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!

[trr_nv]

I don't think it solves the issue, though.  We want to have an instructor or admin place some students into groups and those students will have no option to change groups, while other students get to pick their group.  Perhaps this is an impossible task.

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

@trr_nv ...

Sorry if my response didn't help that much.  If you were to use my example (above), the first Group Set (with the 5 groups of 4 students each) could be controlled by you...where you are the one that assigns students to each of the 5 groups.  Looking at the second Group Set (with 10 groups of 2 students each), you could set this one up so that students get to choose their partner on their own.  Here are a handful of the available Guides (more than what you probably need).  I hope one or more of them will be of help to you.  The rest can be found at: Instructor Guide - Instructure Community.

• How do I add a group set in a course? - Instructure Community - 693
• How do I manually create groups in a group set? - Instructure Community - 700
• How do I manually assign students to groups? - Instructure Community - 663
• How do I automatically assign students to groups? - Instructure Community - 725
• How do I create self sign-up groups in a group set... - Instructure Community - 691
• How do I move a student into a different group? - Instructure Community - 723

[trr_nv]

OK, so I could make a Group Set called Enrichment that is intended for the limited number of students who get to choose an Enrichment and allow self-signup into groups like Karaoke and Crossword Puzzles.  The students who belong in advanced or remedial groups are automatically assigned to this Group Set, and I don't see any option to delete them.  How do I prevent them from joining Karaoke? 

The idea is that teachers will use these groups as their rosters for attendance purposes, but it won't work if troublemakers can join groups where they don't belong.