[Groups] Difficulty Setting up Group Sets for Group Discussions and SpeedGrader

[canhelp]

Group sets in Canvas group assignments are often difficult to set up correctly. If steps are not performed in exactly the correct order, SpeedGrader can be impacted in ways that make the grading process very difficult. In many cases, fixing the issue is a lengthy, troubling, and confusing task.

When setting up group sets, instructors frequently forget to organize students into groups before students submit to assignments. When a student submits to an assignment before students have been organized into group sets, student submissions will not display correctly in SpeedGrader. If this is for a discussion post, discussion posts will often not display in the SpeedGrader and instructors will need to search for individual discussion posts to grade them. In some instances of this issue, we've seen instructors also be unable to view any comments that they are leaving. This issue occurs most often when submissions are received before group sets have been organized, when an assignment is changed to a group assignment after submissions have been received, or when a group set has been assigned to an assignment/discussion but is later deleted.

We believe that all Canvas users would benefit greatly from a notification or message system that will help instructors catch these errors before they occur. If a system were in place to automatically recognize and warn instructors that an assignment or discussion is being assigned to a group set that does not exist or is incomplete, it would be much easier to prevent these issues that occur within the SpeedGrader. This will encourage instructors to ensure that the group set is properly configured before they create and publish the assignment or discussion. Messages like "there are currently X number of students who are unassigned in this group set," or that "the group set you want to delete is currently assigned to the following assignments" would be very helpful to instructors and prevent issues with the SpeedGrader from occurring.

[SamKay]

Yes! This functionality would be key to accommodating things like students joining after the start of the quarter, when groups have already been assigned. And in the event that things aren't set up in exactly the right order, there needs to be a way to correct the issue without using a cumbersome workaround or asking a large number of students to resubmit.

[milesl]

@canhelp You may be interested in this feature request I created about making graded discussions function the same way as assignments WRT groups and speedgrader:

https://community.canvaslms.com/t5/Idea-Conversations/Speedgrader-support-for-ungrouped-discussion-p...