How do Students know about self-signups?

[jherring]

Our university is switching over to Canvas starting this fall semester (2017). All of the faculty and students are going to be experiencing this for the first time this fall. I'm sure we're all in for a bit of a learning curve. 

I teach blended(hybrid) class and I have an exercise where I need the students to form four groups of five students. I've gone into Canvas and set up the assignment with each group to have its own day to come into class for the exercise. I've configured it for four groups with a maximum of five students and for self signup. The groups have separate deadline days and the available "from - to" days are the same. 

My question is this:How do the students know that there are signups and where to go to sign up? Will a button or a link appear on the assignment for them to click? Will something show up near the deadline? Do I need to manually add a link to the people page within the description of the assignment ?

My "Student view" doesn't seem to work with group assignments to help me figure this out. (Something about the student view isn't a real account and thus it can't interact with groups, according to IT/helpdesk). 

Thanks for your time. 

Jeff

[cdavis1921 · Accepted solution]

I'm sure that you have already looked at the student help guide for groups, but in case you haven't, it might help. The Student Groups video tutorial also is very handy. You could make an announcement that explains the need for your students to sign-up for a group and put a direct link to the user groups sign-up page for the course in the announcement. This would help students to know "where to go" in your course to sign-up for the group activities. 

I usually make any course registration/orientation requirements as assignments to be completed with a grading rubric attached. For instance, I teach chemistry, and my students are required to watch a safety film, complete safety training, sign a safety contract, and take a safety quiz. Each of these items is then listed as part of an assignment in my Orientation assignment group (0% weight). As the students finish the portions of the assignment (i.e. watch the film, complete the quiz, etc.), I update the students' scores. They know that when they complete the assignment, then all the requirements have been met. You can also use the Message Students feature to remind students that they haven't completed all of the requirements. Your students would know that they need to sign up for a group from what you put in the instructions of the assignment, and you can put the link to the groups sign-up page in the instructions as well. 

I find that the assignments work well to keep the students on track, since they are listed in the course calendar with the associated due dates. The number of reminders that I have to send out is usually between 2-5 for all of my sections combined, which is about 75-100 students. 

[jherring]

I'm sure that you have already looked at the student help guide for groups, but in case you haven't, it might help. The Student Groups video tutorial also is very handy. 

Student tutorials hadn't occurred to me.  Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. That told me what I needed. I had included a link to groups in the assignment description. I like the idea of adding about adding the info the announcements. Thanks for that. 

Jeff