[Groups] Close self sign-up to groups on a specific date

[jeremy_stevens]

Currently if instructors create a group assignment, and a group set, they can enable self sign-up within that group set. This is desirable as often they want students to self-organise into groups of common interest.

It is clear that students changing groups after submissions have been made can cause trouble and confusion in Canvas.

To prevent this, instructors have to remember to manually edit a group set and disable self self-up on a date that comes before students start submitting.

Solution:

When enabling self sign-up, allow the instructor to set a date and time at which self sign-up becomes disabled or closed. For example: self sign-up might become disabled on October 10, at 11:59pm.

If this date is set, place an event in students' to-do lists and calendars, set for that date and time, reminding them that they have to join a group if they haven't already. Once they join a group within that group set, remove the to-do list item.

[James]

@david_parmentie 

This can be automated using the Update Course Settings endpoint of the Courses API.

You want to send { "allow_student_organized_groups" : false } to disallow students organizing their own groups. You would need to obtain a list of all courses where you want that to happen and then iterate through the course, updating the settings on a course-by-course basis.

Some faculty may want to students to be able to create their own groups, so a blanket disabling may not be the best solution, especially for courses already in progress. You may want to make that part of the course creation process, updating the course settings as soon as the course is created, or you may want to go back through closed courses that are still available for copying and change the setting (this may lose historical records of whether the group switching was an option).

Ultimately, education of the course designer (faculty, instructional designer, whomever) is the best  long-term plan. Then they can get the settings correct in their courses and that will be copied over when they copy courses.

There are other options that may help reduce the group-swapping. You can assign a group leader who can control group membership. Emphasize that it is important for them to not allow students to enter their group. Another way is to make sure that all of the groups are filled and that there is a maximum limit on the size of each group. That way a student could not join a group that was already filled unless someone leaves. There are issues with this approach (groups that aren't maxed out and someone could swap, get the info, and swap back before anyone noticed).

Here are a couple of resources in the Canvas Instructor Guide that can provide additional information.

• How do I prevent students from switching groups in self sign-up groups?
• How do I assign a student leader to a group?

The group membership object contains when someone joined a group and when the membership was last updated. If a membership record was created on November 1 but last updated on November 14, then you know something funky happened in-between those two times. You don't know what else happened with any certainty as the student could have popped around to two or three different groups just to come back.

If you want tracking of group changes, then you will want to look at Canvas Live Events and the Groups event. You can get an event notification sent whenever a group membership is created (initial join) and when a group membership is updated (changed). Those are real-time notifications, but if Canvas is overloaded or there are network issues, they may not get delivered. That likely won't be an issue here -- a few might slip by, but it would provide evidence that they group-hopped. I'm pretty happy with the information we collect and the cost is pretty cheap (we're a small institution collecting information on anytime an asset is accessed and it costs me less than $2 a month in AWS charges).

[Denham]

Problem statement:

on the support page it says "Students should be assigned to groups before group assignments are published. Grades and submissions may be affected for students who were not in a group at the time of assignment submission but who were later added to a group or students who were removed from a group." The risk point of students being able to leave or change group after submissions have occurred or while group work is underway is very concerning. Especially with the recommendation to not publish the submission point (so no access to the assignment rubric etc as you can't link to a rubric for students separate to an assessment) until after the groups are finalised.

Proposed solution:

It would be simpler workflow for teaching staff (and avoid possible problems) to have a date field tied to "Allow self-sign up" for when sign up closes, preventing students from leaving or joining groups in that group sets after that date, and not allowing submissions to the associated submission point/s until the sign up sheet has closed, but allowing them to see the assignment for the details and rubric (so separate from Available From and Published).

User role(s):

instructor,student,designer