Discussions - Sections

[ericmarshburn]

I work as an administrator at the university level and hoping to find a solution for our faculty that teach separate cohorts of students taking the same course. They want students to have access to the same modules/assignments AND discussions WITHOUT interacting with one another. Is this possible? Thank you for any guidance!

[Katrina-Hess]

Hi @ericmarshburn, currently our groups are meant to support project collaboration. We are exploring a new type of group, we're actually calling them "cohort groups" for the time being, which will allow teachers and admins to create private groups for other purposes. Private meaning the groups are not visible to students. Thank you for sharing your use case, I will forward to the team and post any updates as we get further along.

Best, Katrina

[rmartini]

My campus would be very interested in this new type of group that's hidden from students! We are currently transitioning to Canvas and the lack of ability to group students in a way that doesn't automatically make it visible to students is definitely creating some problems/confusion. We've explored creating non-registrar-affiliated sections as an alternative but there is no easy way to bulk upload students to those sections (without sending an additional invitation, potentially causing some confusion). Will definitely be looking forward to exploring this update, @Katrina-Hess !

[CynthiaRubbelke]

We are very interested in private groups as well. We use groups for faculty members teaching clinical courses. There is no reason for the students to see these groups. They are strictly set up for grading clinical performance.  We were able to hide them in Blackboard.

[palmarinich]

I'm not sure whether this new type of group actually address the OPs need, but the option to separate sections within a single Discussion would be very helpful at addressing the longstanding issue with FERPA violations in cross-listed (or otherwise merged) courses.

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Higher-Ed-Canvas-Users/The-Need-For-Privacy-FERPA-and-Title-IX/ba...

[Katrina-Hess]

Thank you for your use cases and feedback, @rmartini, @CynthiaRubbelke, @palmarinich. I'll forward to our team.