ARCHIVED: Using Oncourse, how do I manage study groups or project teams?

• Overview
• Managing groups
• Creating groups
  • Manually
  • Automatically
  • From a spreadsheet
• Editing groups
• Deleting groups

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: 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 ARCHIVED: Controlling access in 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.

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Managing groups

You can manage groups with the Site Setup and Worksite Setup tools.

To manage groups with the Site Setup tool:

1. In your site's menubar, click Site Setup.
2. Click Manage Groups.

To manage groups with the Worksite Setup tool:

1. Click My Workspace.
2. From the menubar, click Worksite Setup.
3. Check the box next to the course for which you wish to manage groups, and from the top, click Edit.
4. Click Manage Groups.

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Creating groups

Creating groups manually

To create a new group manually:

1. Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing groups above).
2. Click Create New Group.
3. In the "Group Title" field, enter a title for your group (e.g., Project team 1). You may also add a text description.
4. 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 the Ctrl key (in Windows) or the Command key (in Mac OS X), and select the members you wish to add.

   Alternatively, click >> 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.

5. 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).

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Creating groups automatically

Using the Auto Groups option, you can create a new group containing all users within a specific role, or create a number of random groups composed of members of a specific role.

To create a new group containing all users within a specific role:

1. Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing groups above).
2. Click Auto Groups.
3. Check the box next to each role for which you would like a group created.
4. Click Update to create your group(s).

To create random groups composed of users in a specified role:

1. Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing groups above).
2. Click Auto Groups.
3. Check the box next to the role for which you would like to randomly generate groups.

   Note: You can use the random group creation option with only one role at a time.

4. Select Create random groups from members with selected role(s).
5. Choose whether you would like to specify the number of groups (Split by number of groups needed) or the number of participants in each group (Split by number of users needed per group).
6. Next to "Group Title", enter a title for your groups. When the groups are generated, each will use the name you specified followed by a hyphen and a number (e.g., Test-1, Test-2, Test-3).
7. Enter the number of users or groups needed.
8. Click Update to generate your groups.

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Creating groups from a spreadsheet

You can import groups from a file in comma-separated variable (.csv) format. If you use Microsoft Excel, you can save a file as a .csv file rather than a standard Excel file. Your file should meet the following requirements:

• The first column should contain group titles, and the second column should contain usernames.
• Do not include a row of column headers.
• If you are editing the file in a text editor (rather than Excel), separate the fields only with commas, with no spaces.
• If an entry contains a space, surround it with double quotation marks.

To import groups from your .csv file:

1. Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing groups above).
2. Click Import from file.
3. Click Browse to find the appropriate file on your computer, and then click Open.
4. Click Continue.
5. On the "Verify the imported data" page, review the groups and group members in your upload. If the content is correct, click Import groups.

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Editing groups

To edit a group:

1. Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing groups above).
2. Next to the group title, click Edit.
3. You may revise the "Group Title" and "Description" fields. You may also add or remove group members as described above.
4. When you're finished, click Update.

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Deleting groups

To delete a group:

1. Navigate to the group management interface for your site (see Managing Groups above).
2. Next to the group you wish to remove, check the box under Remove.
3. Click Remove Checked.
4. To confirm removal, click Delete Groups.

Feature demonstrations

• Creating Groups
• Posting to a Group