Using Oncourse, how do I manage study groups or project teams?
View feature demonstrations relevant to this topic.
Note: To complete these procedures, you must be assigned a role having the necessary permissions. To determine your role, follow the directions in Participant roles. To view a list of permissions associated with a given role, see Permissions, roles, and tools. For a basic understanding of roles and permissions, see Permissions and roles: Overview.
On this page:
Overview
Groups are subsets of participants for a given site. They are created by the site manager and are not preloaded with official course data. Groups are useful to organize study groups, project teams, and other non-official subsets of site participants.
Note: When combining sections into a parent site, groups from the original sections will not be brought forward. However, each section behaves like a group on the parent site, i.e., group-aware tools recognize each section as a group.
You can use groups with the following tools:
-
Announcements: Post announcements for a
group.
-
Assignments 2: Post
assignments for specific groups, and link them to the Gradebook. (Multiple
assignments can be linked to one Gradebook item.)
-
Calendar: Schedule
events for specific groups only.
-
Forums: Assign forum and topic permissions for groups;
see Controlling access to Forums.
-
Messages: Send private messages to a
group.
-
Resources: Allow specific access to files and
folders for a group.
-
Site
Setup: Create, modify, and remove groups.
- Tests & Surveys: Allow specific access to a test or survey for a group by using the "Assessments Released To" setting.
Managing groups
You can manage groups with the Site Setup and Worksite Setup tools.
To manage groups with the Site Setup tool:
- In your site's menubar, click
Site Setup.
- Click
Manage Groups.
To manage groups with the Worksite Setup tool:
- Click
My Workspace.
- From the menubar, click
Worksite Setup.
- Check the box next to the course for which you wish to manage
groups, and from the top, click
Edit.
- Click
Manage Groups.
Also see Viewing participants in your site.
Creating a group
To create a new group:
- Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing groups above).
- Click
Create New Group.
- In the "Title" field, enter a title for your group (e.g.,
Project team 1). You may also add a text description.
- From the window on the left, select a
site participant to add to the group, and then click
>>. Repeat this step until you've added all the members you wish to the group. To select more than one member at a time, hold down theCtrlkey (in Windows) or theCommandkey (in Mac OS X), and select the members you wish to add.Alternatively, click
All>>to move all site participants to the right-hand window, select any participants you do not want in the group, and click<<to remove them. - When you're finished, click
Add.
Note: It is not possible to create a new group based on existing group (i.e., duplicate an existing group).
Editing a group
To edit a group:
- Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing groups above).
- Next to the group title, click
Edit.
- You may revise the "Title" and "Description" fields. You may also
add or remove group members as described above.
- When you're finished, click
Update.
Deleting a group
To delete a group:
- Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing Groups above).
- Next to the group you wish to remove, check the box under
Remove.
- Click
Remove Checked.
- To confirm removal, click
Delete Groups.
Feature demonstrations
All the following feature demonstrations include audio, and each link will open a new window.
Last modified on January 06, 2012.








