[ARCHIVED] Creating groups automatically

[rebecca_asker]

Hi! 

I'm trying to figure out how to best create groups within a course with over 200 students and 7 teachers. I set the student size to 4 in each group and also filled in that the students need to be in the same section. The strange thing is, that in some groups there are three students and in other groups there are six students. Why aren't they divided into two groups with three students in each instead? Is there anything I can change in the settings to make the groups more even? I know I can change it afterwards manually, but it seems so strange that it sometimes divides to groups of three and sometimes to groups of six, it doesn't seem logical to me. 🤔

[MrWilliams]

Hi Rebecca,

When you go to create your group set, underneath "group structure" you should see an option to split students into x # of groups and a second option to split students into groups with x students per group.  Is this what you are looking for?

Also, with the high number of students and teachers associated with this course, you may also consider examining the "sections" feature under course settings for further options for organizing your student load.

Hope this helps!

[chrhh]

Also, make sure the number of groups you create correspond exactly to the number of sections in the course.

In higher education in Norway, our SIS (student information system), FS, will always create one "main" section, containing all students in the course in addition to the sections containing the smaller number of students, meaning each student will be present in at least two sections.

If this is the case, you must temporarily cross-list this (or these) sections  OUT of the course temporarily, then create your group set, then un-crosslist the section again.

We've done this in a course with 2000 students and 200 sections/groups, so you should be fine 😉

[rebecca_asker]

Hi!

Thank you! The students are only in the section that is connected to their teacher, so they are not in any main section. I'm trying to make small groups within the sections, but they turn out uneven, even though I use the setting that should divide them into groups of four (of course, there may be groups of three or even five, but I can't understand why it would divide into groups of six). I haven't set how many groups should be formed, just how many students there should be in each group. So, I'm still confused. 🤔 

[chrhh]

Ah. You need to do the opposite; Set the group number to the same as the number of sections you have in the course. And leave the number of students in each groups blank.

For example, if I have 5 sections in my course, it should look like this: