Canvas @ Yale

Creating Groups in Your Course

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Canvas Groups are created and managed through the People Tool. Instructors / TAs / Guest Instructors can create Group Sets by going to the People tool and clicking on the Groups tab. Group Sets house the different groups within a course. Once you have created a group set, you can create groups and either manually or automatically enroll students into those groups.

Group Sets Vs. Groups

Group Sets are collections of Groups. Instructors can create multiple Group Sets in their course to accommodate different combinations of students for different projects. Each Group Set will contain the appropriate number of groups between which the students should be assigned.

A student can only be assigned to one Group within a specific Group Set.  

Creating a Group Set

  1. Click on "People" in the course navigation.
  2. Click "+Group Set" in the top right corner.
  1. Set the name and options for your group set, and then click "Save":
    1. Group Set Name: This is the name of your set of groups, NOT the name of an individual group.
    2. Self Sign-Up:
      1. Allow self sign-up: This allows students to enroll themselves into their chosen groups.
      2. Require group members to be in the same section: If you allow students to enroll themselves into a group, you can specify that they must be in the same section.
    3. Group Structure:
      1. Split students into __ groups: Automatically divides students into the specified number of groups. You can also specify that they must be in the same section.
      2. I'll create groups manually: Manually create the number of groups, as well as manually enroll students.

Creating Groups within a Group Set

After creating a group set, you will be taken to the tab for the new group set. If you chose the "Split students into __ groups" option, groups will have already been created for you, and students will have been randomly assigned.

  1. To manually create a new group, click "+Group."
  1. Name the group and optionally limit the number of members to a group, then click "Save."

Enrolling / Moving Students in Groups

  1. If you select “I’ll create groups manually” or you would like to move students around groups, you can click and drag their names to the chosen group.
To add a student to a specific group, click the + next to the student's name and then click the link to the group.
  1. Click on the arrow next to the group name to expand and view the group enrollments.
Click on the arrow to expand and view the group.

For more information on Groups:

For more help, please contact [email protected].

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