[ARCHIVED] [ARCHIVED] Groups and Sections and their interplay

[george_hatsidim]

Hi All,

I am trying to get my head around difficult concepts (albeit only for the novice) in Canvas LMS with a view to putting together some visualisations for the clarification of concepts etc. 

I understand that groups are assembled primarily by the educator (although I believe students can assemble study groups as well?) for the purposes of sorting and limiting numbers of students with regards to quizzes, discussions and other collaborative and/or assessment tasks. 

Sections on the other hand seem to be the final step down from Accounts/Sub-accounts/Courses so that students can be organised into administrative groups. This might be done, I believe, for purposes that relate to the fact that some students might have different dates for assessments and tutorials (for example) to that of another section. In other words if you had 600 students all seeing the same content then you might want to break them into three sections of 200 so that perhaps they could be facilitated by three different tutors, all of whom would have their own submission and marking dates etc. (Correct me if I am wrong). 

If this is one scenario, what are other? How do you conceptualise the difference between sections and groups and can you see how this might be represented visually? Also if you have read this far, can you point me to other aspects of Canvas that might cause confusion due to their complexity or perhaps just the manner in which they are organised and presented? 

Many thanks from a beginner,

George.

[Stef_retired]

Thank you for posting this discussion prompt,  @george_hatsidim ‌; I've no doubt it will inspire participation from Canvas veterans. I noticed that you've posted the same discussion in the Find Answers‌ space. Rather than posting the same prompt in multiple places, Community members can post in a single spot, and then use the Share button that appears at the upper right of the screen to share it out to any other groups in the Community of which they're members. This both increases the visibility of the post and allows all of the responses to appear under a single unified thread.

Therefore, to avoid duplication of effort, I've locked this duplicate discussion for further participation, and would encourage people to post their responses to https://community.canvaslms.com/thread/16908-sections-and-groupsdifferences-and-interplay (which I've shared to this https://community.canvaslms.com/groups/higher-ed?sr=search&searchId=8523bf6a-8681-41f8-a4ee-e3e1800e...‌ group).