Creating Student Subgroups

[TFraser2]

There are some assignments that go out to the majority of my students except one or two per class. It would be great to be able to assign to "everyone" and then have a button to select which students are exempt from the assignment.

This should also be possible by Section, and across sections as well.

Use Case Example:

* Differentation

* ESL students

* A/B/C variant exams, etc.

[stimme · Accepted solution]

@TFraser2 Your suggestion sounds like an idea that was attached to a theme that was selected for development in 2023. You might subscribe to the theme and contribute to the discussion. It seems that the updated Assign To features that arrived 7/20/24 grew out of that theme.

In the meantime, I want to suggest a workaround that may save time. Rather than selecting all students to include in order to exclude a couple of students, you could specify the students to exclude and set an available until date in the past. This should lock the assignment for the excluded students. In the gradebook, you could select Excused as the status for their submissions to these assignments. It is a less elegant solution than genuinely not assigning to the excluded students, but it may be good enough for the time being.

[stimme · Accepted solution]

@TFraser2 Your suggestion sounds like an idea that was attached to a theme that was selected for development in 2023. You might subscribe to the theme and contribute to the discussion. It seems that the updated Assign To features that arrived 7/20/24 grew out of that theme.

In the meantime, I want to suggest a workaround that may save time. Rather than selecting all students to include in order to exclude a couple of students, you could specify the students to exclude and set an available until date in the past. This should lock the assignment for the excluded students. In the gradebook, you could select Excused as the status for their submissions to these assignments. It is a less elegant solution than genuinely not assigning to the excluded students, but it may be good enough for the time being.

[TFraser2]

I appreciate the thought, but I'm looking to decrease my workload, not add to it.

In addition to the gradebook clutter that solution creates, it also does not address having completely different Quizzes or assignments, for example.

[TFraser2]

That's an idea, but unfortunately it doesn't work as you described. When I have a Section that is taking a Quiz, and then I "exclude" students by giving those selected students an expired date for the Quiz, the Section seems to override that exclusion. (So even though those students shouldn't be able to take the Quiz, they still can. If I had to guess, it's because they're listed twice: once in the exclusion set, and again in the Section set.)

[chriscas · Accepted solution]

Hi @TFraser2,

You may want to check out and comment on the  Help Us Explore New Group Options - Instructure Community - 612574  blog post, as I think the idea being explored there may be exactly what you are looking for (though I'll admit I'm a bit confused by the wording of the blog myself, so I can't give you a 100% guarantee).

-Chris

[TFraser2]

Not really relevant, other than it mentions Groups. Teachers need to be able to create groups (or Groups) for many reasons, including differentiation and modification. The ability for students to see (or not see) those groups isn't relevant to me.