About groups

Dividing a large class into smaller groups can help you introduce group work, encourage collaboration among your students, or just make managing a large group easier. In Brightspace, you can use the Groups tool to help organize and manage the groups, no matter the size of the class or the number of groups that you want for your class

Setting up groups from the classlist

1. Click on Groups, which will open the Manage Groups page

2. Click on New Category, which will open up the Category Information section and allow you to fill in the settings you want.

3. Give the Category a name and a description- is it a discussion group? Is it for research teams? Is it a project group for the rest of the term?

4. Determine how the groups will be created through the Enrollment Type dropdown menu. There are different settings you can use to determine how the groups will be structured, from the number of groups to how students are grouped together.

• # of Groups, no Auto Enrollment

  • • This option allows you to set the total number of groups to be made and also allows you to manually allocate the students to each group.

• Groups of #

  • • Use this option to automatically allocate students to groups based on the maximum number of students you want in a group. (ex. Automatically group together a class of 200 into groups of 5)

• # of Groups

  • • Brightspace will automatically allocate students to the total number of groups that you set.

• Groups of # - Self Enrollment

  • • This option allows you to set the maximum number of students you want per group. Students are then allowed to enroll themselves into the group of their choice.

• # of Groups - Self Enrollment

  • • Use this option to determine the total amount of groups you want to create and allow students to enroll themselves into the group of their choice.

• # of Groups, Capacity of # - Self Enrollment

  • • This option allows you to set the total number of groups, the maximum number of students per group, and allow students to self-organize and enroll themselves in a group of their choice.

• Single user, member-specific groups - This option creates a single group per student, if you want to work with blogs/journals.

• Advanced Properties - You can modify the above options further using Advanced Properties. Auto-Enroll New Users will automatically assign students who joined the class after groups were made, starting with the groups with the fewest members. Randomise Users in Groups will randomly allocate students to groups - allocation will follow an alphabetical order by default. The Expiry Data option sets a deadline for enrollment into groups (if you used the Self Enrollment options). Use this in conjunction with Allocate unenrolled users to automatically assign students who did not enroll into random groups.

5. To set up the Groups for the purpose of having group assignments, go to the Advanced Options at the bottom of the page.

6. Check the Set Up Assignments. You can now select what kind of assignment you are planning to give this group. Assignment types are File Submission, Text Submission, On Paper Submission and Observe in Person.