How do I use Groups in Canvas?

Consider the difference between Groups and Sections.

Naming Groups

When creating groups and sections, you can choose any name. However, it is strongly encouraged that you use a naming convention that will help you and your students navigate not only your course more easily but also navigate groups and sections across all courses.  Regardless of how you have organized your course and your teaching team, always include your course code at the beginning of your group and section names. If you have assigned TFs to a particular group or section, you may also wish to include the TF’s name in the group or section name. 

Groups Overview

Student's Perspective: Students have access to groups from the Groups link in the global nav bar which will display a list of all the groups that they are a member of. 

TF's Perspective: TFs can access groups from the People page and by clicking on the appropriate group set tab, and then click on the gear/cog icon next to the group name and clicking on Visit Group Homepage.

Collaborative Group Homepages

When a group is created, each group receives its own isolated collaborative space that allows group members to share files, create discussion threads and pages to exchange information and share ideas, host conferences, and create collaborative documents via Office 365 or Google. 

Teaching staff can create the group sets and groups, and in addition, if students are allowed, they can also create and organize their own groups within a group set.

Group Assignments

Along with collaborative spaces, groups can also be used with assignments and discussions as well. Groups are assigned to assignments and discussions through the broader group set that houses the smaller groups. 

Group Assignments allow the flexibility for students to each receive their own individual grades for a single submission, or to receive the same grade as a single group.

Group Discussions

Group Discussions when created by teaching staff, function just like a group discussion created by students within a group when accessed from their group homepage.

If a graded group discussion is created, then Canvas will be expecting at least one response from each student to be considered submitted.

Management Flexibility

Groups can be created by either students or teaching staff, and they can be populated by the teaching staff, or if allowed, students can select which group they would like to join. When managed by the teaching staff, the groups can be automatically created and filled if desired, or they can be created and filled manually as well.

Keep in mind that group sets, the containers for the smaller groups, can only be created by teaching staff.

Note: Both group assignments and discussions, support differentiated due dates where you can assign different due dates for each group within a group set.

Note: Once a group assignment or graded group discussion has already received submissions, do not move group members from one group to another if group membership has to be updated or changed as this will cause issues with grading. 

Instead, create a new group set or clone a pre-existing one, and then add the student(s) to the new group as necessary.

Use Cases

• Help facilitate group projects and collaboration in a more transparent manner that can allow faculty to view and keep track of interactions.
• Provide a space for students to collaborate in their own smaller teams before posting in a larger course-wide discussion thread, or larger group discussion thread comprised of multiple teams.
• Facilitate discussions that were started in class in a smaller team/group-based setting