Groups with Some Students Assigned by Instructor, Other Students Get to Choose

[trr_nv]

My campus has a program where students get to choose an "enrichment" period where they choose in which teacher's classroom they want to be.  Not all students, however, are allowed to participate.  Some advanced classes use this time for extra practice, and other students are assigned to remedial classes.  Currently, the school uses Signup Genius, but it does not work well, as some students sign up even when they shouldn't, and others join ten different classes just to cause chaos.

I've been looking into creating a Canvas course where all students on the campus are enrolled.  Just to be clear, it would only function as a roster system - there are no assignments or grades for enrichment. 

It seems like a great solution would be to have two group sets, one with student signup turned off so that admin can place students, and another for the remaining students to self-signup.  The problem is I can't figure out how to assign students to only one of the two group sets.  Does anyone know how to accomplish this?  Or is there a better approach? 

[Chris_Hofer]

Hi @trr_nv ...

You might have a slight misunderstanding of the terminology of Groups and Group Sets within Canvas.  Think of it this way...

You could create a Group Set called "Project #1".  Within that project, you would create Groups.  Let's say, for example, that you had 20 students, and for this project, you wanted them to work on the project in teams of 4 ... so you'd have 5 groups of 4 students each (total of 20 students).  You could name the Groups within the Group Set such as "Blue Team", "Green Team", "Red Team", etc.

Then, later on in the class, you could create a second Group Set called "Project #2".  Within this Group Set, you wanted to have students work in pairs... so 10 groups of 2 students each (total of 20 students).  For this project, you could name the Groups in the Group Set by NFL Team (or whatever your favorite sport was, for example).

So, in order to use Group Sets, you have to create Groups within the Group Set.  Group Sets allow you to assign students to Groups...which are completely independent of other Groups in other Group Sets.

Does that help to clarify things?  Keep us posted...thanks!