Posting to more than one Group at the same time

[sofallon99]

Hello,

I have fourteen "groups" of five students each set up for weekly discussions. Along with participating, and in addition to the initial discussion question, I like to post additional weekly questions that help move the conversation along within each group. It's often the same questions for each group. I currently go in and out of each group, posting the questions manually over and over. Is there a way to write one question and post it to all fourteen groups at once? Can the questions be set up in advance to post at a predetermined date and time, similar to the way we can set up future Announcements?

I've searched for these answers to no avail. Thank you!

[NoahBoswell]

Hi @sofallon99 ,

Thank you for posting on the Instructure Community!

Where are you posting these questions in each group? Are you by chance using pages?

I was thinking... would it be useful to create a new module in your course and create a new page in that module each week, and each page has the set of questions displayed that your students will need to answer? The benefit of this is you're able to schedule a page for publication, so it will only appear in the module during the date you have it set to appear at. You do not get this functionality with groups.

I hope this helps, hope to hear back from you soon!
- Noah

[sofallon99]

Thank you, Noah. Stimme below supplied a response more to what I was looking for, but you've brought up something new ("pages"). I'll have to go check this feature out. Thank you! 😊

[stimme · Accepted solution]

@sofallon99 If your groups are all part of the same group set, then you can create one discussion topic in the course that becomes a discussion for all groups by checking the "This is a Group Discussion" checkbox. (Your question suggests to me that you are opening your group set tab in People, going to one group's home page, opening Discussions, and starting a thread, then repeating for the other groups. Starting the group discussion from the course Discussions page has a similar effect with much less work. It has the added bonus that you can grade the discussion when you create it from the course.)

How do I create a group discussion in a course? 

If your groups are not all in one group set, then this option won't work. It is so helpful to have group sets that you might want to recreate the groups in a single group set.

How do I manually create groups in a group set? 

[sofallon99]

Thank you, Stimme. What you have described is just what I do, so your solution is what I was hoping to find. I look forward to giving a try. Thanks again! 😁

[sofallon99]

Hello Again,

Now that I've tried what you suggested, it's off just a little. Let me see if I can explain what I'd like to do a bit more clearly...

I do have weekly discussions set up for my fourteen discussion groups which I have made and fall under one group set (see screenshots below). I would like to add additional questions/conversations within the weekly Discussion question at once (without going in and out of each group's conversation) to assist in moving the already existent conversation along. I don't see where I can do this within the links you shared. Am I missing it? Fingers crossed.... Thank you!

 

Screenshot from the Discussions assigned and the Groups Section: