Groups

Groups create opportunities for students to engage and interact with each other. In UB Learns, students can be placed into groups to collaborate on assignments and projects or to participate in discussions with a smaller subset of their classmates. Additionally, by creating groups in which only one student is a member, the Discussions tool can be used to create a journaling space in which students can reflect on their learning experiences and ask questions.

On this page:

Creating and Editing Groups

Group Enrollment Types

The following descriptions explain the enrollment type options when creating a group category to help you decide which type is best to suit your needs.

Considerations for Creating Groups

  • Groups have a maximum enrollment of 200 users. If there are more than 200 users in a course, you can create new group categories; there is no limit on the number of group categories in a course.
  • To organize users' work on projects and assignments or to create special work areas for users with different learning needs, use the Groups tool.
  • Users can belong to multiple groups within the same course but cannot self-enroll in more than one group. Instructors can add users to other groups at any time.
  • For each group, create separate discussion forums and assignment areas to work in.
  • Grade members of groups individually or as a team.
  • Before setting up groups, know how you want to organize them. The following factors can affect how users enroll in groups:
    • Setting groups up before or after you've enrolled users.
    • Enabling auto-enrollment in groups.
    • Enabling randomization of users in groups.
    • Enabling self-enrollment in groups.
    • The Enrollment Type you choose.
  • Set up groups after the majority of users enroll in your course. This gives you a better idea of how many users you are organizing and how many groups you need. Setting up groups after enrollment can also ensure better distribution of users between groups.
  • For copying any number of groups, you can use the Copy Courses workflow. You can also copy existing groups using the Copy Courses Workflow. If used, this process occurs in the background and doesn't
    block other course copy items from completing. You can check your group creation status in the Groups tool. The copy history log reports that the group creation process has started. The completion status is notified via an update alert.

Additional Resources