Self Sign-Up Groups Staggered Opening

[TimJensen]

One of our courses was using self sign-up for student groups and opened them during the class period hoping that all students could sign-up while together in class. Unfortunately, the groups staggered their opening slowly and it took over 30 minutes for all 8 of the groups to open, causing confusion with the self sign-up for students and a less than ideal experience for the faculty member hoping to keep class moving.

This type of situation has happened before in our program when using self sign-up with groups that, when opened, stagger the individual groups over a long period of time so that only some students can sign-up. I can't find any documentation that this is how self sign-up is supposed to behave as it would seem that all the groups should open at the same time. If anyone has any insight or has had a similar experience or solution, please let me know!

[greydon]

Hello @TimJensen 

That sounds like odd behavior - there shouldn't be any type of lag or limit for these students self signing up in the groups. Did some of them get an error message? Or what happened exactly to cause a delay and some of them couldn't all sign up at the same time? It doesn't look like your course is too large either. I'm certain you set up the groups correctly, but just for reference, here is the guide:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Instructor-Guide/How-do-I-create-self-sign-up-groups-in-a-group-s...

I've never heard of there being a limit or enforced time constraints on students not being able to all sign up at the same time. If you can provide some more details as to what type of errors they were experiencing, it would be helpful i.e. error screen, long load times, buttons not working, etc. You can also try contacting Canvas Support directly but they may have a hard time finding a solution if they've all been signed up now and there isn't technically an error at the moment. Also for reference, this is how your students should be signing up via the people tab:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Student-Guide/How-do-I-join-a-group-as-a-student/ta-p/468 

[TimJensen]

This is what the instructor experienced:

Within the “People” page on Canvas, the eight group options simply remained in “locked” status, opening 1-2 at a time over the course of ~40 minutes.

There were no error screens or long page loading times.