Assignment Hidden from One Group, Visible to the Other

[mychael_phillip]

I am teaching a debate class for the first time, and I scaffolded some research-based graded discussions boards for each side of the debate--AFF and NEG--that will servie as a kind of crowd sourced database for each side. In that way, I only want half of the students to be able to see the content in each of the discussion posts. Basically, I don't want the NEG to have the benefit of seeing all the AFF arguments before the debate, and vice versa.

If I assign the discussion board only to one group, will students outside of that group still be able to view the discussion board threads? Is there something I can do to limit who can see what?

Mychael

[Chris_Hofer · Accepted solution]

Hello  @mychael_phillip ...

I think what you'll want to do is the following:

1. Go to your People button in your course.
2. Click on + Group Set in the upper right corner of the screen.
   • How do I add a group set in a course?
3. Fill in the details for the Group Set you are creating...such as "Debate".
4. After the "Debate" Group Set is created, you will create two Groups within that Group Set (via the + Groups button): "AFF" and "NEG".
   • How do I automatically create groups in a group set?
   • How do I manually create groups in a group set?
   • How do I create self sign-up groups in a group set?
5. Then, depending on how you configured your Group Set, you can then place your students into either of these Groups.
   • How do I automatically assign students to groups?
   • How do I manually assign students to groups?
   • How do I move a student into a different group?
6. Next, return to your Discussion topic.
7. When editing your discussion topic, click on the check-box for This is a Group Discussion.
   • How do I create a group discussion in a course?
8. A drop-down list will appear, and you'll want to select the "Debate" Group Set that you created in step #3 above.
9. After you save you Discussion topic, you should see an blue box indicator that this is now a group discussion with two groups, "AFF" and "NEG".  Each should have their own area to discuss without seeing the other side.

I hope this information will be of help to you, Mychael.  Please sing out if you have any questions about this information.

[mychael_phillip]

This should work. Thanks so much for the timely response!

[Shar]

Hi Mychael Phillips,

In case you have different discussion prompts for the 2 groups, for instance different ideas for them to research in the text on the discussion page, you may want to consider also creating 2 sections in the course for AFF, NEG.

1. Create the sections. How do I add a section to a course as an instructor?
2. Sort the students into sections. How do I edit sections for an enrollment in a course?

Then you can assign the unique discussions to the different sections. How do I assign a graded discussion to a course section?

But if you're going to be changing who is on the AFF and NEG side of different debates throughout the term perhaps just using groups will be better so that you do not end up with an insane number of sections unless you don't mind.

Just remember, everyone will see the same discussion text (prompt); it's the entries by the group members that are hidden from other groups. For instance, in this example there is only 1 group assigned to this discussion (Tailors) and there is 1 entry in the group discussion. Everyone else just sees this page and if they are not in the group, they can still post to this discussion but not see what the Tailors have said. Likewise, the Tailors cannot see any posts made outside of their group discussion.

Long story short:

Using Group discussion

• Everyone sees the same discussion prompt.
• Posts are visible to the group members only.
• Can be graded or ungraded.
• Teacher role has to visit each group within the discussion to see the (number of) posts.

Using Section-assigned discussion

• Only students in the section even know the discussion exists and see the prompt.
• Posts are visible to everyone in the section.
• Graded discussion only.
• Teacher role can see the number of posts from the Discussions page.

It's good to have alternatives, depending on how you want the discussions to function,
Cheers - Shar

[mychael_phillip]

This is really helpful as I will be switching the groups at some point (but it will just be one switch), so the idea of making sections instead of groups (if my institution allows it) might be the ticket.

Thanks!

[twassmer]

Hi everybody,

Can I also assign an assignment other than a discussion to just one lab group. In times of COVID I have to split labs into cohorts and teach one in person - the other is Online - than we switch. These are still individual assignments but only for half of the class...

Thanks in advance!

Tom