Batch Group Management

Currently Canvas only allow manual Group creation and member assignment. This idea is about to provide Teacher ability to create course Groups, assign group members via batch .csv upload, so course Groups and group membership can be managed in a more efficient way. It will save lots of time for large courses with hundreds of students enrolled.  group‌group-creation

This idea has been developed and deployed to Canvas

For more information, please read through the Canvas Deploy Notes (2020-10-21) - Canvas Community .

50 Comments
RobDitto
Community Champion

Voted! I'm glad this has been resubmitted and will link to it from its Cold Storage‌ predecessors.

Those interested in this idea may also want to consider upvoting a related idea, currently in Radar stage:

ja46272
Community Novice

ConsideringGroup Roster Export  isn't live, batch group management would be very helpful.  Currently, there is no way for me to synchronize a group set between Canvas and anything else.  I can neither create a group set in a csv and import it, nor create a group set in Canvas and export it.  I need group set information for various reasons (for instance, to ensure that certain people are not paired together who have requested such, or to create a seating plan figure based on groups).  Additionally, being able to import a group set from a csv would have the added value of allowing me to create groups in Excel based on not having people in the same group more than once (this does not seem to be a feature in Canvas right now) or to create groups based on complementary skills or to import groups from other software such as ForClass.  

rake_9
Community Champion

Assuming that this is something an instructor could do from a course (rather than someone with admin access to a sub-account), I think this would be lovely!

natalie_norton1
Community Champion

This would be really useful, especially for large cohorts, along with naming which automatically reflects the course the group is in (https://community.canvaslms.com/ideas/8146-group-naming" modifiedtitle="true" title="Group naming

bradley77ca
Community Novice

Absolutely, this would be a big time-saver for multi-section, large-enrollment courses.  Already know of specific applications within our College of Engineering, where the ability to bulk-manage group membership for the freshman experience course sequences would be great. +1 to Jason Acimovic's comments.

sally_parrott
Community Novice

Great idea - will save time and improve accuracy 

naomi_h
Community Explorer

Voted! This is much needed.

maguire
Community Champion

It is already possible to export at least some of this information using the API - see Listing group information: Chip sandbox  Additionally, you can list scheduled events: Listing scheduled events: Chip sandbox .

johnpj
Community Contributor

At the University of Michigan we've built a Course Manger LTI tool that supports bulk adding groups, sections, and memberships through a CSV or a data grid UI. Below is an image of the data grid view for adding groups and members.

249654_course_manger.png

The GitHub project is open at: GitHub - tl-its-umich-edu/canvas_course_manager 

jayde_colquhoun
Instructure
Instructure

 @lisa_li1 ‌ - This is what Barret brought up during the presentation yesterday, will this meet our needs? - J