group submission settings subsection, and set Students submit in groups to "Yes".
Step 4: Edit other settings as desired -
- Require group to make submission: This enforces the condition that a student must be a part of a group to make a submission. In such a case, users who are not members of a group will be unable to make submissions.
- Require all group members submit: If selected, all members of the group must make a contribution and click Submit to record the submission. This setting requires that "Require students click submit button" is checked in the Submission subsection.
- Grouping for Student Groups: Allows you to choose which grouping to apply to this assignment.
- If your course uses groups for DSP accommodations, please place your groups for the group assignment in their own grouping and select them here. This will help maintain privacy of DSP student accommodations.
Step 5: In the Common module settings subsection, set Group mode to "Separate Groups".
STEP 6: Select the appropriate grouping in the Grouping option.
STEP 7: Click Save and display.
Step 1: Enter your course site and click Turn editing on.
Step 2: Go to the week/section block where you have added your Quiz. To the right, click Edit > Edit Settings.
Step 3: Navigate to the Common module settings subsection, and set Group mode to "Separate Groups".
Step 4: Select the appropriate grouping in the Grouping option. Then, click Save and display.
- If your course uses groups for DSP accommodations, please place your groups for the group quiz in their own grouping and select that grouping here. This will help maintain privacy of DSP student accommodations.
Step 5: In the Administration block, click Results. Then, click Group quiz.
STEP 6: Select the grouping for your quiz in the drop-down menu provided. Then, click Save.
STEP 7: One student can now submit the quiz on behalf of the group.
- Once a student logs an attempt for the quiz (and once this attempt has been graded if the quiz contains manually graded questions), their score will be transferred to the other members of their group. This transfer happens automatically intermittently.
- The instructor can initiate it manually by clicking Apply grades on the Group quiz settings page.
- When grades are transferred to other group members, the content of the attempt will not appear under their name in the results area. Only the grade will be transferred.
When groups are enabled for a Forum, students can communicate with one another in separate groups. For example, you may set up a Group forum for your different discussion sections. Instructors may post a discussion topic to a selected group only, or post copies of a discussion topic to all groups. Students will be able to contribute to only their group's forum.
The procedure for setting up a group forum is the same as a forum, but with two additional steps:
Once you have set up for your forum, you will want to configure it for group mode. Here's how to do that:
- Go into your forum and go to the Forum Administration block. Click Edit settings.
- In the Common module settings subsection, set Group mode to either "Visible groups" or "Separate groups":
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- Visible groups: Students can only start discussions for their own group, but can see other groups using the "Visible groups" dropdown menu. The other groups' work is read-only. Students can only reply to discussions started by other group members or their instructors (if the instructor posts to "All people").
- Separate groups: Students can only see or reply to discussions started by their group members or discussions started by the instructor for their own group. Similarly, students can only start discussions for their own group. If a teacher adds a new discussion topic for all participants (rather than posting to all groups), students can not reply to it
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- Select the appropriate grouping in the Grouping option. For example, "Sections".
- If your course uses groups for DSP accommodations, please place your groups for the group forum in their own grouping and select that grouping here. This will help maintain privacy of DSP student accommodations.
- Click Save and Display.
- In the Forum, click Add a new discussion topic and draft your initial post.
- Click Advanced under the message window.
- Check the box to post a copy to all groups or select a group to copy it to.
- Each group will be able to see their copy of the discussion post. Students will be able to respond to the post.
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For TA section groups, GauchoSpace will automatically add an assigned TA's name and the date/time/location to a section group based on the information in STAR. If a TA is added after the course has been created, they will be assigned to their section and their name will be added to that group.
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Students who have enrolled in your course after the creation of manual groups will not appear in a group automatically. They must be manually added, as well.
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Project groups consisting of individual students can be created as a one-person group.
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Group mode will not work in “single simple discussion” forums because only one discussion is allowed.
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You can allow students to self-select their group by adding the Group Choice Activity to your page.
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To display group membership to students, add the Group Member Resource to your page.
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Learn more about using groups to assign DSP student accommodations here: Quiz and Assignment Configurations for DSP and Additional Attempt Accommodations.
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To allow extension or different deadlines for a single activity, consider Group Overrides.
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Groups can be used to restrict access to activities/resources to specific groups.
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Sort submitted assignments by sections/groups for grading purposes.
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If you're interested in manual enrollment of students (individually or by bulk) prior to grouping them, please refer to our article on Manual Enrollment of Users.