Is my understanding of group sets correct?

[everson_50]

Hi Everyone,

I don't currently have any group discussion assignments in my introductory statistics course because I have a large number of students (over 300).  However, I'm thinking it might be time to experiment with some things in order to build more active learning opportunities into the course.  

I have been reading about group sets, but there is something I'm not sure about.  Suppose I go to create a group set and elect to split students into a certain number of groups.  Does Canvas simply randomly assign students to those groups?  This is what I am hoping happens, because I assume if that is the case, I can create another group set later on as a way of changing groups.  I thought it would be nice to randomly assign students to groups for the first half of the semester and then to change the groups at a certain point.  I think I would prefer that Canvas randomly select who goes into which group as opposed to me manually placing students into groups, especially given the size of my class.

Thank you!

P.S.  If you have any tips or suggestions about how to make group discussions more manageable, I'm searching for ideas!  I'm very much a novice when it comes to doing anything fancy with Canvas discussions. 

Michelle 

[James]

 @everson_50  

If you tell Canvas to automatically assign groups, then it does uses random selection without replacement.

If you come back later in the semester and generate another group set, then that group selection will be independent of the first group selection. As a statistics teacher, you understand that means that there will likely be some groups that have at least two people who were paired together in the first teaming. There is no way around that unless you manually assign the second set of teams. Manual assignment is a major pain, especially with 300 students.

[everson_50]

Thank you, James!  This is exactly what I needed to know.