Assign to a group?

[JESSICAPRIESTLE]

I have my students reading different novels in class. Is there a way to create a group so that I can assign work to only that group? Right now I have to manually assign the work to all 91 students. They will not be doing the work togetheras a group, they will each need to complete their own assignment. They are only grouped by the book they are reading.

For example, I want to assign ch. 1 of Book A to these 40 students and I want to assign ch. 2 of Book B to these 35 students. Each student will answer the questions independently.

I have created groups with the students but cannot figure out how to use the group. 

[Gabriel33 · Accepted solution]

I believe groups will not help you, as groups are used for collaboration in assignments.

You would need to split the students into different sections (see [1] below), but some institutions don't let instructors make their own sections.

If you can't make your own sections, you could use the assignment override API [2], but that requires some coding.

[1] How do I add a section to a course as an instructo... - Instructure Community - 688

[2] Assignment Overrides - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation

[Gabriel33 · Accepted solution]

I believe groups will not help you, as groups are used for collaboration in assignments.

You would need to split the students into different sections (see [1] below), but some institutions don't let instructors make their own sections.

If you can't make your own sections, you could use the assignment override API [2], but that requires some coding.

[1] How do I add a section to a course as an instructo... - Instructure Community - 688

[2] Assignment Overrides - Canvas LMS REST API Documentation

[NoahBoswell · Accepted solution]

Hi @JESSICAPRIESTLE ,

@Gabriel33 is pretty much correct. Unfortunately, there is no current feature inside of Canvas that allows you to assign specific items inside of modules to specific groups. This also applies to modules as a whole. Groups are used so students can work together and collaborate on an assignment, and then only one student has to submit the assignment for the entire group, and in the gradebook after that one student submits that assignment, it will mark it off for every student in the same group as them. 

That being said, there are two ways you could go about this. One, would be to specifically assign individual students to assignment (which could be very time consuming given the fact you have 90+ students in your course), or, and from what Gabriel said before, you would have to divide your students into different sections in order for this to work. However, with many institutions, especially if your Canvas was set-up using a SIS import, this can easily disrupt the intended functionality when it comes to syncing grades and other information from Canvas back over to your SIS, which is why most schools do not allow teachers or TAs to edit their course sections. However, if you do not have a student information system connected to your instance, or if your course is a manually created course which also allows you to edit or create sections without anything being interrupted when it comes to syncing with your SIS, this might be something you could do! However, keep in mind that these students will always be in the same section ("group") unless you take the time to change it, which means they will be working on the same "group" assignments for the rest of the year.

I hope this additional information assists you!
Noah

[dbrace]

Hi @JESSICAPRIESTLE.

It is something that I do not have direct or specific experience with but I would recommend keeping your eyes open to "Differentiation Tags". It is something that Instructure is currently working on for the Canvas LMS.

Help Us Fine-Tune Differentiation Tags: Your Feedback Matters! - Instructure Community - 627254

Key Takeaways from the R1 Customer Discovery Session in Salt Lake City ( - Instructure Community - 6...

-Doug

[chriscas]

Hi @JESSICAPRIESTLE,

At this point in time, I think the info provided by @NoahBoswell and @Gabriel33 are the best and most accurate solutions available.  I know those solutions many not be ideal, so I did also want to let you know this is something Instructure has been working on for a while.  I believe what they are calling Differentiation Tags will be the ultimate solution to creating these kinds of groups/sub-sections (or whatever term you may call them).  I don't know when the feature might be released to all users, but I hope it helps to know you'll have a better solution for this in the future!

-Chris